by Kalidasa
The sun is down, and heaven sleeps:
Thus every path of glory ends;
As high as are the scaled steeps,
The downward way as low descends.
Shiva then retires for meditation. On his return, he finds that his bride is peevish at being left alone even for a little time, and to soothe her, he describes the night which is now advancing. A few stanzas of this description run as follows.
The twilight glow is fading far
And stains the west with blood-red light,
As when a reeking scimitar
Slants upward on a field of fight.
And vision fails above, below,
Around, before us, at our back;
The womb of night envelops slow
The world with darkness vast and black.
Mute while the world is dazed with light,
The smiling moon begins to rise
And, being teased by eager night,
Betrays the secrets of the skies.
Moon-fingers move the black, black hair
Of night into its proper place,
Who shuts her eyes, the lilies fair,
As he sets kisses on her face.
Shiva and Parvati then drink wine brought them by the guardian goddess of the grove, and in this lovely spot they dwell happily for many years.
Ninth canto. The journey to Mount Kailasa .—One day the god of fire appears as a messenger from the gods before Shiva, to remonstrate with him for not begetting the son upon whom heaven's welfare depends. Shiva deposits his seed in Fire, who departs, bent low with the burden. Shortly afterwards the gods wait upon Shiva and Parvati, who journey with them to Mount Kailasa, the splendid dwelling-place of the god of wealth. Here also Shiva and Parvati spend happy days.
Tenth canto. The birth of Kumara .—To Indra, king of the gods, Fire betakes himself, tells his story, and begs to be relieved of his burden. Indra advises him to deposit it in the Ganges. Fire therefore travels to the Ganges, leaves Shiva's seed in the river, and departs much relieved. But now it is the turn of Ganges to be distressed, until at dawn the six Pleiades come to bathe in the river. They find Shiva's seed and lay it in a nest of reeds, where it becomes a child, Kumara, the future god of war.
Eleventh canto. The birth of Kumara, continued .—Ganges suckles the beautiful infant. But there arises a dispute for the possession of the child between Fire, Ganges, and the Pleiades. At this point Shiva and Parvati arrive, and Parvati, wondering at the beauty of the infant and at the strange quarrel, asks Shiva to whom the child belongs. When Shiva tells her that Kumara is their own child, her joy is unbounded.
Because her eyes with happy tears were dim,
'Twas but by snatches that she saw the boy;
Yet, with her blossom-hand caressing him,
She felt a strange, an unimagined joy.
The vision of the infant made her seem
A flower unfolding in mysterious bliss;
Or, billowy with her joyful tears, a stream;
Or pure affection, perfect in a kiss.
Shiva conducts Parvati and the boy back to Mount Kailasa, where gods and fairies welcome them with music and dancing. Here the divine child spends the days of a happy infancy, not very different from human infancy; for he learns to walk, gets dirty in the courtyard, laughs a good deal, pulls the scanty hair of an old servant, and learns to count: "One, nine, two, ten, five, seven." These evidences of healthy development cause Shiva and Parvati the most exquisite joy.
Twelfth canto. Kumara is made general .—Indra, with the other gods, waits upon Shiva, to ask that Kumara, now a youth, may be lent to them as their leader in the campaign against Taraka. The gods are graciously received by Shiva, who asks their errand. Indra prefers their request, whereupon Shiva bids his son assume command of the gods, and slay Taraka. Great is the joy of Kumara himself, of his mother Parvati, and of Indra.
Thirteenth canto. Kumara is consecrated general .—Kumara takes an affectionate farewell of his parents, and sets out with the gods. When they come to Indra's paradise, the gods are afraid to enter, lest they find their enemy there. There is an amusing scene in which each courteously invites the others to precede him, until Kumara ends their embarrassment by leading the way. Here for the first time Kumara sees with deep respect the heavenly Ganges, Indra's garden and palace, and the heavenly city. But he becomes red-eyed with anger on beholding the devastation wrought by Taraka.
He saw departed glory, saw the state
Neglected, ruined, sad, of Indra's city,
As of a woman with a cowardly mate:
And all his inmost heart dissolved in pity.
He saw how crystal floors were gashed and torn
By wanton tusks of elephants, were strewed
With skins that sloughing cobras once had worn:
And sadness overcame him as he viewed.
He saw beside the bathing-pools the bowers
Defiled by elephants grown overbold,
Strewn with uprooted golden lotus-flowers,
No longer bright with plumage of pure gold,
Rough with great, jewelled columns overthrown,
Rank with invasion of the untrimmed grass:
Shame strove with sorrow at the ruin shown,
For heaven's foe had brought these things to pass.
Amid these sorrowful surroundings the gods gather and anoint Kumara, thus consecrating him as their general.
Fourteenth canto. The march .—Kumara prepares for battle, and marshals his army. He is followed by Indra riding on an elephant, Agni on a ram, Yama on a buffalo, a giant on a ghost, Varuna on a dolphin, and many other lesser gods. When all is ready, the army sets out on its dusty march.
Fifteenth canto. The two armies clash .—The demon Taraka is informed that the hostile army is approaching, but scorns the often-conquered Indra and the boy Kumara. Nevertheless, he prepares for battle, marshals his army, and sets forth to meet the gods. But he is beset by dreadful omens of evil.
For foul birds came, a horrid flock to see,
Above the army of the foes of heaven,
And dimmed the sun, awaiting ravenously
The feast of demon corpses to be given.
And monstrous snakes, as black as powdered soot,
Spitting hot poison high into the air,
Brought terror to the army underfoot,
And crept and coiled and crawled before them there.
The sun a sickly halo round him had;
Coiling within it frightened eyes could see
Great, writhing serpents, enviously glad
Because the demon's death so soon should be.
And in the very circle of the sun
Were phantom jackals, snarling to be fed;
And with impatient haste they seemed to run
To drink the demon's blood in battle shed.
There fell, with darting flame and blinding flash
Lighting the farthest heavens, from on high
A thunderbolt whose agonising crash
Brought fear and shuddering from a cloudless sky.
There came a pelting rain of blazing coals
With blood and bones of dead men mingled in;
Smoke and weird flashes horrified their souls;
The sky was dusty grey like asses' skin.
The elephants stumbled and the horses fell,
The footmen jostled, leaving each his post,
The ground beneath them trembled at the swell
Of ocean, when an earthquake shook the host.
And dogs before them lifted muzzles foul
To see the sun that lit that awful day,
And pierced the ears of listeners with a howl
Dreadful yet pitiful, then slunk away.
Taraka's counsellors endeavour to persuade him to turn back, but he refuses; for timidity is not numbered among his faults. As he advances even worse portents appear, and finally warning voices from heaven call upon him to desist from his undertaking. The voices assure hi
m of Kumara's prowess and inevitable victory; they advise him to make his peace while there is yet time. But Taraka's only answer is a defiance.
"You mighty gods that flit about in heaven
And take my foeman's part, what would you say?
Have you forgot so soon the torture given
By shafts of mine that never miss their way?
Why should I fear before a six-days child?
Why should you prowl in heaven and gibber shrill,
Like dogs that in an autumn night run wild,
Like deer that sneak through forests, trembling still?
The boy whom you have chosen as your chief
In vain upon his hermit-sire shall cry;
The upright die, if taken with a thief:
First you shall perish, then he too shall die."
And as Taraka emphasises his meaning by brandishing his great sword, the warning spirits flee, their knees knocking together. Taraka laughs horribly, then mounts his chariot, and advances against the army of the gods. On the other side the gods advance, and the two armies clash.
Sixteenth canto. The battle between gods and demons .—This canto is entirely taken up with the struggle between the two armies. A few stanzas are given here.
As pairs of champions stood forth
To test each other's fighting worth,
The bards who knew the family fame
Proclaimed aloud each mighty name.
As ruthless weapons cut their way
Through quilted armour in the fray,
White tufts of cotton flew on high
Like hoary hairs upon the sky.
Blood-dripping swords reflected bright
The sunbeams in that awful fight;
Fire-darting like the lightning-flash,
They showed how mighty heroes clash.
The archers' arrows flew so fast,
As through a hostile breast they passed,
That they were buried in the ground,
No stain of blood upon them found.
The swords that sheaths no longer clasped,
That hands of heroes firmly grasped,
Flashed out in glory through the fight,
As if they laughed in mad delight.
And many a warrior's eager lance
Shone radiant in the eerie dance,
A curling, lapping tongue of death
To lick away the soldier's breath.
Some, panting with a bloody thirst,
Fought toward the victim chosen first,
But had a reeking path to hew
Before they had him full in view.
Great elephants, their drivers gone
And pierced with arrows, struggled on,
But sank at every step in mud
Made liquid by the streams of blood.
The warriors falling in the fray,
Whose heads the sword had lopped away,
Were able still to fetch a blow
That slew the loud-exulting foe.
The footmen thrown to Paradise
By elephants of monstrous size,
Were seized upon by nymphs above,
Exchanging battle-scenes for love.
The lancer, charging at his foe,
Would pierce him through and bring him low,
And would not heed the hostile dart
That found a lodgment in his heart.
The war-horse, though unguided, stopped
The moment that his rider dropped,
And wept above the lifeless head,
Still faithful to his master dead.
Two lancers fell with mortal wound
And still they struggled on the ground;
With bristling hair, with brandished knife,
Each strove to end the other's life.
Two slew each other in the fight;
To Paradise they took their flight;
There with a nymph they fell in love,
And still they fought in heaven above.
Two souls there were that reached the sky;
From heights of heaven they could spy
Two writhing corpses on the plain,
And knew their headless forms again.
As the struggle comes to no decisive issue, Taraka seeks out the chief gods, and charges upon them.
Seventeenth canto. Taraka is slain .—Taraka engages the principal gods and defeats them with magic weapons. When they are relieved by Kumara, the demon turns to the youthful god of war, and advises him to retire from the battle.
Stripling, you are the only son
Of Shiva and of Parvati.
Go safe and live! Why should you run
On certain death? Why fight with me?
Withdraw! Let sire and mother blest
Clasp living son to joyful breast.
Flee, son of Shiva, flee the host
Of Indra drowning in the sea
That soon shall close upon his boast
In choking waves of misery.
For Indra is a ship of stone;
Withdraw, and let him sink alone.
Kumara answers with modest firmness.
The words you utter in your pride,
O demon-prince, are only fit;
Yet I am minded to abide
The fight, and see the end of it.
The tight-strung bow and brandished sword
Decide, and not the spoken word.
And with this the duel begins. When Taraka finds his arrows parried by Kumara, he employs the magic weapon of the god of wind. When this too is parried, he uses the magic weapon of the god of fire, which Kumara neutralises with the weapon of the god of water. As they fight on, Kumara finds an opening, and slays Taraka with his lance, to the unbounded delight of the universe.
Here the poem ends, in the form in which it has come down to us. It has been sometimes thought that we have less than Kalidasa wrote, partly because of a vague tradition that there were once twenty-three cantos, partly because the customary prayer is lacking at the end. These arguments are not very cogent. Though the concluding prayer is not given in form, yet the stanzas which describe the joy of the universe fairly fill its place. And one does not see with what matter further cantos would be concerned. The action promised in the earlier part is completed in the seventeenth canto.
It has been somewhat more formidably argued that the concluding cantos are spurious, that Kalidasa wrote only the first seven or perhaps the first eight cantos. Yet, after all, what do these arguments amount to? Hardly more than this, that the first eight cantos are better poetry than the last nine. As if a poet were always at his best, even when writing on a kind of subject not calculated to call out his best. Fighting is not Kalidasa's forte ; love is. Even so, there is great vigour in the journey of Taraka, the battle, and the duel. It may not be the highest kind of poetry, but it is wonderfully vigorous poetry of its kind. And if we reject the last nine cantos, we fall into a very much greater difficulty. The poem would be glaringly incomplete, its early promise obviously disregarded. We should have a Birth of the War-god in which the poet stopped before the war-god was born.
There seems then no good reason to doubt that we have the epic substantially as Kalidasa wrote it. Plainly, it has a unity which is lacking in Kalidasa's other epic, The Dynasty of Raghu , though in this epic, too, the interest shifts. Parvati's love-affair is the matter of the first half, Kumara's fight with the demon the matter of the second half. Further, it must be admitted that the interest runs a little thin. Even in India, where the world of gods runs insensibly into the world of men, human beings take more interest in the adventures of men than of gods. The gods, indeed, can hardly have adventures; they must be victorious. The Birth of the War-god pays for its greater unity by a poverty of adventure.
It would be interesting if we could know whether this epic was written before or after The Dynasty of Raghu . But we have no data for deciding the question, hardly any for even arguing it. The introduction to The Dynasty of Raghu seems, indeed, to have been written by a
poet who yet had his spurs to win. But this is all.
As to the comparative excellence of the two epics, opinions differ. My own preference is for The Dynasty of Raghu , yet there are passages in The Birth of the War-god of a piercing beauty which the world can never let die.
THE CLOUD-MESSENGER
In The Cloud-Messenger Kalidasa created a new genre in Sanskrit literature. Hindu critics class the poem with The Dynasty of Raghu and The Birth of the War-god as a kavya , or learned epic. This it obviously is not. It is fair enough to call it an elegiac poem, though a precisian might object to the term.
We have already seen, in speaking of The Dynasty of Raghu , what admiration Kalidasa felt for his great predecessor Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana ; and it is quite possible that an episode of the early epic suggested to him the idea which he has exquisitely treated in The Cloud-Messenger . In the Ramayana , after the defeat and death of Ravana, Rama returns with his wife and certain heroes of the struggle from Ceylon to his home in Northern India. The journey, made in an aërial car, gives the author an opportunity to describe the country over which the car must pass in travelling from one end of India to the other. The hint thus given him was taken by Kalidasa; a whole canto of The Dynasty of Raghu (the thirteenth) is concerned with the aërial journey. Now if, as seems not improbable, The Dynasty of Raghu was the earliest of Kalidasa's more ambitious works, it is perhaps legitimate to imagine him, as he wrote this canto, suddenly inspired with the plan of The Cloud-Messenger .
