II

When Vikramaditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and Kalidasa

its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had

taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The

Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the

Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and

prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the

hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of

India; what was the one current of memory that continually flowed

through her life.

In Kalidasa's drama, _Shakuntala_, the hermitage, which dominates the

play, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea running

through it--the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and

unconscious creation alike.

A poet of a later age, while describing a hermitage in his Kadambari,

tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they

bow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering

their blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by

the neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by constantly

hearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying "vaishva-deva-bali-pinda"

(the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures); of the

ducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seed

spread in the cottage yards to dry; and of the deer caressing with

their tongues the young hermit boys. It is again the same story. The

hermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the place

where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged.

In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the

vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is

almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bow

apologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retain

their fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatika_, _Shakuntala_, _Uttara-Ramacharita_,

Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great

function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions.

The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems is

exhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, from

the context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue sky

around it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever

which is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose which

encircles it in the universe.

_Ritusamhara_ is clearly a work of Kalidasa's immaturity. The youthful

love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in

_Shakuntala_ and _Kumara-Sambhava_. But the tune of these voluptuous

outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The

moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains,

acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the

Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and

the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it

with their murmur.

In the third canto of _Kumara-Sambhava_, Madana, the God Eros, enters

the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the

serenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak of

passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life.

The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in the

world-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have their

life-throbs.

Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kumara-Sambhava poem is

painted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding of

love, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the gods

wait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answers

the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "How

is the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who can

defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom?"

It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in Kalidasa's

time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu

kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans,

and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. What

answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its

message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the

soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation

from the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the God

Shiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centred

solitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. And

then Paradise was lost. But _Kumara-Sambhava_ is the poem of Paradise

Regained. How was it regained? When Sati, the Spirit of Reality,

through humiliation, suffering, and penance, won the Heart of Shiva,

the Spirit of Goodness. And thus, from the union of the freedom of the

real with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism that

released Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness.

Viewed from without, India, in the time of Kalidasa, appeared to have

reached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury,

literature and the arts. But from the poems of Kalidasa it is evident

that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the

ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the

forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the

gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was

slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat

beside all the glories of Vikramaditya's throne the poet's heart

yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual

striving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to

the annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrative

poem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal

that should guide the rulers of men.

King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshina, has entered upon the life of the

forest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage.

Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But it

ends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance of

self-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of

the kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the day

begins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours in

which he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a time

with the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by the

devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night.

In this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden that

message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. There

runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously

ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control,

of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, the

hungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzled

the eyes of all beholders.

Kalidasa in almost all his works represented the unbounded

impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene

strength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of

_Malavikagnimitra_ we find the same thing in a different manner. It

must never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate object

was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy

of lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the object

towards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama with

the prayer, "Sanmargalokayan vyapanayatu sa nastamasi vritimishah"

(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away our

passions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose nature

Parvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of

love. The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of

the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet opens

his drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it is

evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his

kingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the

treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In the

play the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, between

Agnimitra and Dharini, and the significance of the contrast lies

hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the name

Agnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the

destructive force of uncontrolled desire--just as did the name

Agnivarna in _Raghuvamsha_. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire," the

reckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, not

knowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a great

name is Dharini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes

from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite

dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above

all insult and baseness of betrayal!

In _Shakuntala_ this conflict of ideals has been shown, all through

the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's

court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens

with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The

cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of

the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat,

which is "sharanyam sarva-bhutanam" (where all creatures find their

protection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the

king to spare the life of the deer, helplessly innocent and beautiful,

is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama. "Never,

oh, never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer, even

as the fire is not for the burning of flowers."

In the _Ramayana_, Rama and his companions, in their banishment, had

to traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatched

huts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt their

kinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidst

these. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, would

have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the

hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of

Ramachandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the

_Ramayana_, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in a

fierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sita, the

daughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths.

We read:

"She asks Rama about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creepers

which she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers and

brings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and it

delights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with their

streams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck.

"When Rama first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, that

delightful Chitrakuta, by the Malyavati river, with its easy slopes

for landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital

at the sight of those woodlands, alive with beast and bird."

Having lived on that hill for long, Rama, who was "giri-vana-priya"

(lover of the mountain and the forest), said one day to Sita:

"When I look upon the beauties of this hill, the loss of my kingdom

troubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends cause

me any pang."

Thus passed Ramachandra's exile, now in woodland, now in hermitage.

The love which Rama and Sita bore to each other united them, not only

to each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sita was

taken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself.