Kalidasa

“ And led Himálaya's daughter to the God;
Before his feet her young companions spread
Fresh leaves and blossoms as they bow the head,
While Uma stooped so low, that from her hair
Dropped the bright flower that starred the midnight there;
To him whose ensign bears the Bull she bent,
Till each spray fell, her ear's rich ornament.
"Sweet Maid," cried Siva, "surely thou shalt be
Blessed with a husband who loves none but thee!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or how couldst thou have died, nor Reti perish too?
⁠Yes, I will fly to thee, of thee bereft.
And leave this world which thou, my life, hast left—
Cold, gloomy, now this wretched world must be.
For all its pleasures came from only thee.
When night has veiled the city in its shade
Thou, only thou, canst soothe the wandering maid,
And guide her trembling at the thunder's roar
Safe through the darkness to her lover's door. ”

“ There are certain other impressions of Kalidasa's life and personality which gradually become convictions in the mind of one who reads and re-reads his poetry, though they are less easily susceptible of exact proof. One feels certain that he was physically handsome, and the handsome Hindu is a wonderfully fine type of manhood. One knows that he possessed a fascination for women, as they in turn fascinated 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. ”

“ Her arms were softer than the flowery dart,
Young Káma's arrow, that subdues the heart;
For vain his strife with Śiva, till at last
He chose those chains to bind his conqueror fast.
[Pg 10] E'en the new moon poured down a paler beam
When her long fingers flashed their rosy gleam,
And brighter than Aśoka's blossom threw
A glory round, like summer's evening hue.
The strings of pearl across her bosom thrown
Increased its beauty, and enhanced their own,—
Her breast, her jewels seeming to agree,
The adorner now, and now the adorned to be. ”

“ Tempt not the lotus-flowers that bloom by day.
The King of Shurasena has no better fortune, in spite of his virtues and his wealth. As a river hurrying to the sea passes by a mountain that would detain her, so the princess passes him by. She is next introduced to the king of the Kalinga country;
His palace overlooks the ocean dark
With windows gazing on the unresting deep,
Whose gentle thunders drown the drums that mark
The hours of night, and wake him from his sleep.
But the maiden can no more feel at home with him than the goddess of fortune can with a good but unlucky man. ”

“ He likewise mastered the works on rhetoric and dramatic theory—subjects which Hindu savants have treated with great, if sometimes hair-splitting, ingenuity. The profound and subtle systems of philosophy were also possessed by Kalidasa, and he had some knowledge of astronomy and law.
But it was not only in written books that Kalidasa was deeply read. Rarely has a man walked our earth who observed the phenomena of living nature as accurately as he, though his accuracy was of course that of the poet, not that of the scientist. Much is lost to us who grow up among other animals and plants ”

“ All-knowing Indra, deign, my Prince, to tell
Thy heart's desire in earth, or heaven, or hell:
Double the favour, mighty sovereign, thou
Hast thought on Káma, O, command him now:
Who angers thee by toiling for the prize,
By penance, prayer, or holy sacrifice?
What mortal being dost thou count thy foe?
Speak, I will tame him with my darts and bow.
Has some one feared the endless change of birth,
And sought the path that leads the soul from earth?
Slave to a glancing eye thy foe shall bow,
And own the witchery of a woman's brow ”

“ 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?" ”

“ The Æneid itself, the most perfect long poem ever written, has dull passages. And when this allowance is made, what wonderful passages we have in Kalidasa's poem! One hardly knows which of them makes the strongest appeal, so many are they and so varied. There is the description of the small boy Raghu in the third canto, the choice of the princess in the sixth, the lament of King Aja in the eighth, the story of Dasharatha and the hermit youth in the ninth, the account of the ruined city in the sixteenth. Besides these, the Rama cantos, ten to fifteen, make an epic within an epic. ”

“ In full round beauty matched her swelling breast;
⁠Here in a thin bright line, some delicate spray,
Red as her lip, ravished the soul away—
And then how loving, and how close they hung
To the tall trees that fondly o'er them hung!
Bright, heavenly wantons poured the witching strain,
Quiring for Siva's ear, but all in vain—
No charmer's spell may check the firm control,
"Won by the Holy, o'er the impassioned soul. ”

“ To knit great Śiva to the Mountain-Maid,
When Káma's spirit that had swooned in fear
Breathed once again and deemed forgiveness near.
The ancient Sages reverently adored
The world's great Father and its Sovran Lord,
And while a soft ecstatic thrilling ran
O'er their celestial frames, they thus began:
"Glorious the fruit our holy studies bear,
Our constant penance, sacrifice and prayer.
For that high place within thy thoughts we gain
Which fancy strives to reach, but longs in vain.
How blest is he, the glory of the wise,
Deep in whose thoughtful breast thy Godhead lies! ”

“ 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. ”

“ ANASÚYÁ. Know that he is the real father of our friend. The venerable Kanwa is only her reputed father. He it was who brought her up, when she was deserted by her mother.
KING. 'Deserted by her mother!' My curiosity is excited; pray let me hear the story from the beginning.
ANASÚYÁ. You shall hear it, Sir. Some time since, this sage of regal caste, while performing a most severe penance on the banks of the river Godávarí, excited the jealousy and alarm of the gods; insomuch that they despatched a lovely nymph named Menaká to interrupt his devotions. ”

“ To the Hindu, curse and modification are matters of frequent occurrence; and Kalidasa has so delicately managed the matter as not to shock even a modern and Western reader with a feeling of strong improbability. Even to us it seems a natural part of the divine cloud that envelops the drama, in no way obscuring human passion, but rather giving to human passion an unwonted largeness and universality.
In the second place, the poet makes Shakuntala undertake her journey to the palace before her son is born. ”

“ KANWA. [Sighing.
Well, Anasúyá, your sister has departed. Moderate your grief, both of you, and follow me, I go back to the hermitage.
PRIYAMVADÁ AND ANASÚYÁ. Holy father, the sacred grove will be a desert without
[S'] akoontalá. How can we ever return to it?
KANWA. It is natural enough that your affection should make you view it in this light.
[Walking pensively on.]
As for me, I am quite surprised at myself. Now that I have fairly dismissed her to her husband's house, my mind is easy; for, indeed,
A daughter is a loan—a precious jewel
Lent to a parent till her husband claim her. ”

“ The Sun's first ray and parting splendour fall;
Ne'er could he waken with a lovelier glance
His own dear Lotus from her nightly trance;
For him, proud Fiend, the Moon no waning knows,
But with uuminished full-orbed lustre glows.
He would not brook its crescent glory set
Amid the blaze of Siva's coronet.
⁠How fair his garden, where the obedient breeze
Dares steal no blossom from the slumbering trees! ”

“ And now have Indra's elephants defiled
The sparkling stream where heavenly Gangá smiled,
And her gold lotuses the fiend has taken
To deck his pools, and left her all forsaken.
The Gods of heaven no more delight to roam
O'er all the world, far from their glorious home.
They dread the demon's impious might, nor dare
Speed their bright chariots through the fields of air. ”

“ Mount, therefore, with me, the car of Indra, and, grasping thy bow, advance to assured victory.
Dushm. Such a mark of distinction from the prince of good genii honours me highly; but say why you treated so roughly my poor friend Mádhavya.
Mát. Perceiving that, for some reason or another, you were grievously afflicted, I was desirous to rouse your spirits by provoking you to wrath.—The fire blazes when wood is thrown on it; the serpent, when provoked, darts his head against the assailant; and a man capable of acquiring glory, exerts himself when his courage is excited. ”

“ Since the sad moment when his gentle bride
In the full glory of her beauty died,
The mournful Śiva in the holy grove
Had dwelt in solitude, and known not love.
High on that hill where musky breezes throw
Their balmy odours o'er eternal snow;
Where heavenly minstrels pour their notes divine,
And rippling Gangá laves the mountain pine,
Clad in a coat of skin all rudely wrought
He lived for prayer and solitary thought.
The faithful band that served the hermit's will
Lay in the hollows of the rocky hill,
Where from the clefts the dark bitumen flowed. ”

“ 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.
In only one other of his writings, in the drama which was undoubtedly written earlier than the other two dramas, does the poet thus present his feeling of diffidence to his auditors.
It is of course possible that Kalidasa wrote the first nineteen cantos when a young man, intending to add more, then turned to other matters, and never afterwards cared to take up the rather thankless task of ending a youthful work. ”

“ There may have been some kind of ærial contrivance to represent celestial chariots.
KALIDASA.
Kalidasa is the author of Sakuntala, Vikramorvasi and Malavikagnimitra. He has been designated the Indian Shakespeare. He is reputed to have been one of the nine ornaments (or "gems") of the Court of Vikramaditya, king of Ujayin, whose Era, called Samvat, begins in 56 B.C. Stories extant about him describe him to be the veriest fool. He rose to be a great poet through the favour of the Goddess of Learning. ”

“ And beat him from her with a lotus leaf.
[Pg 39] The angry curl of Rati's lip confessed
The shade of envy that stole o'er her breast.
Through Káma's soul fresh hope and courage flew,
As that sweet vision blessed his eager view.
So bright, so fair, so winning soft was she,
Who could not conquer in such company?
Now Umá came, fair maid, his destined bride,
With timid steps approaching Śiva's side.
In contemplation will he brood no more,
He sees the Godhead, and his task is o'er.
He breathes, he moves, the earth begins to rock,
The Snake, her bearer, trembling at the shock. ”