THE BIRTH OF GANGÁ

[Cantos XXXVII and XXXVIII are omitted.]

THE SONS OF SAGAR

THE CLEAVING OF THE EARTH

KAPIL

SAGAR'S SACRIFICE

BHAGÍRATH

BY

KÁLIDÁSA

[Translation by Sir Monier Monier-Williams]

The drama is always the latest development of a national poetry—for the origin of poetry is in the religious rite, where the hymn or the ode is used to celebrate the glories of some divinity, or some hero who has been received into the circle of the gods. This at least is the case in Sanscrit as in Greek literature, where the hymn and ballad precede the epic. The epic poem becomes the stable form of poetry during the middle period in the history of literature, both in India and Greece. The union of the lyric and the epic produces the drama. The speeches uttered by the heroes in such poems as the "Iliad" are put into the mouths of real personages who appear in sight of the audience and represent with fitting gestures and costumes the characters of the story. The dialogue is interspersed with songs or odes, which reach their perfection in the choruses of Sophocles.

The drama is undoubtedly the most intellectual, as it is the most artificial, form of poetry. The construction of the plot, and the arrangement of the action, give room for the most thoughtful and deliberate display of genius. In this respect the Greek drama stands forth as most philosophically perfect. The drama, moreover, has always been by far the most popular form of poetry; because it aids, as much as possible, the imagination of the auditor, and for distinctness and clearness of impression stands preëminent above both the epic narrative and the emotional description of the lyric.

The drama in India appears to have been a perfectly indigenous creation, although it was of very late development, and could not have appeared even so early as the Alexandrian pastorals which marked the last phase of Greek poetry. When it did appear, it never took the perfect form of the drama at Athens. It certainly borrowed as little from Greece as it did from China or Japan, and the Persians and Arabians do not appear to have produced any dramatic masterpieces. The greatest of dramatists in the Sanscrit language is undoubtedly Kálidása, whose date is placed, by different scholars, anywhere from the first to the fifth century of our era. His masterpiece, and indeed the masterpiece of the Indian drama, is the "Śakoontalá," which has all the graces as well as most of the faults of Oriental poetry. There can be no doubt that to most Europeans the charm of it lies in the exquisite description of natural scenery and of that atmosphere of piety and religious calm—almost mediaeval in its austere beauty and serenity—which invests the hermit life of India. The abode of the ascetics is depicted with a pathetic grace that we only find paralleled in the "Admetus" of Euripides. But at the same time the construction of the drama is more like such a play as Milton's "Comus," than the closely-knit, symmetrical, and inevitable progress of such a work of consummate skill as the "King Oedipus" of Sophocles. Emotion, and generally the emotion of love, is the motive in the "Śakoontalá" of Kálidása, and different phases of feeling, rather than the struggles of energetic action, lead on to the dénouement of the play. The introduction of supernatural agencies controlling the life of the personages, leaves very little room for the development and description of human character. As the fate of the hero is dependent altogether upon the caprice of superhuman powers, the moral elements of a drama are but faintly discernible. Thus the central action of Śakoontalá hinges on the fact that the heroine, absorbed in thoughts of love, neglects to welcome with due respect the great saint Durvasas—certainly a trifling and venial fault—but he is represented as blighting her with a curse which results in all the unhappiness of the drama, and which is only ended at last by the intervention of a more powerful being. By this principle of construction the characters are reduced to mere shadow creations: beautiful as arabesques, delicate as a piece of ivory carving, tinted like the flat profiles of an Oriental fan or the pattern of a porcelain vase, but deficient in robustness and vigorous coloring. Humanity is absolutely dwarfed and its powers rendered inoperative by the crowd of supernatural creatures that control its destiny. Even in the "Tempest" of Shakespeare, in which the supernatural plays a greater part than in any other English drama, the strength and nobility of human character are allowed full play—and man in his fortitude, in his intellect and will, even more than in his emotions, keeps full possession of the stage, and imparts a reality to every scene which makes the wildest flight of fancy bear a real relation to the common experiences of human life.

The "Śakoontalá" is divided into seven acts, and is a mixture of prose and verse;—each character rising in the intensity of emotional utterance into bursts of lyric poetry. The first act introduces the King of India, Dushyanta, armed with bow and arrows, in a chariot with his driver. They are passing through a forest in pursuit of a black antelope, which they fail to overtake before the voice of some hermit forbids them to slay the creature as it belongs to the hermitage. The king piously desists and reaches the hermitage of the great saint Kanwa, who has left his companions in charge of his foster-daughter, Śakoontalá, while he is bound on a pilgrimage. Following these hermits the king finds himself within the precincts of a sacred grove, where rice is strewn on the ground to feed the parrots that nest in the hollow trunks, and where the unterrified antelopes do not start at the human voice. The king stops his chariot and alights, so as not to disturb the dwellers in the holy wood. He feels a sudden throb in his right arm, which augurs happy love, and sees hermit maidens approaching to sprinkle the young shrubs, with watering-pots suited to their strength. The forms of these hermit maidens eclipse those found in queenly halls, as the luxuriance of forest vines excels the trim vineyards of cultivation. Amongst these maidens the king, concealed by the trees, observes Śakoontalá, dressed in the bark garment of a hermit—like a blooming bud enclosed within a sheath of yellow leaves. When she stands by the keśara-tree, the king is impressed by her beauty, and regrets that she is, if of a purely Bráhmanic origin, forbidden to marry one of the warrior class, even though he be a king. A very pretty description is given of the pursuit of Śakoontalá by a bee which her sprinkling has startled from a jasmine flower. From this bee she is rescued by the king, and is dismayed to find that the sight of the stranger affects her with an emotion unsuited to the holy grove. She hurries off with her two companions, but as she goes she declares that a prickly kusa-grass has stung her foot; a kuruvaka-bush has caught her garment, and while her companions disentangle it, she takes a long look at the king, who confesses that he cannot turn his mind from Śakoontalá. This is the opening episode of their love.

The second act introduces the king's jester, a Bráhman on confidential terms with his master, who, while Dushyanta is thinking of love, is longing to get back to the city. He is tired of the hot jungle, the nauseating water of bitter mountain streams, the racket of fowlers at early dawn, and the eternal galloping, by which his joints are bruised. The king is equally tired of hunting, and confesses that he cannot bend his bow against those fawns which dwell near Śakoontalá's abode, and have taught their tender glance to her. He calls back the beaters sent out to surround the forest, takes off his hunting-suit, and talks to the jester about the charms of Śakoontalá—whom the Creator, he says, has formed by gathering in his mind all lovely shapes, so as to make a peerless woman-gem. He recalls the glance which she shot at him as she cried, "a kusha-grass has stung my foot." Meanwhile two hermits approach him with the news that the demons have taken advantage of Kanwa's absence to disturb the sacrifices. They request him to take up his abode in the grove for a few days, in order to vanquish the enemies. A messenger arrives to tell him that his mother, in four days, will be offering a solemn sacrifice for her son's welfare, and invites his presence at the rite. But he cannot leave Śakoontalá, and sends the jester Máthavya in his stead, telling him to say nothing about his love for Śakoontalá.

In the third act the love of the king and the hermit girl reaches its climax. The king is found walking in the hermitage, invoking the God of Love, whose shafts are flowers, though the flowery darts are hard as steel. "Mighty God of Love, hast Thou no pity on me?" What better relief, he asks, than the sight of my beloved? He traces Śakoontalá, by the broken tubes which bore the blossoms she had culled, to the arbor, enclosed by the plantation of canes, and shaded by vines, at whose entrance he observes in the sand the track of recent footsteps. Peering through the branches, he perceives her reclining on a stone seat strewn with flowers. Her two companions are with her, and she is sick unto death. The king notices that her cheeks are wasted, her breasts less swelling, her slender waist more slender, her roseate hue has grown pale, and she seems like some poor madhave creeper touched by winds that have scorched its leaves. Her companions anxiously inquire the cause of her sickness, and, after much hesitation, she reveals her love by inscribing a poem, with her fingernail, on a lotus leaf smooth as a parrot's breast. The king hears the avowal of her love, rushes in to her, and declares his passion: adding that daughters of a royal saint have often been wedded by Gandharva rites, without ceremonies or parental consent, yet have not forfeited the father's blessing. He thus overcomes her scruples. Gautamí, the matron of the hermitage, afterwards enters, and asks, "My child, is your fever allayed?" "Venerable mother," is the reply, "I feel a grateful change." As the king sits in solitude that evening in the deserted arbor, he hears a voice outside, uttering the verses—"The evening rites have begun; but, dark as the clouds of night, the demons are swarming round the altar fires." With these words of ill-omen the third act comes to an end.

The fourth act describes the fulfilment of this evil omen. The king has now returned to the city, and has given Śakoontalá a signet ring, with an inscription on it, pronouncing that after there have elapsed as many days as there are letters in this inscription he will return. As the two maiden companions of Śakoontalá are culling flowers in the garden of the hermitage, they hear a voice exclaiming, "It is I! give heed!" This is the great Durvasas, whom Śakoontalá, lost in thoughts of her absent husband, has neglected at once to go forth to welcome. The voice from behind the scenes is soon after heard uttering a curse—"Woe unto her who is thus neglectful of a guest," and declaring that Dushyanta, of whom alone she is thinking, regardless of the presence of a pious saint, shall forget her in spite of all his love, as the wine-bibber forgets his delirium. The Hindoo saint is here described in all his arrogance and cruelty. One of the maidens says that he who had uttered the curse is now retiring with great strides, quivering with rage—for his wrath is like a consuming fire. A pretty picture is given of Śakoontalá, who carries on her finger the signet ring, which has the virtue of restoring the king's love, if ever he should forget her. "There sits our beloved friend," cries one of the maidens: "motionless as a picture; her cheek supported by her left hand, so absorbed in thoughts of her absent lover that she is unconscious of her own self—how much more of a passing stranger?"

In the fourth act there is an exquisite description of the return of Kanwa from his pilgrimage, and the preparations for the start of Śakoontalá for her husband's palace, in the city. The delicate pathos of the scene is worthy of Euripides. "Alas! Alas!" exclaim the two maidens, "Now Śakoontalá has disappeared behind the trees of the forest. Tell us, master, how shall we enter again the sacred grove made desolate by her departure?" But the holy calm, broken for a moment by the excitement of his child's departure, is soon restored to Kanwa's mind. "Now that my child is dismissed to her husband's home, tranquillity regains my soul." The closing reflection is worthy of a Greek dramatist: "Our maids we rear for the happiness of others; and now that I have sent her to her husband I feel the satisfaction that comes from restoring a trust."

In the fifth act, the scene is laid in Dushyanta's palace, where the king is living, under the curse of Durvasas, in complete oblivion of Śakoontalá. The life of the court is happily suggested, with its intrigues and its business. The king has yet a vague impression of restlessness, which, on hearing a song sung behind the scenes, prompts him to say, "Why has this strain flung over me so deep a melancholy, as though I was separated from some loved one; can this be the faint remembrance of affections in some previous existence?" It is here that the hermits, with Gautamí, arrive, bringing Śakoontalá, soon to be made a mother, into the presence of the king; but she has been utterly forgotten by him. He angrily denies his marriage; and when she proposes to bring forth the ring, she finds she has lost it from her finger. "It must have slipped off," suggested Gautamí, "when thou wast offering homage to Śachí's holy lake." The king smiles derisively. Śakoontalá tries to quicken his memory:—"Do you remember how, in the jasmine bower, you poured water from the lotus cup into the hollow of my hand? Do you remember how you said to my little fawn, Drink first, but she shrunk from you—and drank water from my hand, and you said, with a smile, 'Like trusts Like,' for you are two sisters in the same grove." The king calls her words "honeyed falsehoods." Śakoontalá buries her face in her mantle and bursts into tears.

The tenderness of this scene, its grace and delicacy, are quite idyllic, and worthy of the best ages of the pastoral drama. The ring is at length restored to Dushyanta, having been found by a fisherman in the belly of a carp. On its being restored to the king's finger, he is overcome with a flood of recollection: he gives himself over to mourning and forbids the celebration of the Spring festival. He admits that his palsied heart had been slumbering, and that, now it is roused by memories of his fawn-eyed love, he only wakes to agonies of remorse. Meanwhile Śakoontalá had been carried away like a celestial nymph to the sacred grove of Kaśyapa, far removed from earth in the upper air. The king, being summoned by Indra to destroy the brood of giants, descendants of Kalamemi, the monster of a hundred arms and heads, reaches in the celestial car Indra, the grove where dwell his wife and child, an heroic boy whom the hermits call Sarva-damana—the all-tamer. The recognition and reconciliation of husband and wife are delineated with the most delicate skill, and the play concludes with a prayer to Shiva.

E.W.