The Sanskrit Epics, page 995
The Raghuvaṃça, or “Race of Raghu,” which consists of nineteen cantos, describes the life of Rāma together with an account of his forefathers and successors. The first nine cantos deal with his nearest four ancestors, beginning with Dilīpa and his son Raghu. The story of Rāma occupies the next six (x.–xv.), and agrees pretty closely with that in the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, whom Kālidāsa here (xv. 41) speaks of as “the first poet.” The following two cantos are concerned with the three nearest descendants of Rāma, while the last two run through the remainder of twenty-four kings who reigned in Ayodhyā as his descendants, ending rather abruptly with the death of the voluptuous King Agnivarṇa. The names of these successors of Rāma agree closely with those in the list given in the Vishṇu-purāṇa.
The narrative in the Raghuvaṃça moves with some rapidity, not being too much impeded by long descriptions. It abounds with apt and striking similes and contains much genuine poetry, while the style, for a Kāvya, is simple, though many passages are undoubtedly too artificial for the European taste. The following stanza, sung by a bard whose duty it is to waken the king in the morning (v. 75), may serve as a specimen —
The flow’rs to thee presented droop and fade,
The lamps have lost the wreath of rays they shed,
Thy sweet-voiced parrot, in his cage confined,
Repeats the call we sound to waken thee.
More than twenty commentaries on the Raghuvaṃça are known. The most famous is the Saṃjīvanī of Mallinātha, who explains every word of the text, and who has the great merit of endeavouring to find out and preserve the readings of the poet himself. He knew a number of earlier commentaries, among which he names with approval those of Dakshiṇāvarta and Nātha. The latter no longer exist. Among the other extant commentaries may be mentioned the Subodhinī, composed by Dinakara Miçra in 1385, and the Çiçuhitaishiṇī, by a Jain named Chāritravardhana, of which Dinakara’s work appears to be an epitome.
The Kumāra-sambhava, or the “Birth of the War-god,” consists, when complete, of seventeen cantos. The first seven are entirely devoted to the courtship and wedding of the god Çiva and of Pārvatī, daughter of Himālaya, the parents of the youthful god. This fact in itself indicates that description is the prevailing characteristic of the poem. It abounds in that poetical miniature painting in which lies the chief literary strength of the Indian. Affording the poet free scope for the indulgence of his rich and original imaginative powers, it is conspicuous for wealth of illustration. The following rendering of a stanza in the Viyoginī metre (in which lines of ten and eleven syllables ending iambically alternate) may serve as a specimen. The poet shows how the duty of a wife following her husband in death is exemplified even by objects in Nature poetically conceived as spouses —
After the Lord of Night the moonlight goes,
Along with the cloud the lightning is dissolved:
Wives ever follow in their husbands’ path;
Even things bereft of sense obey this law.
Usually the first seven cantos only are to be found in the printed editions, owing to the excessively erotic character of the remaining ten. The poem concludes with an account of the destruction of the demon Tāraka, the object for which the god of war was born.
More than twenty commentaries on the Kumāra-sambhava have been preserved. Several of them are by the same authors, notably Mallinātha, as those on the Raghuvaṃça.
The subject-matter of the later Kāvyas, which is derived from the two great epics, becomes more and more mixed up with lyric, erotic, and didactic elements. It is increasingly regarded as a means for the display of elaborate conceits, till at last nothing remains but bombast and verbal jugglery. The Bhaṭṭi-kāvya, written in Valabhī under King Çrīdharasena, probably in the seventh century, and ascribed by various commentators to the poet and grammarian Bhartṛihari (died 651 A.D.), deals in 22 cantos with the story of Rāma, but only with the object of illustrating the forms of Sanskrit grammar.
The Kirātārjunīya describes, in eighteen cantos, the combat, first narrated in the Mahābhārata, between Çiva, in the guise of a Kirāta or mountaineer, and Arjuna. It cannot have been composed later than the sixth century, as its author, Bhāravi, is mentioned in an inscription of 634 A.D. The fifteenth canto of this poem contains a number of stanzas illustrating all kinds of verbal tricks like those described in Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarça. Thus one stanza (14) contains no consonant but n (excepting a t at the end);1 while each half-line in a subsequent one (25), if its syllables be read backwards, is identical with the other half.2
The Çiçupāla-vadha, or “Death of Çiçupāla,” describes, in twenty cantos, how that prince, son of a king of Chedi, and cousin of Kṛishṇa, was slain by Vishṇu. Having been composed by the poet Māgha, it also goes by the name of Māgha-kāvya. It probably dates from the ninth, and must undoubtedly have been composed before the end of the tenth century. The nineteenth canto is full of metrical puzzles, some of a highly complex character (e.g. 29). It contains an example of a stanza (34) which, if read backwards, is identical with the preceding one read in the ordinary way. At the same time this Kāvya is, as a whole, by no means lacking in poetical beauties and striking thoughts.
The Naishadhīya (also called Naishadha-charita), in twenty-two cantos, deals with the story of Nala, king of Nishada, the well-known episode of the Mahābhārata. It was composed by Çrīharsha, who belongs to the latter half of the twelfth century.
These six artificial epics are recognised as Mahākāvyas, or “Great Poems,” and have all been commented on by Mallinātha. The characteristics of this higher class are set forth by Daṇḍin in his Kāvyādarça, or “Mirror of Poetry” (i. 14–19). Their subjects must be derived from epic story (itihāsa), they should be extensive, and ought to be embellished with descriptions of cities, seas, mountains, seasons, sunrise, weddings, battles fought by the hero, and so forth.
An extensive Mahākāvya, in fifty cantos, is the Haravijaya, or “Victory of Çiva,” by a Kashmirian poet named Ratnākara, who belongs to the ninth century.
Another late epic, narrating the fortunes of the same hero as the Naishadhīya, is the Nalodaya, or “Rise of Nala,” which describes the restoration to power of King Nala after he had lost his all. Though attributed to Kālidāsa, it is unmistakably the product of a much later age. The chief aim of the author is to show off his skill in the manipulation of the most varied and artificial metres, as well as all the elaborate tricks of style exhibited in the latest Kāvyas. Rhyme even is introduced, and that, too, not only at the end of, but within metrical lines. The really epic material is but scantily treated, narrative making way for long descriptions and lyrical effusions. Thus the second and longest of the four cantos of the poem is purely lyrical, describing only the bliss of the newly-wedded pair, with all kinds of irrelevant additions.
The culmination of artificiality is attained by the Rāghava-pāṇḍavīya, a poem composed by Kavirāja, who perhaps flourished about A.D. 800. It celebrates simultaneously the actions of Rāghava or Rāma and of the Pāṇḍava princes. The composition is so arranged that by the use of ambiguous words and phrases the story of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata is told at one and the same time. The same words, according to the sense in which they are understood, narrate the events of each epic. A tour de force of this kind is doubtless unique in the literatures of the world. Kavirāja has, however, found imitators in India itself.
A Mahākāvya which is as yet only known in MS. is the Navasāhasānka-charita, a poem celebrating the doings of Navasāhasānka, otherwise Sindhurāja, a king of Mālava, and composed by a poet named Padmagupta, who lived about 1000 A.D. It consists of eighteen cantos, containing over 1500 stanzas in nineteen different metres. The poet refrains from the employment of metrical tricks; but he greatly impedes the progress of the narrative by introducing interminable speeches and long-winded descriptions.
We may mention, in conclusion, that there is also an epic in Prākrit which is attributed to Kālidāsa. This is the Setu-bandha, “Building of the Bridge,” or Rāvaṇavadha, “Death of Rāvaṇa,” which relates the story of Rāma. It is supposed to have been composed by the poet to commemorate the building of a bridge of boats across the Vitastā (Jhelum) by King Pravarasena of Kashmir.
There are a few prose romances dating from the sixth and seventh centuries, which being classed as Kāvyas by the Sanskrit writers on poetics, may be mentioned in this place. The abundant use of immense compounds, which of course makes them very difficult reading, is an essential characteristic of the style of these works. As to their matter, they contain but little action, consisting largely of scenes which are strung together by a meagre thread of narrative, and are made the occasion of lengthy descriptions full of long strings of comparisons and often teeming with puns. In spite, however, of their highly artificial and involved style, many really poetical thoughts may be found embedded in what to the European taste is an unattractive setting.
The Daça-kumāra-charita, or “Adventures of the Ten Princes,” contains stories of common life and reflects a corrupt state of society. It is by Daṇḍin, and probably dates from the sixth century A.D. Vāsavadattā, by Subandhu, relates the popular story of the heroine Vāsavadattā, princess of Ujjayinī, and Udayana, king of Vatsa. It was probably written quite at the beginning of the seventh century. Slightly later is Bāṇa’s Kādambarī, a poetical romance narrating the fortunes of a princess of that name. Another work of a somewhat similar character by the same author is the Harsha-charita, a romance in eight chapters, in which Bāṇa attempts to give some account of the life of King Harshavardhana of Kanauj. There is, however, but little narrative. Thus in twenty-five pages of the eighth chapter there are to be found five long descriptions, extending on the average to two pages, to say nothing of shorter ones. There is, for instance, a long disquisition, covering four pages, and full of strings of comparisons, about the miseries of servitude. A servant, “like a painted bow, is for ever bent in the one act of distending a string of imaginary virtues, but there is no force in him; like a heap of dust-sweepings gathered by a broom, he carries off toilet-leavings; like the meal offered to the Divine Mothers, he is cast out into space even at night; like a pumping machine, he has left all weight behind him and bends even for water,” and so on. Soon after comes a description, covering two pages, of the trees in a forest. This is immediately followed by another page enumerating the various kinds of students thronging the wood in order to avail themselves of the teaching of a great Buddhist sage; they even include monkeys busily engaged in ritual ceremonies, devout parrots expounding a Buddhist dictionary, owls lecturing on the various births of Buddha, and tigers who have given up eating flesh under the calming influence of Buddhist teaching. Next comes a page describing the sage himself. “He was clad in a very soft red cloth, as if he were the eastern quarter of the sky bathed in the morning sunshine, teaching the other quarters to assume the red Buddhist attire, while they were flushed with the pure red glow of his body like a ruby freshly cut.” Soon after comes a long account, bristling with puns, of a disconsolate princess lying prostrate in the wood— “lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse’s bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burned with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, and held fast by her companions as well as by grief. I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eye and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streaming tears falling down at her feet,” and so forth.
1
Na nonanunno nunnono nānā nānānanā nanu
Nunno ‘nunno nanunneno nānenā nunnanunnanut.
2 Devākānini kāvāde, &c.
Chapter XII
Lyric Poetry
(Circa 400–1100 A.D.)
Sanskrit lyrical poetry has not produced many works of any considerable length. But among these are included two of the most perfect creations of Kālidāsa, a writer distinguished no less in this field than as an epic and a dramatic author. His lyrical talent is, indeed, also sufficiently prominent in his plays.
Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta, or “Cloud Messenger,” is a lyrical gem which won the admiration of Goethe. It consists of 115 stanzas composed in the Mandākrānta metre of four lines of seventeen syllables. The theme is a message which an exile sends by a cloud to his wife dwelling far away. The idea is applied by Schiller in his Maria Stuart, where the captive Queen of Scots calls on the clouds as they fly southwards to greet the land of her youth (act iii. sc. 1). The exile is a Yaksha or attendant of Kubera, the god of wealth, who for neglect of his duty has been banished to the groves on the slopes of Rāmagiri in Central India. Emaciated and melancholy, he sees, at the approach of the rainy season, a dark cloud moving northwards. The sight fills his heart with yearning, and impels him to address to the cloud a request to convey a message of hope to his wife in the remote Himālaya. In the first half of the poem the Yaksha describes with much power and beauty the various scenes the cloud must traverse on its northward course: Mount Āmrakūṭa, on whose peak it will rest after quenching with showers the forest fires; the Narmadā, winding at the foot of the Vindhya hills; the town of Vidiçā (Bhilsa), and the stream of the Vetravatī (Betwah); the city of Ujjayinī (Ujjain) in the land of Avanti; the sacred region of Kurukshetra; the Ganges and the mountains from which she sprang, white with snowfields, till Alakā on Mount Kailāsa is finally reached.
In the second half of the poem the Yaksha first describes the beauties of this city and his own dwelling there. Going on to paint in glowing colours the charms of his wife, her surroundings, and her occupations, he imagines her tossing on her couch, sleepless and emaciated, through the watches of the night. Then, when her eye rests on the window, the cloud shall proclaim to her with thunder-sound her husband’s message, that he is still alive and ever longs to behold her: —
In creepers I discern thy form, in eyes of startled hinds thy glances,
And in the moon thy lovely face, in peacocks’ plumes thy shining tresses;
The sportive frown upon thy brow in flowing waters’ tiny ripples:
But never in one place combined can I, alas! behold thy likeness.
But courage, he says; our sorrow will end at last — we shall be re-united —
And then we will our hearts’ desire, grown more intense by separation,
Enjoy in nights all glorious and bright, with full-orbed autumn moonlight.
Then begging the cloud, after delivering his message, to return with reassuring news, the exile finally dismisses him with the hope that he may never, even for a moment, be divided from his lightning spouse.
Besides the expression of emotion, the descriptive element is very prominent in this fine poem. This is still more true of Kālidāsa’s Ṛitusaṃhāra, or “Cycle of the Seasons.” That little work, which consists of 153 stanzas in six cantos, and is composed in various metres, is a highly poetical description of the six seasons into which classical Sanskrit poets usually divide the Indian year. With glowing descriptions of the beauties of Nature, in which erotic scenes are interspersed, the poet adroitly interweaves the expression of human emotions. Perhaps no other work of Kālidāsa’s manifests so strikingly the poet’s deep sympathy with Nature, his keen powers of observation, and his skill in depicting an Indian landscape in vivid colours.
The poem opens with an account of summer. If the glow of the sun is then too great during the day, the moonlit nights are all the more delightful to lovers. The moon, beholding the face of beauteous maidens, is beside itself with jealousy; then, too, it is that the heart of the wanderer is burnt by the fire of separation. Next follows a brilliant description of the effects of the heat: the thirst or lethargy it produces in serpent, lion, elephant, buffalo, boar, gazelle, peacock, crane, frogs, and fishes; the devastation caused by the forest fire which devours trees and shrubs, and drives before it crowds of terror-stricken beasts.
The close heat is succeeded by the rains, which are announced by the approach of the dark heavy clouds with their banner of lightning and drum of thunder. Slowly they move accompanied by chātaka birds, fabled to live exclusively on raindrops, till at length they discharge their water. The wild streams, like wanton girls, grasp in a trice the tottering trees upon their banks, as they rush onwards to the sea. The earth becomes covered with young blades of grass, and the forests clothe themselves with golden buds —
The mountains fill the soul with yearning thoughts of love,
When rain-charged clouds bend down to kiss the tow’ring rocks,
When all around upon their slopes the streams gush down,
And throngs of peacocks that begin to dance are seen.
Next comes the autumn, beauteous as a newly-wedded bride, with face of full-blown lotuses, with robe of sugarcane and ripening rice, with the cry of flamingoes representing the tinkling of her anklets. The graceful creepers vie with the arms of lovely women, and the jasmine, showing through the crimson açoka blossoms, rivals the dazzling teeth and red lips of smiling maidens.
Winter follows, when the rice ripens, while the lotus fades and the fields in the morning are covered with rime —
Then the Priyangu creeper, reaching ripeness,
Buffeted constantly by chilling breezes,
Grows, O Beloved, ever pale and paler,
Like lonely maiden from her lover parted.
This is the time dear to lovers, whose joys the poet describes in glowing colours.
