Part 2
Though Kalidasa has not been as widely appreciated in Europe as he deserves, he is the only Sanskrit poet who can properly be said to have been appreciated at all. Here he must struggle with the truly Himalayan barrier of language. Since there will never be many Europeans, even among the cultivated, who will find it possible to study the intricate Sanskrit language, there remains only one means of presentation. None knows the cruel inadequacy of poetical translation like the translator. He understands better than others can, the significance of the position which Kalidasa has won in Europe. When Sir William Jones first translated the _Shakuntala_ in 1789, his work was enthusiastically received in Europe, and most warmly, as was fitting, by the greatest living poet of Europe. Since that day, as is testified by new translations and by reprints of the old, there have been many thousands who have read at least one of Kalidasa's works; other thousands have seen it on the stage in Europe and America.
How explain a reputation that maintains itself indefinitely and that conquers a new continent after a lapse of thirteen hundred years? None can explain it, yet certain contributory causes can be named.
No other poet in any land has sung of happy love between man and woman as Kalidasa sang. Every one of his works is a love-poem, however much more it may be. Yet the theme is so infinitely varied that the reader never wearies. If one were to doubt from a study of European literature, comparing the ancient classics with modern works, whether romantic love be the expression of a natural instinct, be not rather a morbid survival of decaying chivalry, he has only to turn to India's independently growing literature to find the question settled. Kalidasa's love-poetry rings as true in our ears as it did in his countrymen's ears fifteen hundred years ago.
It is of love eventually happy, though often struggling for a time against external obstacles, that Kalidasa writes. There is nowhere in his works a trace of that not quite healthy feeling that sometimes assumes the name "modern love." If it were not so, his poetry could hardly have survived; for happy love, blessed with children, is surely the more fundamental thing. In his drama _Urvashi_ he is ready to change and greatly injure a tragic story, given him by long tradition, in order that a loving pair may not be permanently separated. One apparent exception there is--the story of Rama and Sita in _The Dynasty of Raghu_. In this case it must be remembered that Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu, and the story of a mighty god incarnate is not to be lightly tampered with.
It is perhaps an inevitable consequence of Kalidasa's subject that his women appeal more strongly to a modern reader than his men. The man is the more variable phenomenon, and though manly virtues are the same in all countries and centuries, the emphasis has been variously laid. But the true woman seems timeless, universal. I know of no poet, unless it be Shakespeare, who has given the world a group of heroines so individual yet so universal; heroines as true, as tender, as brave as are Indumati, Sita, Parvati, the Yaksha's bride, and Shakuntala.
Kalidasa could not understand women without understanding children. It would be difficult to find anywhere lovelier pictures of childhood than those in which our poet presents the little Bharata, Ayus, Raghu, Kumara. It is a fact worth noticing that Kalidasa's children are all boys. Beautiful as his women are, he never does more than glance at a little girl.
Another pervading note of Kalidasa's writing is his love of external nature. No doubt it is easier for a Hindu, with his almost instinctive belief in reincarnation, to feel that all life, from plant to god, is truly one; yet none, even among the Hindus, has expressed this feeling with such convincing beauty as has Kalidasa. It is hardly true to say that he personifies rivers and mountains and trees; to him they have a conscious individuality as truly and as certainly as animals or men or gods. Fully to appreciate Kalidasa's poetry one must have spent some weeks at least among wild mountains and forests untouched by man; there the conviction grows that trees and flowers are indeed individuals, fully conscious of a personal life and happy in that life. The return to urban surroundings makes the vision fade; yet the memory remains, like a great love or a glimpse of mystic insight, as an intuitive conviction of a higher truth.
Kalidasa's knowledge of nature is not only sympathetic, it is also minutely accurate. Not only are the snows and windy music of the Himalayas, the mighty current of the sacred Ganges, his possession; his too are smaller streams and trees and every littlest flower. It is delightful to imagine a meeting between Kalidasa and Darwin. They would have understood each other perfectly; for in each the same kind of imagination worked with the same wealth of observed fact.
I have already hinted at the wonderful balance in Kalidasa's character, by virtue of which he found himself equally at home in a palace and in a wilderness. I know not with whom to compare him in this; even Shakespeare, for all his magical insight into natural beauty, is primarily a poet of the human heart. That can hardly be said of Kalidasa, nor can it be said that he is primarily a poet of natural beauty. The two characters unite in him, it might almost be said, chemically. The matter which I am clumsily endeavouring to make plain is beautifully epitomised in _The Cloud-Messenger_. The former half is a description of external nature, yet interwoven with human feeling; the latter half is a picture of a human heart, yet the picture is framed in natural beauty. So exquisitely is the thing done that none can say which half is superior. Of those who read this perfect poem in the original text, some are more moved by the one, some by the other. Kalidasa understood in the fifth century what Europe did not learn until the nineteenth, and even now comprehends only imperfectly: that the world was not made for man, that man reaches his full stature only as he realises the dignity and worth of life that is not human.
That Kalidasa seized this truth is a magnificent tribute to his intellectual power, a quality quite as necessary to great poetry as perfection of form. Poetical fluency is not rare; intellectual grasp is not very uncommon: but the combination has not been found perhaps more than a dozen times since the world began. Because he possessed this harmonious combination, Kalidasa ranks not with Anacreon and Horace and Shelley, but with Sophocles, Vergil, Milton.
He would doubtless have been somewhat bewildered by Wordsworth's gospel of nature. "The world is too much with us," we can fancy him repeating. "How can the world, the beautiful human world, be too much with us? How can sympathy with one form of life do other than vivify our sympathy with other forms of life?"
It remains to say what can be said in a foreign language of Kalidasa's style. We have seen that he had a formal and systematic education; in this respect he is rather to be compared with Milton and Tennyson than with Shakespeare or Burns. He was completely master of his learning. In an age and a country which reprobated carelessness but were tolerant of pedantry, he held the scales with a wonderfully even hand, never heedless and never indulging in the elaborate trifling with Sanskrit diction which repels the reader from much of Indian literature. It is true that some western critics have spoken of his disfiguring conceits and puerile plays on words. One can only wonder whether these critics have ever read Elizabethan literature; for Kalidasa's style is far less obnoxious to such condemnation than Shakespeare's. That he had a rich and glowing imagination, "excelling in metaphor," as the Hindus themselves affirm, is indeed true; that he may, both in youth and age, have written lines which would not have passed his scrutiny in the vigour of manhood, it is not worth while to deny: yet the total effect left by his poetry is one of extraordinary sureness and delicacy of taste. This is scarcely a matter for argument; a reader can do no more than state his own subjective impression, though he is glad to find that impression confirmed by the unanimous authority of fifty generations of Hindus, surely the most competent judges on such a point.
Analysis of Kalidasa's writings might easily be continued, but analysis can never explain life. The only real criticism is subjective. We know that Kalidasa is a very great poet, because the world has not been able to leave him alone.
ARTHUR W. RYDER.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
On Kalidasa's life and writings may be consulted A.A. Macdonell's _History of Sanskrit Literature_ (1900); the same author's article "Kalidasa" in the eleventh edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (1910); and Sylvain Lévi's _Le Théâtre Indien_ (1890).
The more important translations in English are the following: of the _Shakuntala_, by Sir William Jones (1789) and Monier Williams (fifth edition, 1887); of the _Urvashi_, by H.H. Wilson (in his _Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus_, third edition, 1871); of _The Dynasty of Raghu_, by P. de Lacy Johnstone (1902); of _The Birth of The War-god_ (cantos one to seven), by Ralph T.H. Griffith (second edition, 1879); of _The Cloud-Messenger_, by H.H. Wilson (1813).
There is an inexpensive reprint of Jones's _Shakuntala_ and Wilson's _Cloud-Messenger_ in one volume in the Camelot Series.
KALIDASA
An ancient heathen poet, loving more God's creatures, and His women, and His flowers Than we who boast of consecrated powers; Still lavishing his unexhausted store
Of love's deep, simple wisdom, healing o'er The world's old sorrows, India's griefs and ours; That healing love he found in palace towers, On mountain, plain, and dark, sea-belted shore,
In songs of holy Raghu's kingly line Or sweet Shakuntala in pious grove, In hearts that met where starry jasmines twine
Or hearts that from long, lovelorn absence strove Together. Still his words of wisdom shine: All's well with man, when man and woman love.
Willst du die Blüte des frühen, die Früchte des späteren Jahres, Willst du, was reizt und entzückt, Willst du, was sättigt und nährt, Willst du den Hummel, die erde mit Einem Namen begreifen, Nenn' ich, Sakuntala, dich, und dann ist alles gesagt.
GOETHE. * * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: These verses are translated on pp. 123, 124.]
[Footnote 2: The passage will be found on pp. 190-192.]
[Footnote 3: This matter is more fully discussed in the introduction to my translation of _The Little Clay Cart_ (1905).]
[Footnote 4: Lévi, _Le Théâtre Indien_, p. 163.]
* * * * *
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: KALIDASA--HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS
SHAKUNTALA
THE STORY OF SHAKUNTALA
THE TWO MINOR DRAMAS-- I. Malavika and Agnimitra II. Urvashi
THE DYNASTY OF RAGHU
THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD
THE CLOUD-MESSENGER
THE SEASONS
* * * * *
SHAKUNTALA A PLAY IN SEVEN ACTS
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
KING DUSHYANTA.
BHARATA, _nicknamed_ All-tamer, _his son_.
MADHAVYA, _a clown, his companion_.
His charioteer.
RAIVATAKA, _a door-keeper_.
BHADRASENA, _a general_.
KARABHAKA, _a servant_.
PARVATAYANA, _a chamberlain_.
SOMARATA, _a chaplain_.
KANVA, _hermit-father_.
SHARNGARAVA }
SHARADVATA } _his pupils_.
HARITA }
DURVASAS, _an irascible sage_.
The chief of police.
SUCHAKA } } _policemen_. JANUKA }
A fisherman.
SHAKUNTALA, _foster-child of Kanva_.
ANUSUVA } } _her friends_. PRIYAMVADA }
GAUTAMI, _hermit-mother_.
KASHYAPA, _father of the gods_.
ADITI, _mother of the gods_.
MATALI, _charioteer of heaven's king_.
GALAVA, _a pupil in heaven_.
MISHRAKESHI, _a heavenly nymph_.
_Stage-director and actress (in the prologue), hermits and hermit-women, two court poets, palace attendants, invisible fairies_.
The first four acts pass in Kanva's forest hermitage; acts five and six in the king's palace; act seven on a heavenly mountain. The time is perhaps seven years.
SHAKUNTALA
PROLOGUE
BENEDICTION UPON THE AUDIENCE
Eight forms has Shiva, lord of all and king: And these are water, first created thing; And fire, which speeds the sacrifice begun; The priest; and time's dividers, moon and sun; The all-embracing ether, path of sound; The earth, wherein all seeds of life are found; And air, the breath of life: may he draw near, Revealed in these, and bless those gathered here.
_The stage-director_. Enough of this! (_Turning toward the dressing-room_.) Madam, if you are ready, pray come here. (_Enter an actress_.)
_Actress_. Here I am, sir. What am I to do?
_Director_. Our audience is very discriminating, and we are to offer them a new play, called _Shakuntala and the ring of recognition_, written by the famous Kalidasa. Every member of the cast must be on his mettle.
_Actress_. Your arrangements are perfect. Nothing will go wrong.
_Director_ (_smiling_). To tell the truth, madam,
Until the wise are satisfied, I cannot feel that skill is shown; The best-trained mind requires support, And does not trust itself alone.
_Actress_. True. What shall we do first?
_Director_. First, you must sing something to please the ears of the audience.
_Actress_. What season of the year shall I sing about? _Director_. Why, sing about the pleasant summer which has just begun. For at this time of year
A mid-day plunge will temper heat; The breeze is rich with forest flowers; To slumber in the shade is sweet; And charming are the twilight hours.
_Actress_ (_sings_).
The siris-blossoms fair, With pollen laden, Are plucked to deck her hair By many a maiden, But gently; flowers like these Are kissed by eager bees.
_Director_. Well done! The whole theatre is captivated by your song, and sits as if painted. What play shall we give them to keep their good-will?
_Actress_. Why, you just told me we were to give a new play called _Shakuntala and the ring_.
_Director_. Thank you for reminding me. For the moment I had quite forgotten.
Your charming song had carried me away As the deer enticed the hero of our play.
(_Exeunt ambo_.)
## ACT I
THE HUNT
(_Enter, in a chariot, pursuing a deer_, KING DUSHYANTA, _bow and arrow in hand; and a charioteer_.)
_Charioteer_ (_Looking at the king and the deer_). Your Majesty,
I see you hunt the spotted deer With shafts to end his race, As though God Shiva should appear In his immortal chase.
_King_. Charioteer, the deer has led us a long chase. And even now
His neck in beauty bends As backward looks he sends At my pursuing car That threatens death from far. Fear shrinks to half the body small; See how he fears the arrow's fall!
The path he takes is strewed With blades of grass half-chewed From jaws wide with the stress Of fevered weariness. He leaps so often and so high, He does not seem to run, but fly.
(_In surprise_.) Pursue as I may, I can hardly keep him in sight.
_Charioteer_. Your Majesty, I have been holding the horses back because the ground was rough. This checked us and gave the deer a lead. Now we are on level ground, and you will easily overtake him.
_King_. Then let the reins hang loose.
_Charioteer_. Yes, your Majesty. (_He counterfeits rapid motion_.) Look, your Majesty!
The lines hang loose; the steeds unreined Dart forward with a will. Their ears are pricked; their necks are strained; Their plumes lie straight and still. They leave the rising dust behind; They seem to float upon the wind.
_King_ (_joyfully_). See! The horses are gaining on the deer.
As onward and onward the chariot flies, The small flashes large to my dizzy eyes. What is cleft in twain, seems to blur and mate; What is crooked in nature, seems to be straight. Things at my side in an instant appear Distant, and things in the distance, near.
_A voice behind the scenes_. O King, this deer belongs to the hermitage, and must not be killed.
_Charioteer_ (_listening and looking_). Your Majesty, here are two hermits, come to save the deer at the moment when your arrow was about to fall.
_King_ (_hastily_). Stop the chariot.
_Charioteer_. Yes, your Majesty. (_He does so. Enter a hermit with his pupil_.)
_Hermit_ (_lifting his hand_). O King, this deer belongs to the hermitage.
Why should his tender form expire, As blossoms perish in the fire? How could that gentle life endure The deadly arrow, sharp and sure?
Restore your arrow to the quiver; To you were weapons lent The broken-hearted to deliver, Not strike the innocent.
_King_ (_bowing low_). It is done. (_He does so_.)
_Hermit_ (_joyfully_). A deed worthy of you, scion of Puru's race, and shining example of kings. May you beget a son to rule earth and heaven.
_King_ (_bowing low_). I am thankful for a Brahman's blessing.
_The two hermits_. O King, we are on our way to gather firewood. Here, along the bank of the Malini, you may see the hermitage of Father Kanva, over which Shakuntala presides, so to speak, as guardian deity. Unless other deities prevent, pray enter here and receive a welcome. Besides,
Beholding pious hermit-rites Preserved from fearful harm, Perceive the profit of the scars On your protecting arm.
_King_. Is the hermit father there?
_The two hermits_. No, he has left his daughter to welcome guests, and has just gone to Somatirtha, to avert an evil fate that threatens her.
_King_. Well, I will see her. She shall feel my devotion, and report it to the sage.
_The two hermits_. Then we will go on our way. (_Exit hermit with pupil_.)
_King_. Charioteer, drive on. A sight of the pious hermitage will purify us.
_Charioteer_. Yes, your Majesty. (_He counterfeits motion again_.)
_King_ (_looking about_). One would know, without being told, that this is the precinct of a pious grove.
_Charioteer_. How so? _King_. Do you not see? Why, here
Are rice-grains, dropped from bills of parrot chicks Beneath the trees; and pounding-stones where sticks A little almond-oil; and trustful deer That do not run away as we draw near; And river-paths that are besprinkled yet From trickling hermit-garments, clean and wet.
Besides,
The roots of trees are washed by many a stream That breezes ruffle; and the flowers' red gleam Is dimmed by pious smoke; and fearless fawns Move softly on the close-cropped forest lawns.
_Charioteer_. It is all true.
_King_ (_after a little_). We must not disturb the hermitage. Stop here while I dismount.
_Charioteer_. I am holding the reins. Dismount, your Majesty.
_King_ (_dismounts and looks at himself_). One should wear modest garments on entering a hermitage. Take these jewels and the bow. (_He gives them to the charioteer_.) Before I return from my visit to the hermits, have the horses' backs wet down.
_Charioteer_. Yes, your Majesty. (_Exit_.)
_King_ (_walking and looking about_). The hermitage! Well, I will enter. (_As he does so, he feels a throbbing in his arm_.)
A tranquil spot! Why should I thrill? Love cannot enter there-- Yet to inevitable things Doors open everywhere.
_A voice behind the scenes_. This way, girls!
_King_ (_listening_). I think I hear some one to the right of the grove. I must find out. (_He walks and looks about_.) Ah, here are hermit-girls, with watering-pots just big enough for them to handle. They are coming in this direction to water the young trees. They are charming!
The city maids, for all their pains, Seem not so sweet and good; Our garden blossoms yield to these Flower-children of the wood.
I will draw back into the shade and wait for them. (_He stands, gazing toward them. Enter_ SHAKUNTALA, _as described, and her two friends_.)
_First friend_. It seems to me, dear, that Father Kanva cares more for the hermitage trees than he does for you. You are delicate as a jasmine blossom, yet he tells you to fill the trenches about the trees.
_Shakuntala_. Oh, it isn't Father's bidding so much. I feel like a real sister to them. (_She waters the trees_.)
_Priyamvada_. Shakuntala, we have watered the trees that blossom in the summer-time. Now let's sprinkle those whose flowering-time is past. That will be a better deed, because we shall not be working for a reward.
_Shakuntala_. What a pretty idea! (_She does so_.)
_King_ (_to himself_). And this is Kanva's daughter, Shakuntala. (_In surprise_.) The good Father does wrong to make her wear the hermit's dress of bark.
The sage who yokes her artless charm With pious pain and grief, Would try to cut the toughest vine With a soft, blue lotus-leaf.
Well, I will step behind a tree and see how she acts with her friends. (_He conceals himself_.)
_Shakuntala_. Oh, Anusuya! Priyamvada has fastened this bark dress so tight that it hurts. Please loosen it. (ANUSUYA _does so_.)
_Priyamvada_ (_laughing_). You had better blame your own budding charms for that.
_King_. She is quite right.
Beneath the barken dress Upon the shoulder tied, In maiden loveliness Her young breast seems to hide,
As when a flower amid The leaves by autumn tossed-- Pale, withered leaves--lies hid, And half its grace is lost.
Yet in truth the bark dress is not an enemy to her beauty. It serves as an added ornament. For
The meanest vesture glows On beauty that enchants: The lotus lovelier shows Amid dull water-plants;
The moon in added splendour Shines for its spot of dark; Yet more the maiden slender Charms in her dress of bark.
_Shakuntala_ (_looking ahead_). Oh, girls, that mango-tree is trying to tell me something with his branches that move in the wind like fingers. I must go and see him. (_She does so_.)
_Priyamvada_. There, Shakuntala, stand right where you are a minute.
_Shakuntala_. Why?
_Priyamvada_. When I see you there, it looks as if a vine were clinging to the mango-tree.
_Shakuntala_. I see why they call you the flatterer.
_King_. But the flattery is true.
Her arms are tender shoots; her lips Are blossoms red and warm; Bewitching youth begins to flower In beauty on her form.
_Anusuya_. Oh, Shakuntala! Here is the jasmine-vine that you named Light of the Grove. She has chosen the mango-tree as her husband.
_Shakuntala_ (_approaches and looks at it, joyfully_). What a pretty pair they make. The jasmine shows her youth in her fresh flowers, and the mango-tree shows his strength in his ripening fruit. (_She stands gazing at them_.)
_Priyamvada_ (_smiling_). Anusuya, do you know why Shakuntala looks so hard at the Light of the Grove?
_Anusuya_. No. Why?
_Priyamvada_. She is thinking how the Light of the Grove has found a good tree, and hoping that she will meet a fine lover.
_Shakuntala_. That's what you want for yourself. (_She tips her watering-pot_.)
_Anusuya_. Look, Shakuntala! Here is the spring-creeper that Father Kanva tended with his own hands--just as he did you. You are forgetting her.
_Shakuntala_. I'd forget myself sooner. (_She goes to the creeper and looks at it, joyfully_.) Wonderful! Wonderful! Priyamvada, I have something pleasant to tell you.
_Priyamvada_. What is it, dear?
_Shakuntala_. It is out of season, but the spring-creeper is covered with buds down to the very root.
_The two friends_ (_running up_). Really?
_Shakuntala_. Of course. Can't you see?
_Priyamvada_ (_looking at it joyfully_). And I have something pleasant to tell _you_. You are to be married soon.
_Shakuntala_ (_snappishly_). You know that's just what you want for yourself.
_Priyamvada_. I'm not teasing. I really heard Father Kanva say that this flowering vine was to be a symbol of your coming happiness.
_Anusuya_. Priyamvada, that is why Shakuntala waters the spring-creeper so lovingly.
_Shakuntala_. She is my sister. Why shouldn't I give her water? (_She tips her watering-pot_.)
_King_. May I hope that she is the hermit's daughter by a mother of a different caste? But it _must_ be so.