In the Vikramorvaçī Kālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in the Ṛgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in the Matsya[31] there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph; [[157]]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.
In the Çakuntalā Kālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of the Mālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in the Vikramorvaçī is paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of the Çakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of the Mahābhārata[32] which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her [[158]]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,[33] his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.
The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā [[159]]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in the Vikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.
Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of the Çakuntalā is a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of the Vikramorvaçī and in the garden scenes of the Mālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of the Çakuntalā also we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.
The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful [[160]]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him by Duḥṣanta’s hunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.
The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; the Mālavikāgnimitra contains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in the Vikramorvaçī spectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī.
Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,[34] the first to translate the Çakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal as Çakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.
4. The Style
Kālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of [[161]]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in the Çakuntalā never leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.