by Kalidasa
He doubts the elephant exists—
Until there’s no elephant, only prints,
And then he’s suddenly convinced.
Such was the miasma that poisoned my mind.
MĀRĪCA. My son, you mustn’t blame yourself. Even your delusion had due cause. Listen to me …
KING. I am all attention.
MĀRĪCA. When Menakā came to Aditi, transporting her daughter from the nymphs’ ford in such obvious distress, I saw, in meditation, that you had rejected your forest wife because of a curse, spoken by Durvāsas. I saw too that the curse would lift when you caught sight of this ring.
KING [sighing with relief. So—I am not to blame.
ŚAKUNTALĀ [to herself]. It’s good to know my husband didn’t reject me for no reason at all. And yet I don’t remember being cursed. Or perhaps it fell unnoticed through the emptiness of separation that engulfed me then. My friends did urge me to show the ring to my husband.
MĀRĪCA. Daughter, now you know the truth. Feel no resentment towards your lord:
When his memory was cursed, (32)
Your husband was cruel to you,
But that darkness has lifted
And your power’s renewed;
The mirror was tarnished,
The image obscure,
But with polishing
It all becomes clear.
KING. Just as Your Holiness says.
MĀRĪCA. My son, I hope you have greeted your little boy, born of Śakuntalā, with due delight. We have initiated him with all the proper rites.
KING. Holiness, the greater glory of my line rests in him.
MĀRĪCA. It does, and you should know, my lord, that he will be a universal emperor,
Gliding on a chariot cushioned by air (33)
Across the ocean’s rough waters—a warrior
Who will rule the earth’s seven continents
Without resistance. Here, he’s Sarvadamana,
All-Tamer; later, when he bears the world,
The world will call him Bharata, Sustainer.*
KING. Since you performed his birth rights, lord, we can expect nothing less.
ADITI. Sir, Kaṇva should be told that his daughter’s hopes have been fulfilled. Menakā, who loves her daughter so, keeps attendance on us here.
ŚAKUNTALĀ [to herself]. Her ladyship’s speech and my desire are one.
MĀRĪCA. Through the power of his practice, he knows everything already.
KING. That must be why the sage never turned his anger on me.
MĀRĪCA. Nevertheless, we should tell him of this happy event. Who’s there!
PUPIL [entering]. I am here, sir.
MĀRĪCA. Gālava, go now by the sky route and tell Kaṇva this happy news from me: Śakuntalā and her son have been recognized by Duṣyanta, now the curse has been broken and his memory restored.
PUPIL. As my lord commands.
[He exits
MĀRĪCA. My son, now you must mount your friend Indra’s chariot and return to your capital with your wife and boy.
KING. As His Holiness commands.
MĀRTCA.
May your great sacrifices please (34)
The great god Indra,
And may he please your subjects with rain.
And so let time and seasons pass
In mutual service,
A benefit to both our realms.
KING. Holiness, I shall strive for this with all my power.
MĀRĪCA. My son, what further joy may I bestow?
KING. What greater joys than these? But if Your Holiness wishes to bestow something else, let it be this:
May the king work for the good of nature, (35)
May we honour those versed in revelation,
And may the universal power
Of self-existent Śiva,
Free me from rebirth and death
Forever.*
[All exit
ŚAKUNTALĀ IN THE MAHĀBHĀRATA
(Mahābhārata, 1.62–9)
NOTE: Marginal numbers refer to the verse numbers of the Sanskrit text.
Duṣyanta was a Paurava forefather,* 1.62.3
A hunter through the wide world
To its hidden places,
A lord of lords, whose joy
Was the open earth—its quarters,
Countries, oceanic islands.
To barbarous shores and tribal forests,
To every cliff drubbed by the pearl-gloved sea,
To the Āryan limit*
This king held sway. 5
It was a golden time—
No need to mine, or plough the earth,
No marriage not a proper match,
No evil done or thought.
The people were devotees
Of their own duty
While King Duṣyanta reigned,
Wealth and religion their only aim,
Theft a fiction,
Disease a mirage,
Starvation an improbable dream.
Each to his duty
And each to selfless worship
In this king’s care.
No fear at all—rain rained
As it must, crops grew
As they should,
Stones were gems,
Wealth a flood. 10
And the king himself?
A miracle of youth and adamantine strength:
He could have plucked up Mount Mandara,*
Trees, forests, jungles—the lot,
And carried it off like a paper cone.
Pick your weapon—bow, club, or sword,
He was its master on elephant or horseback.
Strong as God, blinding as the sun,
Unruffled as the ocean deep,
Solid as the compacted earth—
Yes, he was well thought of.
From border to border,
From hovel to palace,
The kingdom was peaceful
And the people of one good mind.
Then, in this golden season, 1.63.1
The king rode out with his entourage:
Hundreds of horse and elephant teams,
Swords, lances, javelins,
Clubs, maces, and spears—
Name a weapon, there it was,
Where the clamour of warriors, rank and file,
The braying conches, drums,
The churning chariot wheels,
The trumpeting elephants, whinnying horses,
And the growling, shoulder-slapping men
Filled the street from wall to wall.
But riding above that dust and noise,
High on their balconies,
The palace women craned to glimpse
Their regal hero,
Aureoled in his own fame. 5
To them he was Indra,* an enemy-killer,
A god like a wall to hostile elephants.
‘He’s a tiger in a man’s body,’ they cried,
‘Ripping up battlefields,
Burying the foe!’
They loved him, those women, sang his praises,
Dropped blossoms round his head
Like showers of summer rain.
(Brahmins praised him too.)
Rippling with joy,
He made for the forest, the chase.
For miles they trailed him, townsman and villager—
Until, with a gesture, he turned them back. 10
He was lord of the earth,
But it was the sky
That cracked with the sound of his chariot
Like Garuḍa in flight.*
Weaving and swaying he spotted at once
A wooded tract, a paradise,
With fertile groves,
And rolling hills and boulder-punctuated plains,
Terra firma, terra incognita,
Not a human sight or sound.
But that forest was alive—teeming
With deer, their predators, and other game,
And Duṣyanta, a predator himself,
&n
bsp; Was even-handed when it came to slaughter—
Tiger families were shredded, 15
Slashed, shafted, pierced.
Antelopes?—Spear-fodder,
Club-corpses.
Nothing threw or stretched his courage,
Whatever he tried from his armoury—
Javelin, sword, mace, bludgeon, halberd—
The result was the same: dead fowl, dead game.
Bigger beasts saw him coming,
A king riding the wave of his troops.
All too late for the culled, leaderless deer, 20
Who bleated in vain: for they were exhausted,
The rivers were dust,
Their hearts strained to breaking.
Empty and dry, some crumpled unconscious,
And men of the woods, half-beast themselves,
Consumed them raw where they lay.
Others were spitted to roast,
Cut up and consumed in a civilized way.
Sword-gashed, great elephants ran beserk,
Trunks curled the air, stampeding and frantic,
Shitting and pissing, 25
Streaming with blood,
Trampling hunters like snails—
Wild, deranged, in a forest
Drenched by a cloudburst of violence,
A storm of power and iron, a royal cull,
Boiling,
Overflowing with buffalo.
Ten thousand dead deer 1.64.1
Were not enough for king and entourage;
They pushed into the wood
In search of better, fitter game.
As famished and as thirsty,
Yet stronger than the rest,
Duṣyanta pressed deeper still,
Coming at last to a secret place
Of scattered shacks and hovels,
A holy corner of the forest world,
That sprung his hunter’s heart and soothed his eye.
But even there he would not pause,
Making instead for another wood,
Where a cool breeze
Rippled through blossoming boughs
And smoothed the matted grass—
A cavern of light and air,
Echoing with trills and runs,
Where the quick shadows of birds in flight
Merged with the deeper shadows 5
Of foliate trees,
Creeper-covered
And surging with bees,
Under the rule and sway
Of beauty.
It was a forest singing to itself,
To its blossoms and thornless fruit,
A performance paid in perpetual blooms,
Garlanding the velvet moss,
And not a tree unblackened by bees.
Stirred by a gentle wind,
Petals like spiralling snow
Descended onto the king.
Trees in their patchwork robes,
Touching the skies,
Stood in welcoming line,
While under their bud-bent boughs 10
A rug of sound was spread
By bees and birds.
Gazing on vistas of flowers,
On creepers pavilioned in creepers,
The king’s delight mounted to joy.
It could have been the festival
Of spring: trunk joined to trunk
In a tracery of their own
Blossoming branches, pollen
Pollinating a breeze
That swept through the trees,
Taking each as its lover—
A wood wrapped in its rivers,
A forest of banners
Crowding the sky.
Birds flew up, 15
And following their flight,
Through a haze of woodsmoke,
Duṣyanta saw a model hermitage,
Peopled by anchorites,
Ascetics, and other religious types—
The forest floor pitted with their fires.
It was on the flowering banks
Of the holy Mālinī,
Bridging its inlets,
Somewhere between heaven and earth,
A shimmering sanctuary
For wildfowl, deer, and beasts of prey—
A sight that filled the king with joy.
Approaching this earthly paradise,
He saw how, like a mother 20
To all living things, the holy river’s
Veins fed the whole hermitage:
Sheldrake sheltered on her banks,
In her current, blossom and foam
Mixed as one; centaurs, monkeys, bears
Flourished in her fertile care;
Across her ripples came the drone
Of Vedic chant,* taming
Tigers, rutting elephants, great snakes.
What king could resist these woodland depths,
This shimmering river and its graceful banks?
It might have been Nara and Nārāyana’s*
Retreat on the shores of the Gangā,
Echoing with the peacock’s shriek,
And the hermitage itself 25
Citraratha’s field.*
At the threshold, he thought, ‘I’ll visit Kaṇva,
That peerless seer and great ascetic,
That paragon whose brilliance blinds description’,
And said aloud:
‘I shall call on Kaṇva Kāśyapa, dispassionate sage,
Wealthy with penance. Wait for me here!’
His charioteers and bodyguards withdrew.
He might have been in Indra’s heaven:*
He felt no hunger there, or thirst,
But ate and drank the woodland’s joy.
With ministers and a palace priest,
He went on foot to greet the sage
Who’d built that everlasting penance park,
Retreat of all retreats,
Mirror to the world of Brahmā,* 30
A-hum with bees and milling birds.
Then in the wind he heard
The drone of priests reciting hymns,
Veda-trained brahmins with their slow-building rituals—
Word by word, verse by verse—
Specialists in truth and revelation,
Pacing their sacrificial enclosures …*
And now, wherever he looked,
Self-restrained brahmins,
Mutterers of mantras, offerers of offerings,
Were keeping their vows.
And out of nowhere,
A clearing, full of bright seating,
Cushioned with flowers.
What with this, and so many priests 40
Making devotions at heavenly altars,
He supposed himself lost
In the world of Brahmā.
But who could tire of that hermitage
Kaṇva’s penance protected,
Hallowed by brahmins?
And so this king,
With his ministers and priest,
Set foot in Kaṇva’s kingdom of seers,
Crowded yet solitary,
Fertile with penance,
Disarming and holy.
But now it was time to dismiss his companions 1.65.1
And go on alone …
The hermitage was deserted,
Or so it seemed
(But then the seer followed a strict regime).
In the surrounding enclosure, nothing moved.
The king called out:
‘Is anyone here?’
His voice rippling like thunder
Through the sultry air.
A girl appeared,
Śrī herself,* it seemed, in hermitage rags …
Dark eyes.
‘Welcome’, she said without hesitation,
Honoured him, showed him a seat; 5
As a guest-gift, brought him water to wash with,
Enquired of his health;
And at the end of the usual exchanges,
Smiled shyly:
‘Now what
can I do for you?’
Pleased with the welcome,
Aware of her body—
Its seeming perfection—
The king replied to that short, sweet speech:
‘Where’s His Holiness, the great seer KAṆVA?
He’s the one I’ve come to worship.
Tell me, if you can, you beautiful creature.’
‘My reverend father,’ Śakuntalā said,
‘Has gone to gather fruit outside the enclosure.
Wait here a while, and you’ll see him come back.’
But the king had no interest left in the seer, 10
He had seen the girl…
Her rounded hips, her shining body—
Impossibly beautiful—
Her innocent smile,
Radiant from penance, from self-restraint.
So now he asked her,
So shapely and youthful:
‘Who are you? Whose are you?
Why, slender child, have you come to this wood,
When you were born with such beauty?
Where do you come from, you radiant creature?
A single glance and my heart’s a prisoner:
One thing only I want to know—
Everything about you.’
Questioned like this by a king in a hermitage,
She laughed and spoke sweetly:
‘Duṣyanta, I’m the daughter 15
Of the reverend KAṆVA,
Yes—that famous ascetic,
Who knows the Law.’*
‘That can’t be true …
This great and holy man,
Whom the whole world worships,
Has always practised semen retention.*
Law itself might stray from the path,
But not this saint from an avowed intention.
You’re beautiful, my dear,
But how can you be his daughter?
No, I can’t believe it. And yet…
You could try to convince me.’
‘Listen, king, and I’ll tell you my story
From the very beginning. Then you’ll believe
I’m the sage’s daughter.
‘A seer came here once, like you,
Asking awkward questions about my birth.
I’ll repeat, word for word, what KAṆVA told him:
You ‘ve heard, I suppose, of Viśvāmitra, 20
The legendary sage, who performed such penance
He seriously mortified Indra himself,
