Part 10

The second of the two inferior dramas may be conveniently called _Urvashi_, though the full title is _The Tale of Urvashi won by Valour_. When and where the play was first produced we do not know, for the prologue is silent as to these matters. It has been thought that it was the last work of Kalidasa, even that it was never produced in his lifetime. Some support is lent to this theory by the fact that the play is filled with reminiscences of Shakuntala, in small matters as well as in great; as if the poet's imagination had grown weary, and he were willing to repeat himself. Yet _Urvashi_ is a much more ambitious effort than _Malavika_, and invites a fuller criticism, after an outline of the plot has been given.

In addition to the stage-director and his assistant, who appear in the prologue, the characters of the play are these:

PURURAVAS, _king in Pratishthana on the Ganges_.

AYUS, _his son_.

MANAVAKA, _a clown, his friend_.

URVASHI, _a heavenly nymph_.

CHITRALEKHA, _another nymph, her friend_.

AUSHINARI, _queen of Pururavas_.

NIPUNIKA, _her maid_.

_A charioteer, a chamberlain, a hermit-woman, various nymphs and other divine beings, and attendants_.

The scene shifts as indicated in the following analysis. The time of the first four acts is a few days. Between acts four and five several years elapse.

## ACT I.--The prologue only tells us that we may expect a new play of

Kalidasa. A company of heavenly nymphs then appear upon Mount Gold-peak wailing and calling for help. Their cries are answered by King Pururavas, who rides in a chariot that flies through the air. In response to his inquiries, the nymphs inform him that two of their number, Urvashi and Chitralekha, have been carried into captivity by a demon. The king darts in pursuit, and presently returns, victorious, with the two nymphs. As soon as Urvashi recovers consciousness, and has rejoined her joyful friends, it is made plain that she and the king have been deeply impressed with each other's attractions. The king is compelled to decline an invitation to visit Paradise, but he and Urvashi exchange loving glances before they part.

## ACT II.--The act opens with a comic scene in the king's palace. The

clown appears, bursting with the secret of the king's love for Urvashi, which has been confided to him. He is joined by the maid Nipunika, commissioned by the queen to discover what it is that occupies the king's mind. She discovers the secret ingeniously, but without much difficulty, and gleefully departs.

The king and the clown then appear in the garden, and the king expresses at some length the depth and seeming hopelessness of his passion. The latter part of his lament is overheard by Urvashi herself, who, impelled by love for the king, has come down to earth with her friend Chitralekha, and now stands near, listening but invisible. When she has heard enough to satisfy her of the king's passion, she writes a love-stanza on a birch-leaf, and lets it fall before him. His reception of this token is such that Urvashi throws aside the magic veil that renders her invisible, but as soon as she has greeted the king, she and her friend are called away to take their parts in a play that is being presented in Paradise.

The king and the clown hunt for Urvashi's love-letter, which has been neglected during the past few minutes. But the leaf has blown away, only to be picked up and read by Nipunika, who at that moment enters with the queen. The queen can hardly be deceived by the lame excuses which the king makes, and after offering her ironical congratulations, jealously leaves him.

## ACT III.--The act opens with a conversation between two minor

personages in Paradise. It appears that Urvashi had taken the heroine's part in the drama just presented there, and when asked, "On whom is your heart set?" had absentmindedly replied, "On Pururavas." Heaven's stage-director had thereupon cursed her to fall from Paradise, but this curse had been thus modified: that she was to live on earth with Pururavas until he should see a child born of her, and was then to return.

The scene shifts to Pururavas' palace. In the early evening, the chamberlain brings the king a message, inviting him to meet the queen on a balcony bathed in the light of the rising moon. The king betakes himself thither with his friend, the clown. In the midst of a dialogue concerning moonlight and love, Urvashi and Chitralekha enter from Paradise, wearing as before veils of invisibility. Presently the queen appears and with humble dignity asks pardon of the king for her rudeness, adding that she will welcome any new queen whom he genuinely loves and who genuinely returns his love. When the queen departs, Urvashi creeps up behind the king and puts her hands over his eyes. Chitralekha departs after begging the king to make her friend forget Paradise.

## ACT IV.--From a short dialogue in Paradise between Chitralekha and

another nymph, we learn that a misfortune has befallen Pururavas and Urvashi. During their honeymoon in a delightful Himalayan forest, Urvashi, in a fit of jealousy, had left her husband, and had inadvertently entered a grove forbidden by an austere god to women. She was straightway transformed into a vine, while Pururavas is wandering through the forest in desolate anguish.

The scene of what follows is laid in the Himalayan forest. Pururavas enters, and in a long poetical soliloquy bewails his loss and seeks for traces of Urvashi. He vainly asks help of the creatures whom he meets: a peacock, a cuckoo, a swan, a ruddy goose, a bee, an elephant, a mountain-echo, a river, and an antelope. At last he finds a brilliant ruby in a cleft of the rocks, and when about to throw it away, is told by a hermit to preserve it: for this is the gem of reunion, and one who possesses it will soon be reunited with his love. With the gem in his hand, Pururavas comes to a vine which mysteriously reminds him of Urvashi, and when he embraces it, he finds his beloved in his arms. After she has explained to him the reason of her transformation, they determine to return to the king's capital.

## ACT V.--The scene of the concluding act is the king's palace. Several

years have passed in happy love, and Pururavas has only one sorrow--that he is childless.

One day a vulture snatches from a maid's hand the treasured gem of reunion, which he takes to be a bit of bloody meat, and flies off with it, escaping before he can be killed. While the king and his companions lament the gem's loss, the chamberlain enters, bringing the gem and an arrow with which the bird had been shot. On the arrow is written a verse declaring it to be the property of Ayus, son of Pururavas and Urvashi. A hermit-woman is then ushered in, who brings a lad with her. She explains that the lad had been entrusted to her as soon as born by Urvashi, and that it was he who had just shot the bird and recovered the gem. When Urvashi is summoned to explain why she had concealed her child, she reminds the king of heaven's decree that she should return as soon as Pururavas should see the child to be born to them. She had therefore sacrificed maternal love to conjugal affection. Upon this, the king's new-found joy gives way to gloom. He determines to give up his kingdom and spend the remainder of his life as a hermit in the forest. But the situation is saved by a messenger from Paradise, bearing heaven's decree that Urvashi shall live with the king until his death. A troop of nymphs then enter and assist in the solemn consecration of Ayus as crown prince.

The tale of Pururavas and Urvashi, which Kalidasa has treated dramatically, is first made known to us in the Rigveda. It is thus one of the few tales that so caught the Hindu imagination as to survive the profound change which came over Indian thinking in the passage from Vedic to classical times. As might be expected from its history, it is told in many widely differing forms, of which the oldest and best may be summarised thus.

Pururavas, a mortal, sees and loves the nymph Urvashi. She consents to live with him on earth so long as he shall not break certain trivial conditions. Some time after the birth of a son, these conditions are broken, through no fault of the man, and she leaves him. He wanders disconsolate, finds her, and pleads with her, by her duty as a wife, by her love for her child, even by a threat of suicide. She rejects his entreaties, declaring that there can be no lasting love between mortal and immortal, even adding: "There are no friendships with women. Their hearts are the hearts of hyenas." Though at last she comforts him with vague hopes of a future happiness, the story remains, as indeed it must remain, a tragedy--the tragedy of love between human and divine.

This splendid tragic story Kalidasa has ruined. He has made of it an ordinary tale of domestic intrigue, has changed the nymph of heaven into a member of an earthly harem. The more important changes made by Kalidasa in the traditional story, all have the tendency to remove the massive, godlike, austere features of the tale, and to substitute something graceful or even pretty. These principal changes are: the introduction of the queen, the clown, and the whole human paraphernalia of a court; the curse pronounced on Urvashi for her carelessness in the heavenly drama, and its modification; the invention of the gem of reunion; and the final removal of the curse, even as modified. It is true that the Indian theatre permits no tragedy, and we may well believe that no successor of Kalidasa could hope to present a tragedy on the stage. But might not Kalidasa, far overtopping his predecessors, have put on the stage a drama the story of which was already familiar to his audience as a tragic story? Perhaps not. If not, one can but wish that he had chosen another subject.

This violent twisting of an essentially tragic story has had a further ill consequence in weakening the individual characters. Pururavas is a mere conventional hero, in no way different from fifty others, in spite of his divine lineage and his successful wooing of a goddess. Urvashi is too much of a nymph to be a woman, and too much of a woman to be a nymph. The other characters are mere types.

Yet, in spite of these obvious objections, Hindu critical opinion has always rated the _Urvashi_ very high, and I have long hesitated to make adverse comments upon it, for it is surely true that every nation is the best judge of its own literature. And indeed, if one could but forget plot and characters, he would find in _Urvashi_ much to attract and charm. There is no lack of humour in the clever maid who worms the clown's secret out of him. There is no lack of a certain shrewdness in the clown, as when he observes:

"Who wants heaven? It is nothing to eat or drink. It is just a place where they never shut their eyes--like fishes!"

Again, the play offers an opportunity for charming scenic display. The terrified nymphs gathered on the mountain, the palace balcony bathed in moonlight, the forest through which the king wanders in search of his lost darling, the concluding solemn consecration of the crown prince by heavenly beings--these scenes show that Kalidasa was no closet dramatist. And finally, there is here and there such poetry as only Kalidasa could write. The fourth act particularly, undramatic as it is, is full of a delicate beauty that defies transcription. It was a new and daring thought--to present on the stage a long lyrical monologue addressed to the creatures of the forest and inspired by despairing passion. Nor must it be forgotten that this play, like all Indian plays, is an opera. The music and the dancing are lost. We judge it perforce unfairly, for we judge it by the text alone. If, in spite of all, the _Urvashi_ is a failure, it is a failure possible only to a serene and mighty poet.

* * * * *

THE DYNASTY OF RAGHU

_The Dynasty of Raghu_ is an epic poem in nineteen cantos. It consists of 1564 stanzas, or something over six thousand lines of verse. The subject is that great line of kings who traced their origin to the sun, the famous "solar line" of Indian story. The bright particular star of the solar line is Rama, the knight without fear and without reproach, the Indian ideal of a gentleman. His story had been told long before Kalidasa's time in the _Ramayana_, an epic which does not need to shun comparison with the foremost epic poems of Europe. In _The Dynasty of Raghu_, too, Rama is the central figure; yet in Kalidasa's poem there is much detail concerning other princes of the line. The poem thus naturally falls into three great parts: first, the four immediate ancestors of Rama (cantos 1-9); second, Rama (cantos 10-15); third, certain descendants of Rama (cantos 16-19). A somewhat detailed account of the matter of the poem may well precede criticism and comment.

_First canto. The journey to the hermitage_.--The poem begins with the customary brief prayer for Shiva's favour:

God Shiva and his mountain bride, Like word and meaning unified, The world's great parents, I beseech To join fit meaning to my speech.

Then follow nine stanzas in which Kalidasa speaks more directly of himself than elsewhere in his works:

How great is Raghu's solar line! How feebly small are powers of mine! As if upon the ocean's swell I launched a puny cockle-shell.

The fool who seeks a poet's fame Must look for ridicule and blame, Like tiptoe dwarf who fain would try To pluck the fruit for giants high.

Yet I may enter through the door That mightier poets pierced of yore; A thread may pierce a jewel, but Must follow where the diamond cut.

Of kings who lived as saints from birth, Who ruled to ocean-shore on earth, Who toiled until success was given, Whose chariots stormed the gates of heaven,

Whose pious offerings were blest, Who gave his wish to every guest, Whose punishments were as the crimes, Who woke to guard the world betimes,

Who sought, that they might lavish, pelf, Whose measured speech was truth itself, Who fought victorious wars for fame, Who loved in wives the mother's name,

Who studied all good arts as boys, Who loved, in manhood, manhood's joys, Whose age was free from worldly care, Who breathed their lives away in prayer,

Of these I sing, of Raghu's line, Though weak mine art, and wisdom mine. Forgive these idle stammerings And think: For virtue's sake he sings.

The good who hear me will be glad To pluck the good from out the bad; When ore is proved by fire, the loss Is not of purest gold, but dross.

After the briefest glance at the origin of the solar line, the poet tells of Rama's great-great-grandfather, King Dilipa. The detailed description of Dilipa's virtues has interest as showing Kalidasa's ideal of an aristocrat; a brief sample must suffice here:

He practised virtue, though in health; Won riches, with no greed for wealth; Guarded his life, though not from fear; Prized joys of earth, but not too dear.

His virtuous foes he could esteem Like bitter drugs that healing seem; The friends who sinned he could forsake Like fingers bitten by a snake.

Yet King Dilipa has one deep-seated grief: he has no son. He therefore journeys with his queen to the hermitage of the sage Vasishtha, in order to learn what they must do to propitiate an offended fate. Their chariot rolls over country roads past fragrant lotus-ponds and screaming peacocks and trustful deer, under archways formed without supporting pillars by the cranes, through villages where they receive the blessings of the people. At sunset they reach the peaceful forest hermitage, and are welcomed by the sage. In response to Vasishtha's benevolent inquiries, the king declares that all goes well in the kingdom, and yet:

Until from this dear wife there springs A son as great as former kings, The seven islands of the earth And all their gems, are nothing worth.

The final debt, most holy one, Which still I owe to life--a son-- Galls me as galls the cutting chain An elephant housed in dirt and pain.

Vasishtha tells the king that on a former occasion he had offended the divine cow Fragrant, and had been cursed by the cow to lack children until he had propitiated her own offspring. While the sage is speaking, Fragrant's daughter approaches, and is entrusted to the care of the king and queen.

_Second canto. The holy cow's gift_.--During twenty-one days the king accompanies the cow during her wanderings in the forest, and each night the queen welcomes their return to the hermitage. On the twenty-second day the cow is attacked by a lion, and when the king hastens to draw an arrow, his arm is magically numbed, so that he stands helpless. To increase his horror, the lion speaks with a human voice, saying that he is a servant of the god Shiva, set on guard there and eating as his appointed food any animals that may appear. Dilipa perceives that a struggle with earthly weapons is useless, and begs the lion to accept his own body as the price of the cow's release. The lion tries sophistry, using the old, hollow arguments:

Great beauty and fresh youth are yours; on earth As sole, unrivalled emperor you rule; Should you redeem a thing of little worth At such a price, you would appear a fool.

If pity moves you, think that one mere cow Would be the gainer, should you choose to die; Live rather for the world! Remember how The father-king can bid all dangers fly.

And if the fiery sage's wrath, aglow At loss of one sole cow, should make you shudder, Appease his anger; for you can bestow Cows by the million, each with pot-like udder.

Save life and youth; for to the dead are given No long, unbroken years of joyous mirth; But riches and imperial power are heaven-- The gods have nothing that you lack on earth.

The lion spoke and ceased; but echo rolled Forth from the caves wherein the sound was pent, As if the hills applauded manifold, Repeating once again the argument.

Dilipa has no trouble in piercing this sophistical argument, and again offers his own life, begging the lion to spare the body of his fame rather than the body of his flesh. The lion consents, but when the king resolutely presents himself to be eaten, the illusion vanishes, and the holy cow grants the king his desire. The king returns to his capital with the queen, who shortly becomes pregnant.

_Third canto. Raghu's consecration_.--The queen gives birth to a glorious boy, whom the joyful father names Raghu. There follows a description of the happy family, of which a few stanzas are given here:

The king drank pleasure from him late and soon With eyes that stared like windless lotus-flowers; Unselfish joy expanded all his powers As swells the sea responsive to the moon.

The rooted love that filled each parent's soul For the other, deep as bird's love for the mate, Was now divided with the boy; and straight The remaining half proved greater than the whole.

He learned the reverence that befits a boy; Following the nurse's words, began to talk; And clinging to her finger, learned to walk: These childish lessons stretched his father's joy,

Who clasped the baby to his breast, and thrilled To feel the nectar-touch upon his skin, Half closed his eyes, the father's bliss to win Which, more for long delay, his being filled.

The baby hair must needs be clipped; yet he Retained two dangling locks, his cheeks to fret; And down the river of the alphabet He swam, with other boys, to learning's sea.

Religion's rites, and what good learning suits A prince, he had from teachers old and wise; Not theirs the pain of barren enterprise, For effort spent on good material, fruits.

This happy childhood is followed by a youth equally happy. Raghu is married and made crown prince. He is entrusted with the care of the horse of sacrifice,[1] and when Indra, king of the gods, steals the horse, Raghu fights him. He cannot overcome the king of heaven, yet he acquits himself so creditably that he wins Indra's friendship. In consequence of this proof of his manhood, the empire is bestowed upon Raghu by his father, who retires with his queen to the forest, to spend his last days and prepare for death.

_Fourth canto. Raghu conquers the world_.--The canto opens with several stanzas descriptive of the glory of youthful King Raghu.

He manifested royal worth By even justice toward the earth, Beloved as is the southern breeze, Too cool to burn, too warm to freeze.

The people loved his father, yet For greater virtues could forget; The beauty of the blossoms fair Is lost when mango-fruits are there.

But the vassal kings are restless

For when they knew the king was gone And power was wielded by his son, The wrath of subject kings awoke, Which had been damped in sullen smoke.

Raghu therefore determines to make a warlike progress through all India. He marches eastward with his army from his capital Ayodhya (the name is preserved in the modern Oudh) to the Bay of Bengal, then south along the eastern shore of India to Cape Comorin, then north along the western shore until he comes to the region drained by the Indus, finally east through the tremendous Himalaya range into Assam, and thence home. The various nations whom he encounters, Hindus, Persians, Greeks, and White Huns, all submit either with or without fighting. On his safe return, Raghu offers a great sacrifice and gives away all his wealth.[2]

_Fifth canto. Aja goes wooing_.--While King Raghu is penniless, a young sage comes to him, desiring a huge sum of money to give to the teacher with whom he has just finished his education. The king, unwilling that any suppliant should go away unsatisfied, prepares to assail the god of wealth in his Himalayan stronghold, and the god, rather than risk the combat, sends a rain of gold into the king's treasury. This gold King Raghu bestows upon the sage, who gratefully uses his spiritual power to cause a son to be born to his benefactor. In course of time, the son is born and the name Aja is given to him. We are here introduced to Prince Aja, who is a kind of secondary hero in the poem, inferior only to his mighty grandson, Rama. To Aja are devoted the remainder of this fifth canto and the following three cantos; and these Aja-cantos are among the loveliest in the epic. When the prince has grown into young manhood, he journeys to a neighbouring court to participate in the marriage reception of Princess Indumati.[3]