In _Sakuntala_, Kalidasa resorts to the third of the expedients I have
mentioned. The king weds the girl whom he finds in the grove of the
saints in accordance with a form which was not regarded as
respectable--marriage based on mutual inclination, without the
knowledge of the parents. The laws of Mann (III., 20-134) recognized
eight kinds of marriage:
(1) gift of a daughter to a man learned in the Vedas,
(2) gift of a daughter to a priest; (3) gift of a
daughter in return for presents of cows, etc.; (4) gift
of a daughter, with a dress. In these four the father
gives away his daughter as he chooses. In (5) the groom
buys the girl with presents to her kinsmen or herself;
(6) is voluntary union; (7) forcible abduction (in
war); (8) rape of a girl asleep, or drunk, or imbecile.
In other words, of the eight kinds of marriage recognized by Hindoo
law and custom only one is based on free choice, and of that Mann
says: "The voluntary connection of a maiden and a man is to be known
as a Gandharva union, which arises from lust." It is classed among the
blamable marriages. Even this appears not to have been a legal form
before Mann. It is blamable because contracted without the consent or
knowledge of the parents, and because, unless the sacred fire has been
obtained from a Brahman to sanctify it, such a marriage is merely a
temporary union. Gandharvas, after whom it is named, are singers and
other musicians in Indra's heaven, who, like the apsaras, enter into
unions that are not intended to be enduring, but are dissoluble at
will. Such marriages (liaisons we call them) are frequently mentioned
in Hindoo literature (_e.g., Hitopadesa_, p. 85). Malati (30) chides
her friend for advising her to make a secret marriage, and later on
exclaims (75): "I am lost! What a girl must not do, my friend counsels
me." The orthodox view is unfolded by the Buddhist nun Kamándaki(33):
"We hear of Duschyanta loving Sakuntala, of Pururavas loving Urvasi
... but these cases look like arbitrary action and cannot be commended
as models." In _Sakuntala_, too, the king feels it incumbent on him to
apologize to the girl he covets, when she bids him not to transgress
the laws of propriety, by exclaiming that many other girls have thus
been taken by kings without incurring parental disapproval. The
directions for this form of courtship given in the _Kama Soutra_
indicate that Sakuntala had every reason to appeal to the rules of
propriety, social and moral. Kalidasa spares us the details.
The king's desertion of Sakuntala after he had obtained his
self-indulgent object was quite in accordance with the spirit of a
Gandharva marriage. Kalidasa, for dramatic purposes, makes it a result
of a saint's curse, which enables him to continue his story
interestingly. A poet has a right to such license, even though it
takes him out of the realm of realism. Hindoo poets, like others, know
how to rise above sordid reality into a more ideal sphere, and for
this reason, even if we had found in the dramas of India a portrayal
of true love, it would not prove that it existed outside of a poet's
glowing and prophetic fancy. There is a Hindoo saying, "Do not strike
a woman, even with a flower;" but we have seen that these Hindoos
often do physically abuse their wives most cruelly, besides subjecting
them to indescribable mental anguish, and mental anguish is much more
painful and more prolonged than bodily torture. Fine words do not make
fine feelings. From this point of view Dalton was perhaps right when
he asserted that the wild tribes of India come closer to us in their
love-affairs than the more cultured Hindoos, with their "unromantic
heart-schooling." We have seen that Albrecht Weber's high estimate of
the Hindoo's romantic sentiment does not bear the test of a close
psychological analysis.
The Hindoo may have fewer uncultivated traits of emotion than the wild
tribesmen, but they are in the same field. Hindoo civilization rose to
splendid heights, in some respects, and even the great moral principle
of altruism was cultivated; but it was not applied to the relations
between the sexes, and thus we see once more that the refinement of
the affections--especially the sexual affections--comes last in the
evolution of civilization. Masculine selfishness and sensuality have
prevented the Hindoo from entering the Elysian fields of romantic
love. He has always allowed, and still allows, the minds of women to
lie fallow, being contented with their bodily charms, and unaware that
the most delightful of all sexual differences are those of mind and
character. To quote once more the Abbé Dubois (I., 271), the most
minute and philosophic observer of Indian manners and morals:
"The Hindoos are nurtured in the belief that there can
be nothing disinterested or innocent in the intercourse
between a man and a woman; and however Platonic the
attachment might be between two persons of different
sex, it would be infallibly set down to sensual love."