The Recognition of Sakuntala (Oxford World's Classics)

by Kalidasa

  24 See e.g. Goodwin, The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama, p. x.

  25 Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory,27.

  26 By ‘worldly existence’ one should understand not just the present life, but the potentially endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, conditioned by one’s actions (karma).

  27 As the Bhagavad Gita (3. 35) puts it: ‘It is better to practise your own inherent duty deficiently than another’s duty well. It is better to die conforming to your own duty; the duty of others invites danger’: W. J. Johnson (trans.), The Bhagavad Gita, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  28 Those of brahmin (priest), ruler or warrior, and artisan or merchant. Beneath these groups in the social hierarchy is the servant class, and lower still, although technically outside the system altogether, the ‘untouchables’.

  29 Dharma here having the general sense of a social and cosmic order, barely distinguishable from the king’s duty to uphold it.

  30 Such powers are generated through forms of austerity known as tapas (literally ‘heat’). In the epics and mythological texts most ascetics seem more concerned with generating these kinds of powers than achieving liberation from rebirth (mokṣa).

  31 As Goodwin points out, this suspicion of kāma reflects the influence of asceticism and ascetic values on dharma, resulting in a general ‘cultural ideology of self-restraint’ ( The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama, p. ix); hence the tension between ascetic influenced dharma and kāma, which have to coexist as legitimate worldly ends. Kāma and mokṣa are, of course, antithetical and exclusive: they belong to different stages of life and so do not come into direct conflict.

  32 Edwin Gerow, ‘Sanskrit Dramatic Theory and Kālidāsa’s Plays’, in Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory,59.

  33 See Goodwin, who points out that, according to rasa poetics, kāvya is a medium naturally aligned wiith kāma, so questions of duty, for instance, become questions of feeling about duty—a feeling whose goal is ultimately aesthetic pleasure (The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama, p. xv). The closeness of this aesthetic goal to the religious goal of mokṣa (liberation), and its capacity to rival the latter, is confirmed, perhaps, by the convergence of the two within a single system in the works of the great Kashmiri Śaivite, Abhinavagupta (fl. 1000 CE). On Abhinavagupta, see Gnoli, The Aesthetic Experience According to Abhinavagupta; Goodwin, The Playworld, of Sanskrit Drama, ch. 1; and esp. Alexis Sanderson, ‘Purity and Power Among the Brahmans of Kashmir’, in M. Carrithers et al. (eds.), The Category of the Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 190–216, and ‘Trika Śaivism’, in M. Eliade (ed.-in-chief), The Encyclopedia of Religions, vol. 13 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 15–16. On the king as ideal rasika, see the section on ‘Verse, Prose, and the Nature of the Play’, below.

  34 The ‘cognoscenti’ referred to by the Actor-Manager in the Prologue (1.2). On such a ‘man of taste’, see below.

  35 Nīṭyaśāstra,36. 80–1.

  36 One meaning of the word ‘Sanskrit’ is ‘classified’ or ‘assembled’.

  37 i.e. learned as a first language, or ‘mother tongue’.

  38 See section on ‘Staging and Stage Conventions’, below.

  39 There are some exceptions, notably the comic brahmin who is the king’s companion, the Vidūṣaka; in spite of his high-caste status he speaks a type of Prakrit, partly for comic effect and partly to illustrate his dubious character. Women of sufficient education (ascetics and courtesans) are occasionally permitted to speak Sanskrit. Priyaṃvadā (4.4) quotes a Sanskrit verse to her friend Anasūyā, who understands it perfectly well.

  40 Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory,26.

  41 The comparison with Shakespeare as, on the one hand, refined and courtly poet and, on the other, popular playwright is irresistible, although Shakespeare, of course, was only working in different idioms, not different dialects.

  42 Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory, 25.

  43 i.e. the one followed here. See ‘Note on the Text and the Translation’, below.

  44 Twenty-one different Sanskrit metres in all, plus one verse in a semi-Vedic metre in the Devanāgarī recension. For detailed descriptions of these, see M. R. Kale (ed. and trans.), The Abhijñānaśākuntalam of Kālidāsa with Commentary of Rāghavabhaṭṭa (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, repr. of 10th edn. 1994), 190–3 (of the Notes); cf. R. Pischel (ed.), Kalidasa’s Śakuntala: An Ancient Hindu Drama (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 16, 2nd edn. 1922), 256–60, on metres in the Bengali recension. Both Sanskrit and Prakrit metres are based on prescribed patterns of heavy and light syllables. Prakrit verse, on the whole, has a more lyrical and direct effect, eschewing the metaphor and elaborated imagery of Sanskrit. When used alliteratively and with rhyme, Prakrit verse is the natural medium for song. (For more information see Miller, Theater of Memory,24 f.) The present translation, for reasons explained below, makes no attempt to reproduce anything but the variety of these metres in English.

  45 My argument in this section draws, builds on, and deviates from the argument in the Introduction to Goodwin’s The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama.

  46 J. A. B. van Buitenen’s translation of sahrṣdaya in Two Plays of Ancient India (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1968), 22.

  47 Noted by Goodwin, The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama, p. xx, n. 12.

  48 See Jonathan Bate, The Genius Of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997), ch. 5, on Shakespeare’s ‘peculiarity’—what he does to his sources.

  49 See e.g. 5. 2.

  50 Much of the following information is taken from Keith, The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory and Practice; David Gitomer, ‘The Theater in Kālidāsa’s Art’, in Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory; and Farley Richmond, ‘Suggestions for Directors of Sanskrit Plays’, in Rachel van M. Baumer and James R. Brandon (eds.), Sanskrit Drama in Performance (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1981), 74–109. Along with the Nīṭyaśāstra itself, these provide valuable information about the conventions of Sanskrit theatre.

  51 The Eight Natural States (sāttvika bhāvas) are paralysis, horripilation, trembling, tears, sweat, faltering voice, loss of colour, and swoon

  52 Goodwin, The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama,183, n. 8.

  53Nīṭyaśāstra,2.18–21.

  54 Miller, Theater of Memory,18–19.

  55 Gitomer, ‘The Theater in Kālidāsa’s Art’, 67.

  56 There are also various types of asides, themselves accompanied by gestures, to indicate that a character is talking to him- or herself, whispering to someone else, or speaking secretly.

  57 Gitomer, ‘The Theater in Kālidāsa’s Art’, 74.

  58 The text of the Mahābhārata as we now have it was probably edited and re-edited over a period of about 900 years between c.500 BCE and 400 CE.

  59 Those readers who are not familiar with the Mahābhārata, and would like to know more about the core narrative, might begin by reading my introduction to The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahābhārata: The Massacre at Night, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  60 I have attempted to reproduce this narrative drive by means of a fairly free translation. In its Sanskrit form the Śakuntalā episode from the Mahābhārata, like nearly all the rest of the epic, is in unrhymed verse. Most individual verses have thirty-two syllables each, a metre known as śloka or anuṣṭubh. Rhythm is provided by the variation of light and heavy syllables, although their pattern is not fixed throughout the whole line. Two passages (1.65.39–42 and 1.68. 27–9) are in another metre, known as triṣṭubh, which has forty-four syllables to the verse.

  61 For a summary, see the section on ‘Kālidāsa’s Play: Plot and Structure’, above.

  62 But, as Kale has pointed out (The Abhijñānaśākuntalam of Kālidāsa,63), rings are common enough tokens in folk-tales, as well as in life. So, one might add, are embarrassing pregnancies for the ruling classes. Apart from the ring, the whole episode looks closer to the Mahābhārata than to Kāl
idāsa’s play. Perhaps a ring was involved in another version of the Mahābhārata story, familiar to Kālidāsa but now lost to us.

  63 E.B. Cowell, (ed.) and R. Chalmers (trans.), ‘Kaṭṭhahāri-Jātaka’, in The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births (repr. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1990), 27–9.

  64 Reproduced in Sanskrit in Kale, The Abhijñānaśākuntalam of Kālidāsa,102–9.

  1 My translation is based on the tenth edition of M. R. Kale’s text of the Devanāgarī recension, The Abhijñānaśākuntalam of Kālidāsa (conveniently still in print—although prone to misprints—and available to students in India and the West), a text established by the earliest known author of a complete commentary on the play, Rāghavabhaṭṭa (in the late fifteenth century). (Kale’s edition includes Rāghavabhaṭṭa’s commentary in Sanskrit.) I compared this throughout with Pischel’s edition of the Bengali recension (Kalidasa ‘s Śakuntalā: An Ancient Hindu Drama), but resisted the temptation to produce a composite version. Since my translation is not rigidly literal there seemed little point in discussing variant readings in the notes for the bafflement of readers who have no Sanskrit, especially since such variants involve, for the most part, questions of nuance rather than radical differences of meaning. My own understanding of the text was helped immeasurably both by Kale’s notes and by Miller’s translation of the Devanāgarī version in Theater of Memory.

  2 For contrasting views, see, e.g. Chandra Rajan, Kālidāsa: The Loom of Time,13–16; and Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory,333–5; cf. Dileep Kumar Kanjilal (ed.), A Reconstruction of the Abhijñānaśākuntalam (Calcutta: Calcutta Sanskrit College, 1980).

  3 See Miller (ed.), Theater of Memory, 334–5.

  4 Those who do want more are referred to the translations by Coulson and Rajan listed in the Select Bibliography.

  5 Peter Brook, There Are No Secrets (Methuen: Methuen Drama, 1993), 52–3.