[4] Urvasi, in older (i.e. Sanskrit) mythology, is a famous courtesan and dancing-girl at the court of Indra, King of the Gods. Her adventures were many; she was often sent to lure sages aside from their devotions, lest they obtained super-divine powers and threatened the dominion of the Gods (see stanza 4). But in Tagore’s poem she is very much more than her legendary character. The poem is a tangle—Indian mythology, modern science, European romance. She is the cosmic spirit of life, in the mazes of its eternal dance; she is Beauty dissociated from all human relationships; she is that world-enchanting Love which (though not in Dante’s sense) “moves the sun and other stars,” is Lucretius’s hominum divumque voluptas, Alma Venus, is Swinburne’s “perilous goddess,” “sea-foam-born.”
I have adopted a quasi-metrical form which I hope will indicate the general outline of the stanza in which this magnificent ode is written.
[5] When the Gods churned the Ocean, to recover the lost nectar of immortality, Urvasi first appeared, one of many good and bad things that came to light. With the nectar came out poison, which threatened the life of all creatures, till Siva drank it to save the worlds. Tagore has invented Urvasi’s responsibility for the nectar and poison being brought forth; at any rate, I know of no other authority for line 4 of this stanza.
[6] A jasmine.
[7] In Sanskrit mythology, heaven, the atmosphere, and earth; in later mythology, generally heaven, earth, and the underworld.
[8] In Indian mythology, there are Mounts of Sunrise and Sunsetting.
[9] From the Mādhabī.
[10] Sanskrit Urvasī.
[11] I.e. the vīnā, the lute.
[12] From the Kanyādhūp.