ON THE FIRST PAGE of Mani Rao’s Kalidasa translation is a verse that takes the words out of my mouth:
When the poets of old were numbered in conclave
The first finger was by all adjudged Kalidasa’s.
From that day on, for want of a poet to match him,
The second finger has gone unnamed.
This is the tribute of a later poet, a clever and touching conceit to explain why the ring finger is called anamika—anonymous—in one system of numbering. In the general critical and public opinion, over a millennium and a half, Kalidasa has held a position in the Sanskrit, and Indian, canon hardly matched even by Shakespeare in the English. His felicity of composition and imagery; his skill with words; the ease with which he evokes a rasa or flavour, whether while portraying nature or humanity; indeed his expertise in exploiting the so-called pathetic fallacy, where natural phenomena reflect human emotions: all these individual gifts may have been matched or surpassed in individual cases, but in the making of a whole play or poem his mastery is still held to be ineluctable.
However, critics and readers such as I, educated in the modern—European, humanist—tradition, find much to cavil about in Kalidasa. To my mind, Bharata Muni, who lived perhaps a couple of centuries before Kalidasa, is the culprit here. Once his Natya Shastra, which laid down the strictest guidelines for the performing arts, received almost scriptural status, the purpose of art and literature became religious enlightenment. As Srinivas Reddy points out in the introduction to his translation of Kalidasa’s Malavikagnimitram, “the cascade of emotions built up by the poetic action of a drama should ultimately propel the observer to an impersonal state of supreme peace.”
That is, the purpose of the eight rasas is to lead to a ninth, shanta—which, indeed, was a later addition to the list. Further, the internalisation of Bharata Muni’s dicta—meant to serve as a board of censors in the mind—made characters into what we would call stereotypes. There were no shades of grey.
Kalidasa went even further: he cut out the black by dropping villains altogether. There’s an excuse for everyone—unless he’s a rakshasa, which is itself sufficient excuse. A comparison of his Shakuntalam with the story in the Mahabharata that it dramatises is illuminating. The epic, whose realism about humans and their motives is unsparing, portrays the king Dushyanta as a rogue and the maiden Shakuntala as a virago determined to have her rights. Unlike in the play, here there is no angry sage, no curse, no aide-memoire in the form of a ring.
Why did our great poets, those masters of Sanskrit and a half-dozen Prakrits, do this? Why did they ignore the perpetually baffling, eternally fascinating human mind and soul to paint pretty word-pictures? A reader used to Shelley and Wordsworth may get much out of Kalidasa; one attuned to Dostoevsky and Camus might be disappointed.
The poets who came after Kalidasa found it hard going. He seemed to have done it all. Many, over the next 1000 years, fell prey to the charms of wordplay; reading some of their works is like trying to solve Torquemada’s crosswords in the Observer. The greatest, though, asserted their genius and individuality. And it must be noted that Kalidasa was not always adjudged the owner of the first finger, the numero uno position. An anonymous sloka, from perhaps 500 years after him, says:
Kalidasa has his simile,
Bharavi has weighty meaning,
Dandin dancing words.
Magha has all three.
And in the eleventh century, Soddhala writes:
I worship Abhinanda as master of speech,
I worship Vakpatiraja as master of meaning,
and I praise Kalidasa as master of mood,
but I bow down to Bana as master of all.
The point is, though, that Kalidasa is a constant—the only constant. And in a climate seemingly receptive, of a sudden, to classical Sanskrit, it is appropriate that we have a number of new books (even before the recent launch of the Murty Classical Library of India, a series of modern English translations of classical Indian works) to help us appreciate and evaluate his work.
MANI RAO’S “21ST CENTURY” KALIDASA has translations of Shakuntalam and the lyric poem Meghadutam in full, and excerpts—individual cantos or acts—from Kalidasa’s other works. Rao’s style in her own poetry is, I understand, short, to the point, abrupt. This is not a style which suits Kalidasa. Her justification reads, in part:
Today, if most people know the storylines … of Shakuntalam and Meghadutam, not as many have actually read them, even in translation. This is unsurprising, for the conventions of ancient Indian poetics are far removed from our present context. We no longer compare women’s faces to lotuses or their figures to vines, and fanciful expressions of love seem obsessive-compulsive. And because translations just cannot replicate Kalidasa’s metre, the English-language reader cannot relish his literary delights. However, Sanskrit readers of Kalidasa know that his brilliance is not just in prosody, it is in the use of the apt word, in the suggestiveness and unity of parts, how everything comes together. This kind of literary appreciation is one of the goals of this translation.
This is somewhat extreme. Kalidasa is a poet who, more than almost any other in the world’s literatures, marries sound and sense. His metres carry the emotions he chooses quite as well and harmoniously as his words do. A classical play in translation must have classical usage in diction and prosody. If you are remaking the whole thing—making a West Side Story out of Romeo and Juliet—it is proper to use the language of the Bowery. Here, however, are kings and gods and demigods and sages. The language they use, and the phrases, must be fitted to their setting. Later in her introduction Rao says:
in the plays, I use language which today’s actors may speak comfortably on stage. No quaint addresses like ‘Hail, Majesty’ … nor the address ‘friend’ when speaking to a person the audience already knows is a friend.
Are these phrases, picked at random from Rao’s translation, more suitable: “Hi King,” “Hey Lucky,” “Hey Pretty,” “Hey Lovely”? The courtiers of Gupta India sound like a set of roadside Romeos. I was surprised not to find “Hi, Doll-face!” It is unjust and degrading to twenty-first-century readers to assume they are more comfortable with phrases such as “sexhaustion” or “senses a good vibe.” How about “ripe ‘n’ ready” and “women prep for sex fests”? What is “a leeward wind”? What does “a brief period of sultry after the rains” describe? Are we not only to accept the corruption of modern English, but to further it in the name of translating one of the most literary writers of all time? A translator must have, as one of her goals, leaving the sensibilities of the writer unruffled. I suspect Kalidasa would have been offended. Of course I don’t know. As to “friend,” the purpose of the salutation is not to let the audience know, but to reaffirm the bond between two characters. After all, one of the most common words in daily usage in India is “yaar.”
Besides, it’s not true that Sanskrit metres cannot be imitated. They cannot be replicated, true; but it is possible for a skilled and dedicated translator to reproduce the effects of a variety of metres, and even use sound effects, as Hank Heifetz has so marvellously done in his rendition of Kalidasa’s epic Kumarasambhavam. In any case, a failed attempt at replication would be less jarring than these brusque, spiky half-lines. I hope I’m not dismissive of Rao, but I am disapproving—particularly as she’s not consistent. For instance, where Reddy has, in his translation of Malavikagnimitram, “open-air bed,” Rao has “outdoor chaise-longue.” How many twenty-first-century readers know what a chaise-longue is? Where Reddy has “the wound looks bad,” Rao has “the visible change does not augur well.”
Let’s go the whole hog and make the story and characters twenty-first-century, too. If we could have West Side Story for Romeo and Juliet, and Maqbool for Macbeth, we can have Nandurbar Nights, or even Harem-Scarem, for Malavikagnimitram. Rao and her publishers at Aleph have tried to do something new not because it’s necessary, but for newness’ sake. If this view puts me firmly in the twentieth century, so be it. Hi, old fossil!
THE TWO PENGUIN TRANSLATIONS, by Heifetz and Reddy, are much more to my taste, despite their rather orgasmic covers. Srinivas Reddy, who has a bio that I envy—all these translators have bios I envy—does a workmanlike job with Malavikagnimitram, without worrying too much that it’s impossible to duplicate Kalidasa’s skill. From his introduction:
Although this rhythm is nearly impossible to translate into English, I have tried to convey the building up and layering of sounds and images that mark Kalidasa’s high style when dealing with long metrical forms.
As I have found out myself when attempting to translate Kalidasa, the 19- and 24-syllable metres which are commonplace in Sanskrit poetry are simply unacceptable in English.
Reddy makes several important points in his brief introductory essay. The myth of Kalidasa having been a dolt until the goddess gave him creative power is exploded now; Reddy describes how Kalidasa, too, evolved. That Malavikagnimitram is a play about the performing arts; how important the pathetic fallacy is to Sanskrit poetry; and that shanta, not realism, is “the fundamental metaphysical or salvational dimension of Indian aesthetics that underlies all artistic pursuits,” are all illuminating points. Malavikagnimitram is, after all, simply a harem intrigue, with not much drama. It is mostly a vehicle for poetry.
Hank Heifetz’s Kumarasambhavam is a reprint of a 1985 edition, and Penguin has done us all a favour by making it accessible. This is a brilliant translation, true poetry, and among its many virtues is the way Heifetz has succeeded in imitating Kalidasa’s metrical patterns. A sarga, or canto, in a mahakavya follows certain rules of prosody, and Heifetz’s text and notes combine to give readers a very good idea of the plan and execution of the original. Kalidasa’s famous descriptions of Uma and of spring are beautifully rendered:
Like blue water lilies blowing in the wind
were her long eyes with their tremulous glances,
which either she had learned by imitation
of the does or they had learned from her.
Of spring:
The living beauty of spring, on her forehead, showed
the tilaka flower, decorated black by the clinging bees,
and she coloured her lips that were the young mango leaves
with the delicate lac of the first redness of dawn.
The sarga devoted to Shiva and Parvati’s love-making (deemed immoral by innumerable Bowdlers since early medieval times) is enchanting:
Alone together, before she would let her robe fall,
she would cover Siva’s eyes with both her palms,
but she was left troubled then by that useless effort
as the third eye in his forehead looked down at her.
It is Heifetz’s introduction, though, which leads me back to the theme of this review:
Classical Sanskrit poetry has often been compared to the productions of 18th century English neoclassicism … The comparison is misleading, however, as regards the charge of the poetry. Sanskrit verse is far more sensuous in image, rhythm and sound play and far more concerned with emotion, the inner life, than with wit, the comment on the other.
Heifetz makes the point tellingly that Sanskrit literature does not concern itself with the study of psyches, but of emotions:
Character, in both cases, is primarily the expression of a value, and this value does not move us through eliciting identification with a unique and detailed psyche but rather through means which can best be termed musical. Each character of the [Kumarasambhavam] is a leitmotif
So should we judge Kalidasa’s work—and by extension all classical and pre-modern Indian literature that follows the Natya Shastra’s codes—on its own terms, or bring marching across our six-seasoned landscapes the hydra-headed, all-conquering chimera of European humanism? If you look at them from a modern European point of view, Kalidasa’s characters are stereotypes; Heifetz argues that they should be studied in their own value-frame and judged by their own criteria. The way to do that, he thinks, is musically, when the character flows through the poem or play like a motif or a phrase.
IN TOWARD A HISTORY OF KAVYA LITERATURE, the scholar Velcheru Narayana Rao makes this significant point about Indian modernity and its effect on Sanskrit literature:
Marginalisation of Sanskrit gave precedence to new poets and critics who took pride in their ignorance of old texts. They read English poets and Western philosophers, thought in English. … Evaluations of … literature began to be heavily based on political and social ideologies, rather than on literary sensibilities and modes of presentation. A modern writer has to reject caste, avoid erotic descriptions, deny religious superstition, and advocate and depict progressive ideas about women and the lower castes. Once he does this, he is modern, never mind if his literary sensibilities are not refined.
The book—book? It’s a tome, a three-inch-shelf—is a set of 25 essays by various scholars ranging over the whole vast scope of kavya from Kalidasa’s time to very nearly the present. Not content with India, it forays into Tibet and Java as well. It is not an encyclopaedia simply because it is not all-inclusive. The authors of the essays touch upon important facets of important writers and works in the tradition, and their level of scholarship is far beyond this reviewer, who did, though, rise from the exercise of reading them with not only stronger wrists but also a much better-informed mind.
A piercing insight into Kalidasa’s mind is achieved by Gary Tubb, following his fellow Sanskrit scholar Daniel Ingalls:
What is most striking in the Raghuvamsa is that the affection shown by these kings [Rama’s forebears] and depicted so movingly in passages such as Aja’s lament for Indumati, is almost totally absent in Kalidasa’s treatment of Rama … who in the hands of other Sanskrit poets … is credited with the most elaborate and vocal yearnings for his missing Sita. … [Ingalls] concludes that Kalidasa could not believe Rama really loved his wife, and so he refused to say he did.
My understanding of this reticence on Kalidasa’s part is that he had to genuinely feel the emotions he portrayed. (Indeed, I hold that no one can write well whose emotions are not genuine.) The codes of his time and his stage held fast; but he could choose what he wished to portray. Tennyson’s Lady Clara might have appalled him, or not; it would have been interesting to know:
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown;
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.
For Kalidasa, an arya, the daughter of a hundred earls, must be incapable of ignoble behaviour. Tennyson’s statement later in his poem—“Kind hearts are more than coronets,/ And simple faith than Norman blood”—may also have bewildered him. His Dushyanta, unlike the king in the Mahabharata, cannot commit un-arya actions.
My uninformed opinion, mentioned near the beginning of this essay, that ambitious poets who wished to surpass Kalidasa were forced to play games with the language, is largely confirmed by this book. Peter Khoroche, in his discussion of Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniya, mentions that chitrakavya, or “patterned verse,” first appears in this work, in the late sixth century. He adds:
Though entirely in the spirit of kavya, such verbal acrobatics involve the poet in drastic stretches of meaning and other licences which surely diminish his achievement
The seventh-century poet Magha goes further in his Shisupalavadha with his zigzag verse, where alternate syllables of a couplet’s first line match with syllables of the second. This is, hilariously, called the gomutrikabandha, or “cow urine arrangement,” in token of the view that a cow urinating as she walks leaves a zigzag pattern. (In my experience, though, only bullocks do this.) There was no limit to this absurdity. One dramatist, a millennium later, used yamaka, a kind of punning, in his stage directions.
Bana, of the late seventh century, is often cited for his boldness. He is, as I understand, the only great Sanskrit poet to have attempted anything like realistic description. His verses, though, are not placed, in the great anthologies which began to be made some time after him, in the categories where we would put them today—“illustrating once again,” Tubb says, “the tendency for realistic description to be trumped by the standard emotional categories in the interest of … readers and critics.”
Here is Bana on the poor traveller at daybreak:
The corners of his mouth are wet with the mingled flow
Of tears and precipitation, his body racked by age
And his knees worn out, but somehow the traveller manages
Numbly to set his crooked shanks in motion.
He takes the staff in his fist and painfully gets up,
His ragged garment ripping at the cleft of his buttocks,
His patchwork robe scorched by the fire, and, unsteady
In the cruel wind, sets out along the road at dawn.
This is the best that classical realism can offer. Give me the Panchatantra any day; and of course the Mahabharata beats all hollow. Tubb explains:
the description of low-class … persons, by virtue of their irrelevance to the preoccupation of Sanskrit kavya poetry with ideal types to which they did not conform, fits only quite awkwardly within the very influential system of poetic aesthetics based on the concept of rasa … As Pollock [says], “rasa is a way of speaking about the literary promulgation of an ideal-typical social order…” Ingalls has noted that “This prohibition of tragedy is the one crippling restriction from which Sanskrit literature suffers and one may be thankful for those single verses of pity”
So I have to go back and excoriate Bharata Muni all over again. Why did not these poets flout the conventions he had established? Bana was obviously tempted to. But they needed their place in the ranks of the ratnas, they needed royal patronage. They were pillars of a world of great intellectual sophistication, and one of the codes of their order was that their world would last for ever. Besides, as Tubb says above, “the interest of … readers and critics” would always prevail. It was the duty of the poet to lead readers to enlightenment, to shanta, and to give critics the wherewithal to neatly catalogue. They could not just do as they liked.
I’d just like to add that the quoting of original Sanskrit text in Roman script, in these four books and countless others, is pointless. It’s much harder to read the Roman than it is Nagari. And what reader ignorant of Nagari would make sense of the Roman, with all those diacritical marks? It’s far better to use the native script, at least in full—verse-sized—quotations.
THESE 25 ESSAYS are the work of 12 scholars, only one of whom is of Indian origin. Sheldon Pollock, leading Sanskrit scholar and general editor of the Murty Library, said recently in an interview in Mint Lounge that two-fifths of the series’ translators would be Indian. This was a concession; Indian scholarship does not merit so high a share. Indeed, Indian scholarship in India, in the classics—that includes Tamil and Bengali classics as well as Sanskrit ones—is all but extinct.
Well, why shouldn’t it be extinct? Pollock, in a 2011 essay, says why:
Classical studies 1) promotes real pedagogy, especially and perhaps unexpectedly radical pedagogy; 2) stimulates care for memory and helps shape a usable sense of the past, preserving memory from those who would abuse it and opening the past to responsible critique; 3) enables us to acquire new “tools for living”; 4) makes possible an encounter with the enduring beauty and intellectual excitement created by the vast labor of several thousands years of human consciousness.
This means nothing to policy-makers. “Make in India” means to manufacture goods in India. Putative scholars are forced by the system’s bias into information technology or management—or reviewing. The fundamental cause of this skewed pattern is the mindset that has betrayed India for 2,000 years, not least in the Natya Shastra: the myth of a sanatana dharma, an unchanging code which has always been thus and sacred, and will always be. There is no need to analyse or reinterpret what has gone before; it is too holy, literally, for words.
Our mandarins smugly ignore the fact that there are no classical scholars left here. After all, the raw material will always be ours, the “intellectual property rights.” But spouting the Vedas is not the same as understanding them, and they who cannot understand their past betray it, and themselves.