Early Cultural Writings

Vikramorvasie: The Play

Vikram and the Nymph is the second, in order of time, of Kalidasa's three extant dramas. The steady development of the poet's genius is easy to read even for a superficial observer. Malavica and the King is a gracious and delicate trifle, full of the sweet & dainty characterisation which Kalidasa loves, almost too curiously admirable in the perfection of its structure and dramatic art but with only a few touches of that nobility of manner which raises his tender & sensuous poetry and makes it divine. In the Urvasie he is preening his wings for a mightier flight; the dramatic art is not so flawless, but the characters are far deeper and nobler, the poetry stronger and more original and the admirable lyrical sweetness of the first and fourth acts as well as the exaltation of love and the passion of beauty which throb through the whole play, lift it into a far rarer creative atmosphere. It is a worthy predecessor of the Shacountala, that loveliest, most nobly tender and most faultless of all romantic plays. Other indications of this development may be observed. The conventional elements of an Indian romantic comedy, the humours of the Brahmin buffoon and the jealousy of the established wife for the new innamorata occupy the whole picture in the Malavica, though they are touched with exquisite skill and transfigured into elements of a gracious and smiling beauty. In the Urvasie the space given to them is far more limited and their connection with the main action less vital; and they are less skilfully handled: finally in the Shacountala we have only vestiges of them,—a perfunctory recognition of their claims to be admitted rather than a willing use of them as good dramatic material. The prologues of the three plays point to a similar conclusion. In producing the Malavica Kalidasa comes forward as a new and unrecognized poet challenging the fame of the great dramatic classics and apprehensive of severe criticism for

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his audacity, which he anticipates by a defiant challenge. When the Urvasie is first represented, his position as a dramatist is more assured; only the slightest apology is given for displacing the classics in favour of a new play and the indulgence of the audience is requested not for the poet but for the actors. The prologue of the Shacountala on the other hand breathes of the dignified and confident silence of the acknowledged Master. No apology is needed; none is volunteered.

The prologue of this play contains an apparent allusion to the great Vikramaditya, Kalidasa's patron, and tradition seems to hint, if it does not assert, connection of a kind between the plot of the drama and, perhaps, some episode in the King's life. At any rate the name of the drama is an obvious compliment to that great ruler & conqueror and one or two double entendres in the play which I have not thought it worth while to transfer into English, are, it is clear, strokes [of] delicate flattery pointed to the same quarter. The majority of European scholars identify this Vikrama with Harsha of Ujjaini, the Grand Monarque of classical India; indigenous scholarship mostly dissents from this view, and an imaginative mind may well prefer to associate our greatest classical poet with the earlier and more heroic, if also more shadowy, Vikram, who united the Malavas and founded the power of that great nation, the most gifted and artistic of the earlier Hindu peoples. There are no sufficient data to fix Kalidasa's epoch; he was certainly not later than the 6ṭḥ century after Christ, certainly not earlier than the 1ṣṭ century before; but a chronological margin of seven hundred years is too wide to encourage dogmatism.

The legend which forms the subject of the plot is one of the older Indian myths; it may have been a sun myth dear to the heart of the late Prof. Max Muller,—or it may have meant something very different. The literary critic is only concerned with the changes and developments it has undergone in the hands of Kalidasa; that these are all in the direction of emotional sweetness and artistic beauty, may easily be seen by comparing with the drama a translation of the original story as it appears in the [Shatapatha Brahmana.]

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