Adab Nama Short Stories Children's Stories 8Indian Languages Novel Work of Kalidas
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Work of Great Sanskrit Poet & Dramatist
KALIDASA
in English
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.--"URVASHI"
The second of the two inferior dramas may be conveniently called
_Urvashi_, though the full title is _The Tale of Urvashi won by
Valour_. When and where the play was first produced we do not know,
for the prologue is silent as to these matters. It has been thought
that it was the last work of Kalidasa, even that it was never produced
in his lifetime. Some support is lent to this theory by the fact that
the play is filled with reminiscences of Shakuntala, in small matters
as well as in great; as if the poet's imagination had grown weary, and
he were willing to repeat himself. Yet _Urvashi_ is a much more
ambitious effort than _Malavika_, and invites a fuller criticism,
after an outline of the plot has been given.
In addition to the stage-director and his assistant, who appear in the
prologue, the characters of the play are these:
PURURAVAS, _king in Pratishthana on the Ganges_.
AYUS, _his son_.
MANAVAKA, _a clown, his friend_.
URVASHI, _a heavenly nymph_.
CHITRALEKHA, _another nymph, her friend_.
AUSHINARI, _queen of Pururavas_.
NIPUNIKA, _her maid_.
_A charioteer, a chamberlain, a hermit-woman, various nymphs and other
divine beings, and attendants_.
The scene shifts as indicated in the following analysis. The time of
the first four acts is a few days. Between acts four and five several
years elapse.
ACT I.--The prologue only tells us that we may expect a new play of
Kalidasa. A company of heavenly nymphs then appear upon Mount
Gold-peak wailing and calling for help. Their cries are answered by
King Pururavas, who rides in a chariot that flies through the air. In
response to his inquiries, the nymphs inform him that two of their
number, Urvashi and Chitralekha, have been carried into captivity by a
demon. The king darts in pursuit, and presently returns, victorious,
with the two nymphs. As soon as Urvashi recovers consciousness, and
has rejoined her joyful friends, it is made plain that she and the
king have been deeply impressed with each other's attractions. The
king is compelled to decline an invitation to visit Paradise, but he
and Urvashi exchange loving glances before they part.
ACT II.--The act opens with a comic scene in the king's palace. The
clown appears, bursting with the secret of the king's love for
Urvashi, which has been confided to him. He is joined by the maid
Nipunika, commissioned by the queen to discover what it is that
occupies the king's mind. She discovers the secret ingeniously, but
without much difficulty, and gleefully departs.
The king and the clown then appear in the garden, and the king
expresses at some length the depth and seeming hopelessness of his
passion. The latter part of his lament is overheard by Urvashi
herself, who, impelled by love for the king, has come down to earth
with her friend Chitralekha, and now stands near, listening but
invisible. When she has heard enough to satisfy her of the king's
passion, she writes a love-stanza on a birch-leaf, and lets it fall
before him. His reception of this token is such that Urvashi throws
aside the magic veil that renders her invisible, but as soon as she
has greeted the king, she and her friend are called away to take their
parts in a play that is being presented in Paradise.
The king and the clown hunt for Urvashi's love-letter, which has been
neglected during the past few minutes. But the leaf has blown away,
only to be picked up and read by Nipunika, who at that moment enters
with the queen. The queen can hardly be deceived by the lame excuses
which the king makes, and after offering her ironical congratulations,
jealously leaves him.
ACT III.--The act opens with a conversation between two minor
personages in Paradise. It appears that Urvashi had taken the
heroine's part in the drama just presented there, and when asked, "On
whom is your heart set?" had absentmindedly replied, "On Pururavas."
Heaven's stage-director had thereupon cursed her to fall from
Paradise, but this curse had been thus modified: that she was to live
on earth with Pururavas until he should see a child born of her, and
was then to return.
The scene shifts to Pururavas' palace. In the early evening, the
chamberlain brings the king a message, inviting him to meet the queen
on a balcony bathed in the light of the rising moon. The king betakes
himself thither with his friend, the clown. In the midst of a dialogue
concerning moonlight and love, Urvashi and Chitralekha enter from
Paradise, wearing as before veils of invisibility. Presently the queen
appears and with humble dignity asks pardon of the king for her
rudeness, adding that she will welcome any new queen whom he genuinely
loves and who genuinely returns his love. When the queen departs,
Urvashi creeps up behind the king and puts her hands over his eyes.
Chitralekha departs after begging the king to make her friend forget
Paradise.
ACT IV.--From a short dialogue in Paradise between Chitralekha and
another nymph, we learn that a misfortune has befallen Pururavas and
Urvashi. During their honeymoon in a delightful Himalayan forest,
Urvashi, in a fit of jealousy, had left her husband, and had
inadvertently entered a grove forbidden by an austere god to women.
She was straightway transformed into a vine, while Pururavas is
wandering through the forest in desolate anguish.
The scene of what follows is laid in the Himalayan forest. Pururavas
enters, and in a long poetical soliloquy bewails his loss and seeks
for traces of Urvashi. He vainly asks help of the creatures whom he
meets: a peacock, a cuckoo, a swan, a ruddy goose, a bee, an elephant,
a mountain-echo, a river, and an antelope. At last he finds a
brilliant ruby in a cleft of the rocks, and when about to throw it
away, is told by a hermit to preserve it: for this is the gem of
reunion, and one who possesses it will soon be reunited with his love.
With the gem in his hand, Pururavas comes to a vine which mysteriously
reminds him of Urvashi, and when he embraces it, he finds his beloved
in his arms. After she has explained to him the reason of her
transformation, they determine to return to the king's capital.
ACT V.--The scene of the concluding act is the king's palace. Several
years have passed in happy love, and Pururavas has only one
sorrow--that he is childless.
One day a vulture snatches from a maid's hand the treasured gem of
reunion, which he takes to be a bit of bloody meat, and flies off with
it, escaping before he can be killed. While the king and his
companions lament the gem's loss, the chamberlain enters, bringing the
gem and an arrow with which the bird had been shot. On the arrow is
written a verse declaring it to be the property of Ayus, son of
Pururavas and Urvashi. A hermit-woman is then ushered in, who brings a
lad with her. She explains that the lad had been entrusted to her as
soon as born by Urvashi, and that it was he who had just shot the bird
and recovered the gem. When Urvashi is summoned to explain why she had
concealed her child, she reminds the king of heaven's decree that she
should return as soon as Pururavas should see the child to be born to
them. She had therefore sacrificed maternal love to conjugal
affection. Upon this, the king's new-found joy gives way to gloom. He
determines to give up his kingdom and spend the remainder of his life
as a hermit in the forest. But the situation is saved by a messenger
from Paradise, bearing heaven's decree that Urvashi shall live with
the king until his death. A troop of nymphs then enter and assist in
the solemn consecration of Ayus as crown prince.
The tale of Pururavas and Urvashi, which Kalidasa has treated
dramatically, is first made known to us in the Rigveda. It is thus one
of the few tales that so caught the Hindu imagination as to survive
the profound change which came over Indian thinking in the passage
from Vedic to classical times. As might be expected from its history,
it is told in many widely differing forms, of which the oldest and
best may be summarised thus.
Pururavas, a mortal, sees and loves the nymph Urvashi. She consents to
live with him on earth so long as he shall not break certain trivial
conditions. Some time after the birth of a son, these conditions are
broken, through no fault of the man, and she leaves him. He wanders
disconsolate, finds her, and pleads with her, by her duty as a wife,
by her love for her child, even by a threat of suicide. She rejects
his entreaties, declaring that there can be no lasting love between
mortal and immortal, even adding: "There are no friendships with
women. Their hearts are the hearts of hyenas." Though at last she
comforts him with vague hopes of a future happiness, the story
remains, as indeed it must remain, a tragedy--the tragedy of love
between human and divine.
This splendid tragic story Kalidasa has ruined. He has made of it an
ordinary tale of domestic intrigue, has changed the nymph of heaven
into a member of an earthly harem. The more important changes made by
Kalidasa in the traditional story, all have the tendency to remove the
massive, godlike, austere features of the tale, and to substitute
something graceful or even pretty. These principal changes are: the
introduction of the queen, the clown, and the whole human
paraphernalia of a court; the curse pronounced on Urvashi for her
carelessness in the heavenly drama, and its modification; the
invention of the gem of reunion; and the final removal of the curse,
even as modified. It is true that the Indian theatre permits no
tragedy, and we may well believe that no successor of Kalidasa could
hope to present a tragedy on the stage. But might not Kalidasa, far
overtopping his predecessors, have put on the stage a drama the story
of which was already familiar to his audience as a tragic story?
Perhaps not. If not, one can but wish that he had chosen another
subject.
This violent twisting of an essentially tragic story has had a further
ill consequence in weakening the individual characters. Pururavas is a
mere conventional hero, in no way different from fifty others, in
spite of his divine lineage and his successful wooing of a goddess.
Urvashi is too much of a nymph to be a woman, and too much of a woman
to be a nymph. The other characters are mere types.
Yet, in spite of these obvious objections, Hindu critical opinion has
always rated the _Urvashi_ very high, and I have long hesitated to
make adverse comments upon it, for it is surely true that every nation
is the best judge of its own literature. And indeed, if one could but
forget plot and characters, he would find in _Urvashi_ much to attract
and charm. There is no lack of humour in the clever maid who worms the
clown's secret out of him. There is no lack of a certain shrewdness in
the clown, as when he observes:
"Who wants heaven? It is nothing to eat or drink. It is just a place
where they never shut their eyes--like fishes!"
Again, the play offers an opportunity for charming scenic display. The
terrified nymphs gathered on the mountain, the palace balcony bathed
in moonlight, the forest through which the king wanders in search of
his lost darling, the concluding solemn consecration of the crown
prince by heavenly beings--these scenes show that Kalidasa was no
closet dramatist. And finally, there is here and there such poetry as
only Kalidasa could write. The fourth act particularly, undramatic as
it is, is full of a delicate beauty that defies transcription. It was
a new and daring thought--to present on the stage a long lyrical
monologue addressed to the creatures of the forest and inspired by
despairing passion. Nor must it be forgotten that this play, like all
Indian plays, is an opera. The music and the dancing are lost. We
judge it perforce unfairly, for we judge it by the text alone. If, in
spite of all, the _Urvashi_ is a failure, it is a failure possible
only to a serene and mighty poet.
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