As you have intelligently observed, our Puranas and other scriptures abound in the type of stories you refer to. These are typical of the kings or rulers who had the power to desire whatever they wished and to acquire all those wishes. Females were such highly prized possessions and the people who wrote the puranas gave a simple "twist" to this purely lust-driven phenomenon a different colour, so to say. Such accounts were relished by the educated land-owning gentry who alos generally led idle lives and had minds where the devil had workshop. That is why even today, the "naLacaritam" kathakaLi is a favourite among the Namboothiris and other, modern-day cognoscenti of that dance drama.
Tabras of Travancore (and I feel even the other areas of modern day Kerala) did not have any liking for the kind of tales which you list, nor did they have any interest in Kathakali. Since these tabras were migrants, essentially, and identified themselves at least intrinsically with their Tamil roots and culture, they were more concerned with the "Bhakthi" parts of our puranic stories. Marriage for them, was essentially a "samskAram" to enter the grihastAshramam and beget progeny so that their culture and ways of life could continue in the endless flow of time.
The vasantasena-chArudatta (not vAsavadatta) story is, of course, a debut in our classical drama. And I agree that this story perhaps is the forerunner of all the subsequent "love stories". Even so, mricchakatika is not a guide to normal living; if anything, it is full of strange events not conforming to the ordinary lives of people of those times.
The difficulty with this idea of "chemistry", "frequency" and "wavelengths", etc., is that such things will no longer apply once the marriage is over. I have heard Smt. Mercy Ravi (Late) wife of our GOI minister Shri Vayalar Ravi, in a TV programme, that though both of them loved for 6 or 7 years (they belonged to different religions and probably also castes) and got married thereafter, on the morning after their marriage both of them found their partner to be a different person from the one whom they knew all along for those 6 or 7 years. They then found out that their "love period" was not real! Smt. Mercy Ravi signed off with the advice to all "lovers" with a suitable caution that they should not expect their married life to be a continuation of their "love life".
I therefore feel that an arranged marriage without any of these "chemistry", "frequency" and "wavelengths", etc., is as good as one with these add-ons, provided both the partners are not deluded by such things.
P.S.
I have seen a young couple, love marriage after love from primary school!, and every now and then both of them utter, like "deekshA mantra" "xyz! I love you!" or something to this effect, even in the presence of others. So, I asked the husband when he was alone why both of them are doing so. His reply was that both of them needed this constant assurance from the other party so that they have the assurance that their mutual love or chemistry remains intact!!
hwell: (I mean the claculation one makes vis a vis another person).
