Sakoontala; Or, The Lost Ring: An Indian Drama

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, jayam and PG Distributed
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The fact that the following translation (first published in 1855) of India's most celebrated drama has gone through seven editions, might reasonably have absolved me from the duty of revising it.
Another edition is now called for, but after a severely critical examination of every word, I have only detected a few minor unimportant points—and those only in the Introduction and Notes—in which any alteration appeared to be desirable. Indeed it is probable that the possessors of previous editions will scarcely perceive that any alterations have been made anywhere.
Occasionally in the process of comparison a misgiving has troubled me, and I have felt inclined to accuse myself of having taken, in some cases, too great liberties with the Sanskrit original. But in the end I have acquiesced in my first and still abiding conviction that a literal translation (such as that which I have given in the notes of my edition of the Sanskrit text) might have commended itself to Oriental students, but would not have given a true idea of the beauty of India's most cherished drama to general readers, whose minds are cast in a European mould, and who require a translator to clothe Oriental ideas, as far as practicable, in a dress conformable to European canons of taste.
And lest any one in this country should be sceptical as to the possibility of interesting a modern audience in a play written possibly as early as the third or fourth century of our era (see p. xvi), I here append an extract from a letter received by me in 1893 from Mr. V. Padmanabha Aiyar, B.A., resident at Karamanai, Trivandrum, Travancore.
'May 1, 1893 .
'It was acted in two parts. On the first day Acts I to IV were acted, and on the second the remaining three Acts.
'All our chief native officials and many Europeans and their ladies honoured the occasion with their presence. We acted it a second time at the special request of H.H. the Second Prince of Travancore, in the Palace of His Highness' mother, the Junior Ránee.