King Vikramaditya was a great patron of
learning
and of poetry.
Kalidasa - Shantukala, and More
INTRODUCTION
KALIDASA--HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS
I
Kalidasa probably lived in the fifth century of the Christian era.
This date, approximate as it is, must yet be given with considerable
hesitation, and is by no means certain. No truly biographical data are
preserved about the author, who nevertheless enjoyed a great
popularity during his life, and whom the Hindus have ever regarded as
the greatest of Sanskrit poets. We are thus confronted with one of the
remarkable problems of literary history. For our ignorance is not due
to neglect of Kalidasa's writings on the part of his countrymen, but
to their strange blindness in regard to the interest and importance of
historic fact. No European nation can compare with India in critical
devotion to its own literature. During a period to be reckoned not by
centuries but by millenniums, there has been in India an unbroken line
of savants unselfishly dedicated to the perpetuation and exegesis of
the native masterpieces. Editions, recensions, commentaries abound;
poets have sought the exact phrase of appreciation for their
predecessors: yet when we seek to reconstruct the life of their
greatest poet, we have no materials except certain tantalising
legends, and such data as we can gather from the writings of a man who
hardly mentions himself.
One of these legends deserves to be recounted for its intrinsic
interest, although it contains, so far as we can see, no grain of
historic truth, and although it places Kalidasa in Benares, five
hundred miles distant from the only city in which we certainly know
that he spent a part of his life. According to this account, Kalidasa
was a Brahman's child. At the age of six months he was left an orphan
and was adopted by an ox-driver. He grew to manhood without formal
education, yet with remarkable beauty and grace of manner. Now it
happened that the Princess of Benares was a blue-stocking, who
rejected one suitor after another, among them her father's counsellor,
because they failed to reach her standard as scholars and poets. The
rejected counsellor planned a cruel revenge. He took the handsome
ox-driver from the street, gave him the garments of a savant and a
retinue of learned doctors, then introduced him to the princess, after
warning him that he was under no circumstances to open his lips. The
princess was struck with his beauty and smitten to the depths of her
pedantic soul by his obstinate silence, which seemed to her, as indeed
it was, an evidence of profound wisdom. She desired to marry Kalidasa,
and together they went to the temple. But no sooner was the ceremony
performed than Kalidasa perceived an image of a bull. His early
training was too much for him; the secret came out, and the bride was
furious. But she relented in response to Kalidasa's entreaties, and
advised him to pray for learning and poetry to the goddess Kali. The
prayer was granted; education and poetical power descended
miraculously to dwell with the young ox-driver, who in gratitude
assumed the name Kalidasa, servant of Kali. Feeling that he owed this
happy change in his very nature to his princess, he swore that he
would ever treat her as his teacher, with profound respect but without
familiarity. This was more than the lady had bargained for; her anger
burst forth anew, and she cursed Kalidasa to meet his death at the
hands of a woman. At a later date, the story continues, this curse was
fulfilled. A certain king had written a half-stanza of verse, and had
offered a large reward to any poet who could worthily complete it.
Kalidasa completed the stanza without difficulty; but a woman whom he
loved discovered his lines, and greedy of the reward herself, killed
him.
Another legend represents Kalidasa as engaging in a pilgrimage to a
shrine of Vishnu in Southern India, in company with two other famous
writers, Bhavabhuti and Dandin. Yet another pictures Bhavabhuti as a
contemporary of Kalidasa, and jealous of the less austere poet's
reputation. These stories must be untrue, for it is certain that the
three authors were not contemporary, yet they show a true instinct in
the belief that genius seeks genius, and is rarely isolated.
This instinctive belief has been at work with the stories which
connect Kalidasa with King Vikramaditya and the literary figures of
his court. It has doubtless enlarged, perhaps partly falsified the
facts; yet we cannot doubt that there is truth in this tradition, late
though it be, and impossible though it may ever be to separate the
actual from the fanciful. Here then we are on firmer ground.
King Vikramaditya ruled in the city of Ujjain, in West-central India.
He was mighty both in war and in peace, winning especial glory by a
decisive victory over the barbarians who pressed into India through
the northern passes. Though it has not proved possible to identify
this monarch with any of the known rulers, there can be no doubt that
he existed and had the character attributed to him. The name
Vikramaditya--Sun of Valour--is probably not a proper name, but a
title like Pharaoh or Tsar. No doubt Kalidasa intended to pay a
tribute to his patron, the Sun of Valour, in the very title of his
play, _Urvashi won by Valour_.
King Vikramaditya was a great patron of learning and of poetry. Ujjain
during his reign was the most brilliant capital in the world, nor has
it to this day lost all the lustre shed upon it by that splendid
court. Among the eminent men gathered there, nine were particularly
distinguished, and these nine are known as the "nine gems. " Some of
the nine gems were poets, others represented science--astronomy,
medicine, lexicography. It is quite true that the details of this late
tradition concerning the nine gems are open to suspicion, yet the
central fact is not doubtful: that there was at this time and place a
great quickening of the human mind, an artistic impulse creating works
that cannot perish. Ujjain in the days of Vikramaditya stands worthily
beside Athens, Rome, Florence, and London in their great centuries.
Here is the substantial fact behind Max Muller's often ridiculed
theory of the renaissance of Sanskrit literature. It is quite false to
suppose, as some appear to do, that this theory has been invalidated
by the discovery of certain literary products which antedate
Kalidasa. It might even be said that those rare and happy centuries
that see a man as great as Homer or Vergil or Kalidasa or Shakespeare
partake in that one man of a renaissance.
It is interesting to observe that the centuries of intellectual
darkness in Europe have sometimes coincided with centuries of light in
India. The Vedas were composed for the most part before Homer;
Kalidasa and his contemporaries lived while Rome was tottering under
barbarian assault.
To the scanty and uncertain data of late traditions may be added some
information about Kalidasa's life gathered from his own writings. He
mentions his own name only in the prologues to his three plays, and
here with a modesty that is charming indeed, yet tantalising. One
wishes for a portion of the communicativeness that characterises some
of the Indian poets. He speaks in the first person only once, in the
verses introductory to his epic poem _The Dynasty of Raghu_[1].
Here also we feel his modesty, and here once more we are balked of
details as to his life.
We know from Kalidasa's writings that he spent at least a part of his
life in the city of Ujjain. He refers to Ujjain more than once, and in
a manner hardly possible to one who did not know and love the city.
Especially in his poem _The Cloud-Messenger_ does he dwell upon the
city's charms, and even bids the cloud make a detour in his long
journey lest he should miss making its acquaintance. [2]
We learn further that Kalidasa travelled widely in India. The fourth
canto of _The Dynasty of Raghu_ describes a tour about the whole of
India and even into regions which are beyond the borders of a narrowly
measured India. It is hard to believe that Kalidasa had not himself
made such a "grand tour"; so much of truth there may be in the
tradition which sends him on a pilgrimage to Southern India. The
thirteenth canto of the same epic and _The Cloud-Messenger_ also
describe long journeys over India, for the most part through regions
far from Ujjain. It is the mountains which impress him most deeply.
His works are full of the Himalayas. Apart from his earliest drama
and the slight poem called _The Seasons_, there is not one of them
which is not fairly redolent of mountains. One, _The Birth of the
War-god_, might be said to be all mountains. Nor was it only Himalayan
grandeur and sublimity which attracted him; for, as a Hindu critic has
acutely observed, he is the only Sanskrit poet who has described a
certain flower that grows in Kashmir. The sea interested him less. To
him, as to most Hindus, the ocean was a beautiful, terrible barrier,
not a highway to adventure. The "sea-belted earth" of which Kalidasa
speaks means to him the mainland of India.
Another conclusion that may be certainly drawn from Kalidasa's writing
is this, that he was a man of sound and rather extensive education. He
was not indeed a prodigy of learning, like Bhavabhuti in his own
country or Milton in England, yet no man could write as he did without
hard and intelligent study. To begin with, he had a minutely accurate
knowledge of the Sanskrit language, at a time when Sanskrit was to
some extent an artificial tongue. Somewhat too much stress is often
laid upon this point, as if the writers of the classical period in
India were composing in a foreign language. Every writer, especially
every poet, composing in any language, writes in what may be called a
strange idiom; that is, he does not write as he talks. Yet it is true
that the gap between written language and vernacular was wider in
Kalidasa's day than it has often been. The Hindus themselves regard
twelve years' study as requisite for the mastery of the "chief of all
sciences, the science of grammar. " That Kalidasa had mastered this
science his works bear abundant witness.
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; yet we can appreciate his "bee-black
hair," his ashoka-tree that "sheds his blossoms in a rain of tears,"
his river wearing a sombre veil of mist:
Although her reeds seem hands that clutch the dress
To hide her charms;
his picture of the day-blooming water-lily at sunset:
The water-lily closes, but
With wonderful reluctancy;
As if it troubled her to shut
Her door of welcome to the bee.
The religion of any great poet is always a matter of interest,
especially the religion of a Hindu poet; for the Hindus have ever been
a deeply and creatively religious people. So far as we can judge,
Kalidasa moved among the jarring sects with sympathy for all,
fanaticism for none. The dedicatory prayers that introduce his dramas
are addressed to Shiva. This is hardly more than a convention, for
Shiva is the patron of literature. If one of his epics, _The Birth of
the War-god_, is distinctively Shivaistic, the other, _The Dynasty of
Raghu_, is no less Vishnuite in tendency. If the hymn to Vishnu in
_The Dynasty of Raghu_ is an expression of Vedantic monism, the hymn
to Brahma in _The Birth of the War-god_ gives equally clear expression
to the rival dualism of the Sankhya system. Nor are the Yoga doctrine
and Buddhism left without sympathetic mention. We are therefore
justified in concluding that Kalidasa was, in matters of religion,
what William James would call "healthy-minded," emphatically not a
"sick soul. "
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.
One knows that children loved him. One becomes convinced that he never
suffered any morbid, soul-shaking experience such as besetting
religious doubt brings with it, or the pangs of despised love; that
on the contrary he moved among men and women with a serene and godlike
tread, neither self-indulgent nor ascetic, with mind and senses ever
alert to every form of beauty. We know that his poetry was popular
while he lived, and we cannot doubt that his personality was equally
attractive, though it is probable that no contemporary knew the full
measure of his greatness. For his nature was one of singular balance,
equally at home in a splendid court and on a lonely mountain, with men
of high and of low degree. Such men are never fully appreciated during
life. They continue to grow after they are dead.
II
Kalidasa left seven works which have come down to us: three dramas,
two epics, one elegiac poem, and one descriptive poem. Many other
works, including even an astronomical treatise, have been attributed
to him; they are certainly not his. Perhaps there was more than one
author who bore the name Kalidasa; perhaps certain later writers were
more concerned for their work than for personal fame. On the other
hand, there is no reason to doubt that the seven recognised works are
in truth from Kalidasa's hand. The only one concerning which there is
reasonable room for suspicion is the short poem descriptive of the
seasons, and this is fortunately the least important of the seven. Nor
is there evidence to show that any considerable poem has been lost,
unless it be true that the concluding cantos of one of the epics have
perished. We are thus in a fortunate position in reading Kalidasa: we
have substantially all that he wrote, and run no risk of ascribing to
him any considerable work from another hand.
Of these seven works, four are poetry throughout; the three dramas,
like all Sanskrit dramas, are written in prose, with a generous
mingling of lyric and descriptive stanzas. The poetry, even in the
epics, is stanzaic; no part of it can fairly be compared to English
blank verse. Classical Sanskrit verse, so far as structure is
concerned, has much in common with familiar Greek and Latin forms:
it makes no systematic use of rhyme; it depends for its rhythm not
upon accent, but upon quantity. The natural medium of translation into
English seems to me to be the rhymed stanza;[3] in the present work
the rhymed stanza has been used, with a consistency perhaps too rigid,
wherever the original is in verse.
Kalidasa's three dramas bear the names: _Malavika and Agnimitra,
Urvashi_, and _Shakuntala_. The two epics are _The Dynasty of Raghu_
and _The Birth of the War-god_. The elegiac poem is called _The
Cloud-Messenger_, and the descriptive poem is entitled _The Seasons_.
It may be well to state briefly the more salient features of the
Sanskrit _genres_ to which these works belong.
The drama proved in India, as in other countries, a congenial form to
many of the most eminent poets. The Indian drama has a marked
individuality, but stands nearer to the modern European theatre than
to that of ancient Greece; for the plays, with a very few exceptions,
have no religious significance, and deal with love between man and
woman. Although tragic elements may be present, a tragic ending is
forbidden. Indeed, nothing regarded as disagreeable, such as fighting
or even kissing, is permitted on the stage; here Europe may perhaps
learn a lesson in taste. Stage properties were few and simple, while
particular care was lavished on the music. The female parts were
played by women. The plays very rarely have long monologues, even the
inevitable prologue being divided between two speakers, but a Hindu
audience was tolerant of lyrical digression.
It may be said, though the statement needs qualification in both
directions, that the Indian dramas have less action and less
individuality in the characters, but more poetical charm than the
dramas of modern Europe.
On the whole, Kalidasa was remarkably faithful to the ingenious but
somewhat over-elaborate conventions of Indian dramaturgy. His first
play, the _Malavika and Agnimitra_, is entirely conventional in plot.
The _Shakuntala_ is transfigured by the character of the heroine. The
_Urvashi_, in spite of detail beauty, marks a distinct decline.
_The Dynasty of Raghu_ and _The Birth of the War-god_ belong to a
species of composition which it is not easy to name accurately. The
Hindu name _kavya_ has been rendered by artificial epic, _epopee
savante, Kunstgedicht_. It is best perhaps to use the term epic, and
to qualify the term by explanation.
The _kavyas_ differ widely from the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_,
epics which resemble the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ less in outward form
than in their character as truly national poems. The _kavya_ is a
narrative poem written in a sophisticated age by a learned poet, who
possesses all the resources of an elaborate rhetoric and metric. The
subject is drawn from time-honoured mythology. The poem is divided
into cantos, written not in blank verse but in stanzas. Several
stanza-forms are commonly employed in the same poem, though not in the
same canto, except that the concluding verses of a canto are not
infrequently written in a metre of more compass than the remainder.
I have called _The Cloud-Messenger_ an elegiac poem, though it would
not perhaps meet the test of a rigid definition. The Hindus class it
with _The Dynasty of Raghu_ and _The Birth of the War-god_ as a
_kavya_, but this classification simply evidences their embarrassment.
In fact, Kalidasa created in _The Cloud-Messenger_ a new _genre_. No
further explanation is needed here, as the entire poem is translated
below.
The short descriptive poem called _The Seasons_ has abundant analogues
in other literatures, and requires no comment.
It is not possible to fix the chronology of Kalidasa's writings, yet
we are not wholly in the dark. _Malavika and Agnimitra_ was certainly
his first drama, almost certainly his first work. It is a reasonable
conjecture, though nothing more, that Urvashi was written late, when
the poet's powers were waning. The introductory stanzas of _The
Dynasty of Raghu_ suggest that this epic was written before _The Birth
of the War-god_, though the inference is far from certain. Again, it
is reasonable to assume that the great works on which Kalidasa's fame
chiefly rests--_Shakuntala_, _The Cloud-Messenger_, _The Dynasty of
Raghu_, the first eight cantos of _The Birth of the War-god_--were
composed when he was in the prime of manhood. But as to the succession
of these four works we can do little but guess.
Kalidasa's glory depends primarily upon the quality of his work, yet
would be much diminished if he had failed in bulk and variety. In
India, more than would be the case in Europe, the extent of his
writing is an indication of originality and power; for the poets of
the classical period underwent an education that encouraged an
exaggerated fastidiousness, and they wrote for a public meticulously
critical. Thus the great Bhavabhuti spent his life in constructing
three dramas; mighty spirit though he was, he yet suffers from the
very scrupulosity of his labour. In this matter, as in others,
Kalidasa preserves his intellectual balance and his spiritual
initiative: what greatness of soul is required for this, every one
knows who has ever had the misfortune to differ in opinion from an
intellectual clique.
III
Le nom de Kalidasa domine la poesie indienne et la resume brillamment.
Le drame, l'epopee savante, l'elegie attestent aujourd'hui encore la
puissance et la souplesse de ce magnifique genie; seul entre les
disciples de Sarasvati [the goddess of eloquence], il a eu le bonheur
de produire un chef-d'oeuvre vraiment classique, ou l'Inde s'admire et
ou l'humanite se reconnait. Les applaudissements qui saluerent la
naissance de Cakuntala a Ujjayini ont apres de longs siecles eclate
d'un bout du monde a l'autre, quand William Jones l'eut revelee a
l'Occident. Kalidasa a marque sa place dans cette pleiade etincelante
ou chaque nom resume une periode de l'esprit humain. La serie de ces
noms forme l'histoire, ou plutot elle est l'histoire meme. [4]
It is hardly possible to say anything true about Kalidasa's
achievement which is not already contained in this appreciation. Yet
one loves to expand the praise, even though realising that the critic
is by his very nature a fool. Here there shall at any rate be none
of that cold-blooded criticism which imagines itself set above a
world-author to appraise and judge, but a generous tribute of
affectionate admiration.
The best proof of a poet's greatness is the inability of men to live
without him; in other words, his power to win and hold through
centuries the love and admiration of his own people, especially when
that people has shown itself capable of high intellectual and
spiritual achievement.
For something like fifteen hundred years, Kalidasa has been more
widely read in India than any other author who wrote in Sanskrit.
There have also been many attempts to express in words the secret of
his abiding power: such attempts can never be wholly successful, yet
they are not without considerable interest. Thus Bana, a celebrated
novelist of the seventh century, has the following lines in some
stanzas of poetical criticism which he prefixes to a historical
romance:
Where find a soul that does not thrill
In Kalidasa's verse to meet
The smooth, inevitable lines
Like blossom-clusters, honey-sweet?
A later writer, speaking of Kalidasa and another poet, is more laconic
in this alliterative line: _Bhaso hasah, Kalidaso vilasah_--Bhasa is
mirth, Kalidasa is grace.
These two critics see Kalidasa's grace, his sweetness, his delicate
taste, without doing justice to the massive quality without which his
poetry could not have survived.
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.
King Vikramaditya was a great patron of learning and of poetry. Ujjain
during his reign was the most brilliant capital in the world, nor has
it to this day lost all the lustre shed upon it by that splendid
court. Among the eminent men gathered there, nine were particularly
distinguished, and these nine are known as the "nine gems. " Some of
the nine gems were poets, others represented science--astronomy,
medicine, lexicography. It is quite true that the details of this late
tradition concerning the nine gems are open to suspicion, yet the
central fact is not doubtful: that there was at this time and place a
great quickening of the human mind, an artistic impulse creating works
that cannot perish. Ujjain in the days of Vikramaditya stands worthily
beside Athens, Rome, Florence, and London in their great centuries.
Here is the substantial fact behind Max Muller's often ridiculed
theory of the renaissance of Sanskrit literature. It is quite false to
suppose, as some appear to do, that this theory has been invalidated
by the discovery of certain literary products which antedate
Kalidasa. It might even be said that those rare and happy centuries
that see a man as great as Homer or Vergil or Kalidasa or Shakespeare
partake in that one man of a renaissance.
It is interesting to observe that the centuries of intellectual
darkness in Europe have sometimes coincided with centuries of light in
India. The Vedas were composed for the most part before Homer;
Kalidasa and his contemporaries lived while Rome was tottering under
barbarian assault.
To the scanty and uncertain data of late traditions may be added some
information about Kalidasa's life gathered from his own writings. He
mentions his own name only in the prologues to his three plays, and
here with a modesty that is charming indeed, yet tantalising. One
wishes for a portion of the communicativeness that characterises some
of the Indian poets. He speaks in the first person only once, in the
verses introductory to his epic poem _The Dynasty of Raghu_[1].
Here also we feel his modesty, and here once more we are balked of
details as to his life.
We know from Kalidasa's writings that he spent at least a part of his
life in the city of Ujjain. He refers to Ujjain more than once, and in
a manner hardly possible to one who did not know and love the city.
Especially in his poem _The Cloud-Messenger_ does he dwell upon the
city's charms, and even bids the cloud make a detour in his long
journey lest he should miss making its acquaintance. [2]
We learn further that Kalidasa travelled widely in India. The fourth
canto of _The Dynasty of Raghu_ describes a tour about the whole of
India and even into regions which are beyond the borders of a narrowly
measured India. It is hard to believe that Kalidasa had not himself
made such a "grand tour"; so much of truth there may be in the
tradition which sends him on a pilgrimage to Southern India. The
thirteenth canto of the same epic and _The Cloud-Messenger_ also
describe long journeys over India, for the most part through regions
far from Ujjain. It is the mountains which impress him most deeply.
His works are full of the Himalayas. Apart from his earliest drama
and the slight poem called _The Seasons_, there is not one of them
which is not fairly redolent of mountains. One, _The Birth of the
War-god_, might be said to be all mountains. Nor was it only Himalayan
grandeur and sublimity which attracted him; for, as a Hindu critic has
acutely observed, he is the only Sanskrit poet who has described a
certain flower that grows in Kashmir. The sea interested him less. To
him, as to most Hindus, the ocean was a beautiful, terrible barrier,
not a highway to adventure. The "sea-belted earth" of which Kalidasa
speaks means to him the mainland of India.
Another conclusion that may be certainly drawn from Kalidasa's writing
is this, that he was a man of sound and rather extensive education. He
was not indeed a prodigy of learning, like Bhavabhuti in his own
country or Milton in England, yet no man could write as he did without
hard and intelligent study. To begin with, he had a minutely accurate
knowledge of the Sanskrit language, at a time when Sanskrit was to
some extent an artificial tongue. Somewhat too much stress is often
laid upon this point, as if the writers of the classical period in
India were composing in a foreign language. Every writer, especially
every poet, composing in any language, writes in what may be called a
strange idiom; that is, he does not write as he talks. Yet it is true
that the gap between written language and vernacular was wider in
Kalidasa's day than it has often been. The Hindus themselves regard
twelve years' study as requisite for the mastery of the "chief of all
sciences, the science of grammar. " That Kalidasa had mastered this
science his works bear abundant witness.
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; yet we can appreciate his "bee-black
hair," his ashoka-tree that "sheds his blossoms in a rain of tears,"
his river wearing a sombre veil of mist:
Although her reeds seem hands that clutch the dress
To hide her charms;
his picture of the day-blooming water-lily at sunset:
The water-lily closes, but
With wonderful reluctancy;
As if it troubled her to shut
Her door of welcome to the bee.
The religion of any great poet is always a matter of interest,
especially the religion of a Hindu poet; for the Hindus have ever been
a deeply and creatively religious people. So far as we can judge,
Kalidasa moved among the jarring sects with sympathy for all,
fanaticism for none. The dedicatory prayers that introduce his dramas
are addressed to Shiva. This is hardly more than a convention, for
Shiva is the patron of literature. If one of his epics, _The Birth of
the War-god_, is distinctively Shivaistic, the other, _The Dynasty of
Raghu_, is no less Vishnuite in tendency. If the hymn to Vishnu in
_The Dynasty of Raghu_ is an expression of Vedantic monism, the hymn
to Brahma in _The Birth of the War-god_ gives equally clear expression
to the rival dualism of the Sankhya system. Nor are the Yoga doctrine
and Buddhism left without sympathetic mention. We are therefore
justified in concluding that Kalidasa was, in matters of religion,
what William James would call "healthy-minded," emphatically not a
"sick soul. "
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.
One knows that children loved him. One becomes convinced that he never
suffered any morbid, soul-shaking experience such as besetting
religious doubt brings with it, or the pangs of despised love; that
on the contrary he moved among men and women with a serene and godlike
tread, neither self-indulgent nor ascetic, with mind and senses ever
alert to every form of beauty. We know that his poetry was popular
while he lived, and we cannot doubt that his personality was equally
attractive, though it is probable that no contemporary knew the full
measure of his greatness. For his nature was one of singular balance,
equally at home in a splendid court and on a lonely mountain, with men
of high and of low degree. Such men are never fully appreciated during
life. They continue to grow after they are dead.
II
Kalidasa left seven works which have come down to us: three dramas,
two epics, one elegiac poem, and one descriptive poem. Many other
works, including even an astronomical treatise, have been attributed
to him; they are certainly not his. Perhaps there was more than one
author who bore the name Kalidasa; perhaps certain later writers were
more concerned for their work than for personal fame. On the other
hand, there is no reason to doubt that the seven recognised works are
in truth from Kalidasa's hand. The only one concerning which there is
reasonable room for suspicion is the short poem descriptive of the
seasons, and this is fortunately the least important of the seven. Nor
is there evidence to show that any considerable poem has been lost,
unless it be true that the concluding cantos of one of the epics have
perished. We are thus in a fortunate position in reading Kalidasa: we
have substantially all that he wrote, and run no risk of ascribing to
him any considerable work from another hand.
Of these seven works, four are poetry throughout; the three dramas,
like all Sanskrit dramas, are written in prose, with a generous
mingling of lyric and descriptive stanzas. The poetry, even in the
epics, is stanzaic; no part of it can fairly be compared to English
blank verse. Classical Sanskrit verse, so far as structure is
concerned, has much in common with familiar Greek and Latin forms:
it makes no systematic use of rhyme; it depends for its rhythm not
upon accent, but upon quantity. The natural medium of translation into
English seems to me to be the rhymed stanza;[3] in the present work
the rhymed stanza has been used, with a consistency perhaps too rigid,
wherever the original is in verse.
Kalidasa's three dramas bear the names: _Malavika and Agnimitra,
Urvashi_, and _Shakuntala_. The two epics are _The Dynasty of Raghu_
and _The Birth of the War-god_. The elegiac poem is called _The
Cloud-Messenger_, and the descriptive poem is entitled _The Seasons_.
It may be well to state briefly the more salient features of the
Sanskrit _genres_ to which these works belong.
The drama proved in India, as in other countries, a congenial form to
many of the most eminent poets. The Indian drama has a marked
individuality, but stands nearer to the modern European theatre than
to that of ancient Greece; for the plays, with a very few exceptions,
have no religious significance, and deal with love between man and
woman. Although tragic elements may be present, a tragic ending is
forbidden. Indeed, nothing regarded as disagreeable, such as fighting
or even kissing, is permitted on the stage; here Europe may perhaps
learn a lesson in taste. Stage properties were few and simple, while
particular care was lavished on the music. The female parts were
played by women. The plays very rarely have long monologues, even the
inevitable prologue being divided between two speakers, but a Hindu
audience was tolerant of lyrical digression.
It may be said, though the statement needs qualification in both
directions, that the Indian dramas have less action and less
individuality in the characters, but more poetical charm than the
dramas of modern Europe.
On the whole, Kalidasa was remarkably faithful to the ingenious but
somewhat over-elaborate conventions of Indian dramaturgy. His first
play, the _Malavika and Agnimitra_, is entirely conventional in plot.
The _Shakuntala_ is transfigured by the character of the heroine. The
_Urvashi_, in spite of detail beauty, marks a distinct decline.
_The Dynasty of Raghu_ and _The Birth of the War-god_ belong to a
species of composition which it is not easy to name accurately. The
Hindu name _kavya_ has been rendered by artificial epic, _epopee
savante, Kunstgedicht_. It is best perhaps to use the term epic, and
to qualify the term by explanation.
The _kavyas_ differ widely from the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_,
epics which resemble the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ less in outward form
than in their character as truly national poems. The _kavya_ is a
narrative poem written in a sophisticated age by a learned poet, who
possesses all the resources of an elaborate rhetoric and metric. The
subject is drawn from time-honoured mythology. The poem is divided
into cantos, written not in blank verse but in stanzas. Several
stanza-forms are commonly employed in the same poem, though not in the
same canto, except that the concluding verses of a canto are not
infrequently written in a metre of more compass than the remainder.
I have called _The Cloud-Messenger_ an elegiac poem, though it would
not perhaps meet the test of a rigid definition. The Hindus class it
with _The Dynasty of Raghu_ and _The Birth of the War-god_ as a
_kavya_, but this classification simply evidences their embarrassment.
In fact, Kalidasa created in _The Cloud-Messenger_ a new _genre_. No
further explanation is needed here, as the entire poem is translated
below.
The short descriptive poem called _The Seasons_ has abundant analogues
in other literatures, and requires no comment.
It is not possible to fix the chronology of Kalidasa's writings, yet
we are not wholly in the dark. _Malavika and Agnimitra_ was certainly
his first drama, almost certainly his first work. It is a reasonable
conjecture, though nothing more, that Urvashi was written late, when
the poet's powers were waning. The introductory stanzas of _The
Dynasty of Raghu_ suggest that this epic was written before _The Birth
of the War-god_, though the inference is far from certain. Again, it
is reasonable to assume that the great works on which Kalidasa's fame
chiefly rests--_Shakuntala_, _The Cloud-Messenger_, _The Dynasty of
Raghu_, the first eight cantos of _The Birth of the War-god_--were
composed when he was in the prime of manhood. But as to the succession
of these four works we can do little but guess.
Kalidasa's glory depends primarily upon the quality of his work, yet
would be much diminished if he had failed in bulk and variety. In
India, more than would be the case in Europe, the extent of his
writing is an indication of originality and power; for the poets of
the classical period underwent an education that encouraged an
exaggerated fastidiousness, and they wrote for a public meticulously
critical. Thus the great Bhavabhuti spent his life in constructing
three dramas; mighty spirit though he was, he yet suffers from the
very scrupulosity of his labour. In this matter, as in others,
Kalidasa preserves his intellectual balance and his spiritual
initiative: what greatness of soul is required for this, every one
knows who has ever had the misfortune to differ in opinion from an
intellectual clique.
III
Le nom de Kalidasa domine la poesie indienne et la resume brillamment.
Le drame, l'epopee savante, l'elegie attestent aujourd'hui encore la
puissance et la souplesse de ce magnifique genie; seul entre les
disciples de Sarasvati [the goddess of eloquence], il a eu le bonheur
de produire un chef-d'oeuvre vraiment classique, ou l'Inde s'admire et
ou l'humanite se reconnait. Les applaudissements qui saluerent la
naissance de Cakuntala a Ujjayini ont apres de longs siecles eclate
d'un bout du monde a l'autre, quand William Jones l'eut revelee a
l'Occident. Kalidasa a marque sa place dans cette pleiade etincelante
ou chaque nom resume une periode de l'esprit humain. La serie de ces
noms forme l'histoire, ou plutot elle est l'histoire meme. [4]
It is hardly possible to say anything true about Kalidasa's
achievement which is not already contained in this appreciation. Yet
one loves to expand the praise, even though realising that the critic
is by his very nature a fool. Here there shall at any rate be none
of that cold-blooded criticism which imagines itself set above a
world-author to appraise and judge, but a generous tribute of
affectionate admiration.
The best proof of a poet's greatness is the inability of men to live
without him; in other words, his power to win and hold through
centuries the love and admiration of his own people, especially when
that people has shown itself capable of high intellectual and
spiritual achievement.
For something like fifteen hundred years, Kalidasa has been more
widely read in India than any other author who wrote in Sanskrit.
There have also been many attempts to express in words the secret of
his abiding power: such attempts can never be wholly successful, yet
they are not without considerable interest. Thus Bana, a celebrated
novelist of the seventh century, has the following lines in some
stanzas of poetical criticism which he prefixes to a historical
romance:
Where find a soul that does not thrill
In Kalidasa's verse to meet
The smooth, inevitable lines
Like blossom-clusters, honey-sweet?
A later writer, speaking of Kalidasa and another poet, is more laconic
in this alliterative line: _Bhaso hasah, Kalidaso vilasah_--Bhasa is
mirth, Kalidasa is grace.
These two critics see Kalidasa's grace, his sweetness, his delicate
taste, without doing justice to the massive quality without which his
poetry could not have survived.
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 _Encyclopaedia Britannica_
(1910); and Sylvain Levi's _Le Theatre 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.
