Kalidasa : Many works are attributed to him; esp. the dramas Abhijñāna Śākuntalam, Vikramorvasīyam & Mālavikāgnimitram, & three epics Raghuvamsam, Kumara-sambhavam & Meghadutam. One more, Ritusamhāram, is considered by most as Kālidāsa’s. Tradition depicts him as one of Navaratnas (nine gems) adorning the court of King Vikramāditya at Ujjayini in 1st century BC. His patron Vikramāditya was the one who is associated with the Vikram Saṃvat or Era that dates from 58/57 BC. The consolidation of the Mālavas (q.v.) under Vikramāditya took place in 56 BC, & it was subsequent to this date that Kālidāsa came to Ujjayini. In opposition, Indian historians swearing by western historiography insist he lived between the reign of Agnimitra, the second Śuṅga king (c.170 BC), hero of one of his dramas & Aihole Inscription of AD 634, which lauds Kālidāsa – but this fits pretty well with the traditional dating as he could very well have made a past king his hero & the inscription may well be honouring his memory! [See S. Bhattacharya]
... Upanishads. I shall first consider the influence of Kalidasa. The translations from Kalidasa had taught Sri Aurobindo the manner of catching the mood of Sanskrit versification and transposing it in English verse. These translations are creative transformations of the spirit of Sanskrit metrical pattern. The metres that Kalidasa uses are varied. In epic poems ( mahākāvya ) Sanskrit poets... not contrary to dharma : dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu kamo 'smi In Kalidasa the physical body is of the foremost importance for the practice of religion and morality: 85 Ibid ., p. 226. 86 Kumārasaṃbhava , 5.38. 87 For the moral significance of one form of love, priti , in Kalidasa, see, Ranajit Sarkar, "Meghaduta: A study of the interplay of 'dark' and 'bright'... Sri Aurobindo gives of art applies perfectly to the descriptive art of Kalidasa. It is not, he writes, "an imitation or reproduction of outward Nature, but rather missioned to give by the aid of a transmuting faculty something more inwardly true than the external life and appearance." 95 The society in which Kalidasa lived was committed to beauty in all its expressions.The landscape with ...
... ______________ *Kalpika Mukherjee, "Kalidasa in Legends" in Kalidasa: Afresh, (Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1997), p. 4. **N. Gangadharan, "Kalidasa as a Sarvajna" in Kalidasa: Afresh, (Delhi; Nag Publishers, 1997), p. 50. Page 37 Parvati. Bronze, Tanjavur Works Seven works are attributed to Kalidasa. Out of them, three are plays: Malavikagnimitra... and Broadcasting, Govt of India, 1992. — Devadhar, C.R. Works of Kalidasa. Edited by with an exhaustive Introduction, Translation and Critical and Explanatory Notes (Two volumes). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986. — Jain, K.C. Kalidasa and his Times. Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1990. — Kalidasa. Kalidasa, The Loom of Time, Translated from Sanskrit Page 49 and... and Prakrit with an Introduction by Chandra Rajan. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1989. —Kalidasa. The Plays of Kalidasa, Theater of Memory, Edited by Barbara Stoler Miller. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1999. — Krishnamoorthy, K. Kalidasa. New Delhi: Sahitya Academi, 1994. — Kalidasa: Afresh (Prof. S.N. Rath Felicitation Volume) Nag Publisher, Delhi 1997. Shiva ...
... therefore to see how Kalidasa dealt with a similar character. To our surprise we find that the Hindu poet does not associate incompetence, failure & tragedy with his image of the poet-king; on the contrary Pururavus is a Great Emperor, well-loved of his people, an unconquered hero, the valued ally of the Gods, successful in empire, successful in war, successful in love. Was then Kalidasa at fault in his... which we call Napoleon was incompatible with stoical calm & insensibility, so was the ardent mass of sensuousness & imagination which Kalidasa portrayed in Pururavus incompatible with the high austerity of religion. It is in the mouth of this champion of Heaven Kalidasa has placed one of the few explicit protests in Sanscrit of the ordinary sensuous man against the ascetic idealism of the old religion... greater English compeer. Kalidasa like Shakespeare seems to have realised the paternal instinct of tenderness far more strongly than the maternal; his works both dramatic and epic give us many powerful & emotional expressions of the love of father & child to which there are few corresponding outbursts of maternal feeling. Valmekie's Cowshalya has no parallel in Kalidasa. Yet he expresses the true ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Age of Kalidasa Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development of the human soul, types and exponents also of... greatest, the epic and the drama. In his epic style Kalidasa adds to these permanent features a more than Miltonic fullness and grandiose pitch of sound and expression, in his dramatic an extraordinary grace and suavity which makes it adaptable to conversation and the expression of dramatic shade and subtly blended emotion. With these supreme gifts Kalidasa had the advantage of being born into an age with... ary grandeur by Kalidasa,—nor had they yet been weakened or lowered to a less heroic key. It was a time in which one might expect to meet the extremes of indulgence side by side with the extremes of renunciation; for the inherent spirituality of the Hindu nature finally revolted against the splendid and unsatisfying life of the senses. But of this phase Bhartrihari and not Kalidasa is the poet. The ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings On Translating Kalidasa Since the different tribes of the human Babel began to study each other's literatures, the problem of poetical translation has constantly defied the earnest experimenter. There have been brilliant versions, successful falsifications, honest renderings, but some few lyrics apart... grandiose rhythmic structures with fascinating names of which Kalidasa is so mighty a master? Nor would such variation be tolerated by English canons of taste. In the epic & drama the translator is driven to a compromise and therefore to that extent a failure; he may infuse good poems or plays reproducing the architecture & idea-sense of Kalidasa with something of his spirit; but it is a version & not a... "through heaven." But to the English reader the words of Kalidasa literally transliterated would be a mere artificial conceit devoid of the original sublimity. It is the inability to seize the associations & precise poetical force of Sanscrit words that Page 254 has led so many European Sanscritists to describe the poetry of Kalidasa which is hardly surpassed for truth, bold directness & ...
... Aurobindo after his departure from Baroda in March 1906. The Poetry of Kalidasa Sri Aurobindo wrote the material published in this section between 1898 and 1903. All but one of the pieces were meant for inclusion in a planned book-length study, the contents of which he sketched out in "A Proposed Work on Kalidasa" (see below). He used four notebooks for writing the material that was to make... On the first page of Page 767 one of the notebooks he wrote the title "The Poetry of Kalidasa"; the editors have used this as the title of the section. Sri Aurobindo brought only two of the pieces to a satisfactory conclusion. One of them, "The Age of Kalidasa", was revised and published in The Indian Review (Madras) in 1902. The other, "The Seasons", was revised and... included in the final texts have been published in an appendix at the end of the section. A Proposed Work on Kalidasa. Circa 1898-1903. Editorial title. The Malavas. Circa 1900-1903. Title taken from Chapter II of "A Proposed Work". The Age of Kalidasa. Circa 1898-1902. See Chapter II of "A Proposed Work". This piece was published in The Indian Review of Madras in July ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Seasons Its Authenticity The "seasons" of Kalidasa is one of those early works of a great poet which are even more interesting to a student of his evolution than his later masterpieces. We see his characteristic gift even in the immature workmanship and uncertain touch and can distinguish the... Much of it is as yet in a half-developed state, crude consistence not yet fashioned with the masterly touch he soon manifested, but Kalidasa is there quite as evidently as Shakespeare in his earlier work, the Venus and Adonis or Lucrece. Defects which the riper Kalidasa avoids, are not uncommon in this poem,—repetition of ideas, use of more words than are absolutely required, haphazard recurrence of... like the Endymion, but it is a weakening charm to which no virile temperament will trust itself. The poetry of Kalidasa satisfies the sensuous imagination without enervating the virile chords of character; for virile energy is an unfailing characteristic of the best Sanskrit poetry, and Kalidasa is inferior to none in this respect. His artistic error has nevertheless had disastrous effects on the substance ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings Appendix: Alternative and Unused Passages and Fragments Passages and Fragments - I [ An early fragment ] Kalidasa does best in more complicated & grandiose metres where his majesty of sound and subtle power of harmony have most opportunity; his treatment of the Anustubh is massive & noble, but... compares unfavourably with the inexhaustible flexibility of Valmekie and the nervous ease of Vyasa. Passages and Fragments - II [ Alternative opening to "The Historical Method" ] Kalidasa Of Kalidasa the man we are fortunate to know nothing beyond what we can gather from the evidence of his own writings. There are many anecdotes current throughout India that have gathered around his name... execution and a far cruder yet not absolutely dissimilar verse & diction which sounds like a rough sketch for the mighty style & movement of Kalidasa. If it is not then an early work of the poet, it must be either a production of an earlier poet who influenced Kalidasa or of a later poet who imitated him. The first hypothesis is hardly credible, unless the writer died young; for it is otherwise impossible ...
... 1909. SABCL: The Upanishads, Vol. 12 35 KALIDASA Arya Sahitya Bhawan, Calcutta, 1929 A combined edition, revised, of The Age of Kalidasa (Seel) and Kalidasa's "Seasons" (See 37). SABCL: The Harmony of Virtue, Vol. 3 Page 390 36. KALIDASA (Second Series) Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1954... SABCL : Social and Political Thought, Vol . 15 2 . THE AGE OF KALIDASA Tagore & Co., Madras, 1921 Written during the Baroda period (1893-1906). First appeared in the Calcutta Review . Published in book form with Kalidasa's. " Seasons " since 1929 under the title Kalidasa (See 35). SABCL : The Harmony of Virtue, Vol. 3 Page... 1954 Second Edition, 1964 From Sri Aurobindo's Baroda manuscripts: "Hindu Drama", "The Historical Method", "On Translating Kalidasa" and the four studies making up "Kalidasa's Characters". "On Translating Kalidasa" and "Pururavas" (published as "The Character of the Hero") appeared as Introduction and Appendix to Vikramorvasie (See 97). The First Edition included ...
... poetic creation that reached its acme of perfection in the poetry of Kalidasa. This preeminence proceeds from two qualities possessed in a degree only to be paralleled in the work of the greatest world-poets and not always combined in them in so equable a harmony and with so adequate a combination of execution and substance. Kalidasa ranks among the supreme poetic artists with Milton and Virgil and... literary instruments and developing as the grand and ancient tongue loses its last forces and inspiring life. The difference in spirit and mould between the epics and the speech of Bhartrihari and Kalidasa is already enormous and may possibly be explained by the early centuries of Buddhism when Sanskrit ceased to be the sole literary tongue understood and spoken by all educated men and Pali came up... national thought and life. The language and movement of the epics have all the vigour, freedom, spontaneous force and appeal of a speech that leaps straight from the founts of life; the speech of Kalidasa is an accomplished art, an intellectual and aesthetic creation consummate, deliberate, finely ornate, carved like a statue, coloured like a painting, not yet artificial, though there is a masterly ...
... recovered so far; the three early drafts of the translation of Kumarasambhavam, however, are how published,62 along with Sri Aurobindo's early essays on Kalidasa, on the problem of translating Kalidasa and on some of the characters in Kalidasa. From all this, one thing is clear: Sri Aurobindo set about the task of translation always with a sense of commitment, and only after clarifying to his own... however, we shall confine ourselves to the translations: from old Greek poetry, from mediaeval and modem Bengali poetry, from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, from Bhartrihari, and lastly from Kalidasa. 2 In the matter of translations, Sri Aurobindo seems to have held the not unreasonable, if perhaps unorthodox, view that mere literalness or word for word equation was not the ideal to be... worldly wisdom. VIII It was inevitable that, once he had plunged into Sanskrit studies, Sri Aurobindo should feel drawn (sooner than later), as iron to magnet, to the poetic genius of Kalidasa. Sri Aurobindo seems to have made, in the early Baroda period, drafts of translations of Vikramorvasie, Meghaduta and the first canto of Kumara-sambhavam, - perhaps of Kalidasa's other works ...
... Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa Appendices Passages from the writings of Sri Aurobindo on Kalidasa "Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development... poetic creation that reached its acme of perfection in the poetry of Kalidasa. This pre-eminence proceeds from two qualities possessed in a degree only to be paralleled in the work of the greatest world-poets and not always combined in them in so equable a harmony and with so adequate a combination of execution and substance. Kalidasa ranks among the supreme poetic artists with Milton and Virgil and... Shakespeare and Dante..." * * * "Many centuries after these poets [Valmiki and Vyasa], perhaps a thousand years or even more, came the third great embodiment of the national consciousness, Kalidasa. There is a far greater difference between the civilisation he mirrors than between Vyasa's and Valmiki's. He came when the daemonic orgy of character and intellect had worked itself out and ended ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings A Proposed Work on Kalidasa Chapter I. Kalidasa's surroundings. Chapter II. Kalidasa & his work. The Malavas—the three ages, Valmekie.. Vyasa.. Kalidasa.. materialism & sensuousness..] the historic method.. psychological principles of criticism.. variety of Kalidasa's work.. probable chronological... Chapter IX. The Characters. Chapter X XI XII. The Shacountala. Chapter XIII XIV. The Kumara. Chapter XV. Retrospect; poetic greatness of Kalidasa; comparisons with other classical [writers]. Chapter XVI XVII. Hindu civilisation in the time of Kalidasa (this may go with Raghu or Kumara). Page 151 ... Messenger. Kalidasa's treatment of the Supernatural.. Substance of the poem.. Chastened style.. Perfection of the harmony.. moderation & restraint.. pathos & passion. Chapter VI. The Drama before Kalidasa; elements of Hindu drama.. the three plays studies of one subject. Chapter VII. The Agnimitra; its plot; perfection of dramatic workmanship; Kalidasa's method of characterisation; the characters ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Historical Method Of Kalidasa, the man who thus represents one of the greatest periods in our civilisation and typifies so many sides and facets of it in his writing, we know if possible even less than of Valmekie and Vyasa. It is probable but not certain that he was a native of Malwa born not in... ingenuities mostly ribald, but these may be safely discredited. Valmekie, Vyasa and Kalidasa, our three greatest names, are to us, outside their poetical creation, names merely and nothing more. This is an exceedingly fortunate circumstance. The natural man within us rebels indeed against such a void; who Kalidasa was, what was his personal as distinguished from his poetic individuality, what manner... and imperfectly in the shape of action. It is really this difference that makes the great figures of epic poetry so much less intimately and thoroughly known to us than the great figures of drama. Kalidasa was both an epic poet and a dramatist, yet Sheva and Parvatie are merely grand paintings while Dushyanta, Shacountala, Sharngarava, Page 170 Priyumvada & Anasuya, Pururavus and Urvasie ...
... Vyasa, and Kalidasa are the three greatest poets of India, and one cannot have a living experience of Indian culture without some direct experience of the works of these three great poets. Kalidasa is the reputed author of Ritusamhara, Meghadutam, Raghuvamsham, and Kumarasambhavam. Apart from these four poetical works, three dramatic works have been universally attributed to Kalidasa, viz., Malav... the best portions of Raghuvamsham. In all the works of Kalidasa we find a majestic style, charming suggestion, apt similes, beautiful ornamentation and colourful descriptions of nature as also the description of human happiness and suffering. It has been said that Poetry unveiled herself in all her beauty in the presence of Kalidasa. "Vaidarbhi kavita svayam vritavati Shri Kalidasam varam." ... Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa Illumination, Heroism and Harmony Preface The task of preparing teaching-learning material for value-oriented education is enormous. There is, first, the idea that value-oriented education should be exploratory rather than prescriptive, and that the teaching-learning material should provide to the learners ...
... we have no other choice than to move, to act — and tapasya, giving Page 13 and sacrifice, are the means of our action. Parvati's tapasya and its achievement are described by Kalidasa in the fifth canto of his great epic poem Kumarasambhava , the Birth of the War God, which many critics regard as his crowning work. Indeed what "the most splendidly sensuous of poets" describes... rules, the main characters of a Mahakavya must be gods, heroes or persons of royal descent. And it is true that the subject of the poem is the union of the supreme god and the supreme goddess. But Kalidasa excels in the blending of divine loftiness with the sweetness of very human feelings. As Sri Aurobindo said, "Under his slight touch,... the sublime yields to the law of romance." All the gods described... transformed by the poet into romantic elements that are part of the charm and power of their personality. We could Page 14 give as an example a passage of the second canto in which Kalidasa depicts the gods complaining to Brahma about the atrocities committed by the demon Taraka. These deities have been terribly harassed and humiliated by the Asura; they feel totally helpless and there ...
... creators." Among the latter, Sri Aurobindo makes three rows: First row - Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Vyasa. Second row - Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Milton. Third row - Goethe. In Sri Aurobindo's view, Dante and Kalidasa would rank beside those in the first row except that they do not have enough of "a kind of elemental demiurgic power". Each of the others... scholars mostly connect him with the third of the Imperial Guptas -Chandragupta II, titled Vikramaditya, who is generally dated to 380-414 A.D. R. C. Majumdar admits that there is no decisive reason why Kalidasa should be at the end of the fourth century A.D. rather than in the first century B.C. Thus we get a fixed span of about four hundred years within which or after which to place Kumarila Bhatta... Copaditya (the seventeenth king of Kashmir) built the temple of Shankara on the Takht-i-Suleiman hill in this year. Page 360 If we are to pass beyond the first century B.C. for Kalidasa, we would have to entertain the theory sometimes submitted that the Indian adventurer named by the Greek historians Sandrocottus, who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great and flourished as a ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Spirit of the Times The life & personality of Kalidasa, the epoch in which he lived and wrote, the development of his poetical genius as evidenced by the order of his works, are all lost in a thick cloud of uncertainty and oblivion. It was once thought an established fact that he lived & wrote... behind the luxurious ease and sensuousness of court life we hear the clash of arms and glimpse the great & energetic motions of statesmanship and diplomacy. The variety of his genius specially fits Kalidasa for the interpretation of a rich & complex national life. From pages heavy with the obsession of the senses, the delight of the eye and the lust of the flesh we turn to others sweet and gracious with... of human life; the noblest & most grandiose epic of our classical literature; and its one matchless poem of passionate love and descriptive beauty. In Europe the Shacountala is the one poem of Kalidasa universally known and appreciated. In India the Cloud has gone even nearer home to the national imagination. For this there is good reason. It is, essentially and above all, the poem of India, the ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa 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... 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... y 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 Page 194 his audacity, which he anticipates by ...
... astute comparisons which Sri Aurobindo institutes between Shakespeare and Kalidasa and Shakespeare and Browning. He shows how, although Sri Aurobindo would set Kalidasa close to Shakespeare but at the same time a notch or two below him in view of his lack of the Shakespearian range and scope of creativity, he gives credit to Kalidasa in two respects, his portrayal of children and his delineation of mothers... insufficient recognition of the theatrical dimensions of the verse and the drama. It is a poetic reading of the dramatic verse that is on offer. In SAOS (p. 50), Sethna quotes Sri Aurobindo [ Kalidasa : Second Series (Pondicherry, 1954), pp. 13-14]. It may matter to the pedant or the gossip within me whether the sonnets were written to William Herbert or to Henry Wriothesley or to ...
... hariar in his History of Classical Sanskrit Literature mentions at least thirteen poems and four dramas (in Sanskrit alone) based on the story. A poem called Nalodaya is sometimes attributed to Kalidasa. Page 66 Vyasa's art It has been said that Vyasa was the most masculine of writers.What is meant by this statement is that tendencies usually associated, rightly or wrongly, with... colours, images, epithets, similes, alliterations. The aesthetic possibilities contained in a king addressing an elephant are exploited to the full. So much so that one verse is not sufficient for Kalidasa to exhaust all this wealth. The address of the king to the elephant extends to several verses. There are descriptions of the elephant, the way he eats, the way he roars as if he were answering... with the frontal ichor oozing from the elephant's temple; Urvashi with the elephant's mate, etc. Of course, here we are far from the austere self restraint of Vyasa. If Vyasa was "a granite mind", Kalidasa was the "supreme poet of the senses". It mirrors the evolution of Indian civilisation and in a way, applied to literature, this is a very practical illustration of the different periods of India's ...
... Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa Introduction I Kālidāsa: his life, time, works and genius It has been rightly pointed out by C. R. Devadhar that, "Kālidāsa is both famous and unknown". 1 Nothing definite can be said about Kālidāsa's life, place of birth, and the time to which he belonged, for Kālidāsa himself, like many other... works to be famous by being attributed to Kālidāsa. This explains the undue proliferation of the works of Kālidāsa; as a matter of fact, only the seven works mentioned above undoubtedly belong to Kalidasa, the great. Rājasekhara, it needs to be noted, speaks of three different poets who were known to him as bearing the name of Kālidāsa ( Kālidāsa trayī kimu), and it is therefore probable that those... It is no wonder that Sir William Jones has referred to him as "the Shakespeare of India". Sri Aurobindo, the greatest Indian yogin-philosopher, and poet, has the following words to say about Kalidasa: Kālidāsa is the great, the supreme poet of the senses, of aesthetic beauty of sensuous emotion... In continuous gift of seizing an object and creating it to the eye he has no rival in literature ...
... heart-rending frantic yell: "Blow, winds and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!"² relieved, one may say in Kalidasa, by his sheer poetry – but in Shakespeare also not less so, although in a different hue and tune. This tumult of the soul, the raging raving wild thing that man becomes – this seems to be, in Kalidasa, the price that mortality has to pay for a touch of divinity – it is the churning of the ocean that... limitation is that of a mixture, a dilution. The quality and nature of Divine Love entering earth suffers an alteration, a diminution and pollution. It is mixed with baser elements of human nature. Kalidasa too mentions these – foremost of all is jealousy – jealousy that caught Urvasie like a wild fire and made her run helter-skelter and enter straight into the arms of self-oblivion and infra-consciousness... here that the queen is a foil, a hark back to wisdom and poise, to steadiness and normalcy. She symbolises also the consent of the mere human to the divine Dispensation. A Shakespearean tragedy Kalidasa avoids by finding a way out of the impasse – a happy marriage between heaven and earth is possible if with heaven agreeing to come down upon earth, earth too on its side agrees to go up to heaven ...
... poetic genius of Kalidasa. It was his intention to write a full-scale book on Kalidasa for which he drew up an outline but he did not have the sustained leisure to complete it. He did, however, write extensively on Kalidasa — on the important works, the characters in the plays, the age he lived in and on other aspects of his genius. Moreover, he took in hand some translations of Kalidasa. Of these, a very ...
... it into ojas, the result would be an increased power of creative productivity. Q.E.D., sir! Logic, sir! I suppose Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa were complete abstainers, though there is doubt about the last two. Excuse me, there are no doubts about Kalidasa. Very much to the contrary. December 4, 1935 I asked R about S's screen examination. He said he would write to you. I am doubtful... capacious arms of the W.P.B. 134 for your misdeed or try to cover it up by doing better. I was perplexed by your reply about Kalidasa [4.12.35]. You mean he was an abstainer? You seem to know his life very well; then is there any truth in the conjecture that you were Kalidasa? Don't know anything about that. But I said "There are no doubts, very much to the contrary"—meaning that everybody knows ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings Hindu Drama The origin of the Sanscrit drama, like the origin of all Hindu arts and sciences, is lost in the silence of antiquity; and there one might be content to leave it. But European scholarship abhors a vacuum, even where Nature allows it; confronted with a void in its knowledge, it is always... with such truth and power. On the other side the Bengali critics, men of no mean literary taste and perception though inferior in pure verbal scholarship, are agreed in regarding the characters of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti as beautiful and energetic creations, not less deserving of study than the personalities of Elizabethan drama. Page 188 This contradiction, violent as it is, is not difficult... to fine discrimination by a love of the striking & a habit of gross forms & pronounced colours due to the too exclusive study of English poetry, repeat & re-enforce their criticisms, the lover of Kalidasa & his peers need not be alarmed; he need not banish from his imagination the gracious company with which it is peopled as a gilded & soulless list of names. For these dicta spring from prejudice and ...
... supreme singers. Who are these, then? Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Kalidasa? And what about Aeschylus, Virgil and Milton? I suppose all the names you mention except Goethe can be included; or if you like you can put them all including Goethe in three rows—e.g.: 1st row Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki 2nd row Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Virgil, Milton 3rd row Goethe and there you are! To speak... created a world of his own. Dante's triple world beyond is more constructed by the poetic seeing mind than by this kind of elemental demiurgic power—otherwise he would rank by their side; the same with Kalidasa. Aeschylus is a seer and creator but on a much smaller scale. Virgil and Milton have a less spontaneous breath of creative genius; one or two typal figures excepted, they live rather by what they ...
... Aurobindo gave Dante a very high rank: Dante figured for him among the giants of poetry. But Sri Aurobindo certainly did not put him at the sheer top. Dante stood on a slightly lower level, along with Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton - just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the elite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare... and real-seeming situations and "unknown modes of being". An energetic constructiveness on a grand scale rather than a formative force as of a demiurge distinguishes Dante, even as it marks out Kalidasa who, like him, would otherwise be in the company of those topmost four. So Sri Aurobindo's admiration for Dante could never have been of the extreme order. Though, among the world's epics... for the demiurgic capacity to create a world of one's own - living characters or else vibrant modes of being variously interrelated within a real-seeming milieu. It is because Dante, just like Kalidasa, has not enough of this capacity that he fails to rank with the sheer pinnacles of Parnassus: Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Vyasa. His having less of inequalities, fewer ups and downs, does not ...
... which surpasses that of poetry. Here is a clear proof. When we speak of genuine poetry, we hardly think of the Veda-Upanishad-Gita. To serve our purpose we immediately resort to the works of Valmiki, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti. Yet, as a matter of fact, the Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedas can easily stand on the same footing with the greatest poetry. However natural or mundane may be the delight in poetic... t existence and becomes the vehicle and embodiment of Immortality. I believe herein lies the secret of India's sculpture, and the aim of many Indian spiritual disciplines was this Immortality. Kalidasa is a great poet – he stands in the vanguard of the world's greatest poets. He really deserves this place. Yet he is only a poet and does not seem to be a seer or creator of mantras like the poets... end and the earth too is boundless." From this point of view Milton and Virgil may be looked upon as mere poets. Those who consider Shakespeare, Homer and Valmiki superior to Milton, Virgil and Kalidasa come to such a conclusion from a subtler consideration. One group of poets makes use of vaikhari vak, while the other of pasyanti vak. Seer as poet and poet as poet are different, because of ...
... settled that question once for all. Educated Indians on the other hand have their own deficiencies in dealing with Vyasa; for they have [been] nourished partly on the curious and elaborate art of Kalidasa and his gorgeous pomps of vision and colour, partly on the somewhat gaudy, expensive & meretricious spirit of English poetry. Like Englishmen they are taught to profess a sort of official admiration... The vividness of the portraiture arises from the quiet accuracy of vision and the care in the choice of simple but effective words; not from any seeking after the salient and graphic such as gives Kalidasa his wonderful power of description; and the bitterness of the taunts arises from the quiet & searching irony with which [each] shaft is tipped and not from any force used in driving them home. Yet... with a subtle significance of thought or emotion. There are others who hold her with a strong sensuous grasp by virtue of a ripe, sometimes an overripe delight in beauty; such are Shakespeare, Keats, Kalidasa. Others again approach her Page 313 with a fine or clear intellectual sense of her charm as do some of the old classical poets. Hardly in the rank of poets are those who like Dryden & ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Malavas Once in the long history of poetry the great powers who are ever working the finest energies of nature into the warp of our human evolution, met together and resolved to unite in creating a poetical intellect & imagination that, endowed with the most noble & various poetical gifts, capable... Ujjaini, the capital of the great nation of the Malavas, who consolidated themselves under Vikramaditya in the first century before Christ. Here they set the outcome of their endeavour & called him Kalidasa. The country of Avunti had always played a considerable part in our ancient history for which the genius, taste and high courage of its inhabitants fitted it & Ujjaini their future capital was always... Vikramaditya took place in 56 BC, and from that moment dates the age of Malava pre-eminence, the great era of the Malavas afterwards called the Samvat era. It was doubtless subsequent to this date that Kalidasa came to Ujjaini to sum up in his poetry, the beauty of human life, the splendours of art & the glory of the senses. Page 155 ...
... blank verse hints the Indian in him and affines him to the genius of Kalidasa. It is therefore no wonder that a few years after Love and Death which was written when he was twenty-seven Sri Aurobindo was able to make the most perfect and vivid translation possible of The Hero and the Nymph, a famous play by Kalidasa. It is, however, a wonder indeed that a few years before Love and Death... not stark force alone: it has a suppleness which adapts itself to opulent no less than austere effects and often brings like Kalidasa's afflatus a sensuous and voluptuous sweep that makes him like Kalidasa a poet par excellence of Love. Love's countless moods colour the texture of Urvasie. In a brief quiet phrase like And she received him in her eyes, as earth Receives the rain ...
... Aurobindo gave Dante a very high rank: Dante figured for him among the giants of poetry. But Sri Aurobindo certainly did not put him at the sheer top. Dante stood on a slightly lower level, along with Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton — just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the e1ite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare... and "unknown modes of being". An energetic constructiveness Page 262 on a grand scale rather than a formative force as of a demiurge distinguishes Dante, even as it marks out Kalidasa who, like him, would otherwise be in the company of those topmost four. So Sri Aurobindo's admiration for Dante could never have been of the extreme order. Though, among the world's epics... for the demiurgic capacity to create a world of one's own — living characters or else vibrant modes of being variously interrelated within a real-seeming milieu . It is because Dante, just like Kalidasa, has not enough of this capacity that he fails to rank with the sheer pinnacles of Parnassus: Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Vyasa. His having less of inequalities, fewer ups and downs, does not help ...
... found in the poetry, even in translation (I have several different translations, and many volumes) of Tagore, whom I am prepared to believe may be a poet equal to Yeats. And even in translations, Kalidasa; and Valmiki, and many other Indian poets. I have searched in vain for a complete translation of the Mahabharata but I am prepared even from the several abridgements I know to believe it surpasses... it were the hems of their garments When with our vegetable eyes we view these wondrous visions . Blake neither wanted nor needed super-flies, and neither I think did Tagore, nor Kalidasa, for the task of the poet is to see the eternal in the world as each day creates the marvels daily before our eyes. To the 'Man of Imagination' (Blake's phrase again) 'Nature is one continued vision... giving, first of the soul's needs? Next, I invite you to relish the psychological subtlety of word and rhythm, where to a basic Shakespearian note is added a sensuous felicity peculiar to Kalidasa: Page 95 "Priyumvada!" He cried, and at that well-loved sound there dawned With overwhelming sweetness miserable Upon his mind the old delightful times When he ...
... Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa Selected Episodes from Raghuvamśam ON RAGHU'S LINE Of kings who were untainted from their birth, Who toiled until there was success, who ruled the earth to the sea, Whose car-track reached to heaven; Who duly worshipped the sacred fire, who gave to every guest according... pathos..There is almost an absence of any studied effort on the part of the poet to produce any word effect, and the flow of language is unimpeded and natural. Altogether this canto clearly reveals Kalidasa at his best. 29 Page 67 RAMA In Raghuvamśam, Rāmā stands before us as a colossal figure, in whom the lofty qualities of the descendants of the solar race... envisaged in the Bhagavadgita. 31 No wonder that such an ideal personality should find a firm footing in the heart of every good man. This is what is suggested by the poet in the next stanza, where Kalidasa points out that: sa Sītā Laksmanasakhah satyādgurumalopayan viveśa dandkāranyam pratyekam ca satām manah With Laksmana and Sītā for companions, helping his revered father ...
... As a result, I am a bad student and got a zero in mathematics. I failed in my tenth examination even when I bagged prizes for English and Sanskrit. I love Wordsworth, Shelly and Keats; and I love Kalidasa and Bhartrihari. I wonder whether these poets ever learned mathematics. I think their curricula were quite different and they had the freedom to study what they liked and to muse over the music of... dingy rooms of the schools listening to the boring lessons of history and geography, where you have no tales except those of battles and deserts. In my history class I have never heard the story of Kalidasa or of Jayadeva. But one day, when I was reading Meghadootam stealthily in my class, my teacher somehow noticed it. As I looked up at him with fear and rebellion in my eyes, I was reprimanded, and... no results. "Take Upendra for example. What amazing intellectual gifts he possesses! And the poor boy has to satisfy his romance for poetry by absconding from the school. When he romances with Kalidasa, his object of love is snatched away from him. Under the care of a good teacher who observes and watches his children, Upendra's romance in poetry could have been easily detected and a wise teacher ...
... him the immense treasure-house of the Indian heritage. He read the Upanishads, the Gita, the Puranas, the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the poems of Bhartrihari, the dramas of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti etc., Page 27 etc. Ancient India, the ageless India of spiritual culture and unwearied creative vitality, thus revealed herself to his wondering vision, and he ... revelation. Ancient India furnished him with the clue to the building of the greater India of the future. Sri Aurobindo translated some portions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, some dramas of Kalidasa, the Nitishataka of Bhartrihari, some poems of Vidyapati and Chandidas etc. into English. Once, when R. C. Dutt, the well-known civilian, came to Baroda at the invitation of the Maharaja, he somehow... Countless English novels were stacked in his book-cases, littered in the comers of his rooms, and stuffed in his steel trunks. The Iliad of Homer, the Divine Comedy of Dante, our Ramayana, Mahabharata, Kalidasa were also among those books. He was very fond of Russian literature... "After learning Bengali fairly well, Aurobindo began to study Bengali classics, Swarnalata, Annadamangal by Bharat ...
... India, and classical dramatists like Bhasa, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti as also poets of our own time like Subramania Bharati, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo have freely taken deep draughts from this veritable Ganga-Yamuna confluence of the great Indian epic tradition. The literary epics from the days of Virgil in Europe and since the days of Kalidasa in India have carved no mean territory for... Gilgamesh; and among the latter, the Aeneid, the Divina Commedia (if it could be called an epic), Camoens' Os Lusiadas, Paradise Lost, and Mah ā k ā vyas in Sanskrit like the Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa. Something is lost, and something is gained. The change is significant, but no more significant than the change from the Heroic Age to the more recent period of sophistication and organised ci ...
... Sambhava seems later than Raghuvansha , though Raghu is more brilliant; Kumar is more deep and mature. If you grant the common belief that Kalidasa wrote only the first 8 cantos of the Kumar then it does not seem logical that a man like Kalidasa would complete Raghu leaving Kumar unfinished. 14–12–1940 A. wrote an article in the Calcutta Review about ''The Advaita in the... is asserted that one "Bhasker Shashtri Joshi gave him lessons in Sanskrit and Gujarat." He did not learn Sanskrit from any one at Baroda. He read the Mahabharata by himself and also read works of Kalidasa and one drama of Bhavabhuti as well as the Ramayana. 4. It is stated that his patriotism got the religious colour by his contact with one Swami Hamsa. Swami Hamsa had nothing to do with his nationalism ...
... most of me is as foreign to them as if I had been born in New York or Paraguay. 3 June 1935 Speculations about His Past Lives It is reported that you were Kalidasa and Shakespeare. I suppose it is true, at least regarding Kalidasa—isn't it? As to the report, who is the reporter? and in what "Reincarnation Review" have these items been reported? 31 March 1932 We have various guesses ...
... right to call the whole passage erotic and I am surprised at your imagining that Sri Aurobindo meant it to be "a new super-spiritual vision of love". I have pointed to "a sensuous felicity peculiar to Kalidasa" in it. Who would dream of ascribing anything "super-spiritual" to that supreme poet of artistic eroticism? The English critic Banning Richardson who reviewed at some length in The Aryan Path (March... important terminal position reinforces the meaning technically by giving it weight. The sense, however, flows over to the next line as if the heaviness implied by the word had to drop the sense into it. Kalidasa would have rejoiced at all this craftsmanship brought by the afflatus. While regretting that you have missed the "minute particulars" of both the heart and the art of the passage, I wonder why ...
... and aesthetic emotionalism of the British Celt found something to interest them, something even to assist. In Page 391 the teachings of Buddha, the speculation of Shankara, the poetry of Kalidasa their souls could find pasture and refreshment. The alien form and spirit of Japanese and Arabian poetry and of Chinese philosophy which prevented such an approximation with the rest of Asia, was... substance of [the] Upanishads will be as necessary to an universal culture as a knowledge of the substance of the Bible, Shankara's theories as familiar as the speculations of Teutonic thinkers and Kalidasa, Valmekie & Vyasa as near and common to the subject matter of the European critical intellect as Dante or Homer. It is the difficulties of presentation that prevent a more rapid and complete c ...
... voluptuous directness— nothing vulgar or lascivious yet a sharp frank awareness of the impassioned body and its enamoured rhythms. This combination affines Urvasie and Love and Death to the poetry of Kalidasa, as perhaps might be guessed from the fact that the former treats in essence the same theme as a play of Kalidasa's which Sri Aurobindo translated soon after. Out of many possible instances we may... extreme his murmuring in deep quiet moments That name like a religion in her ear and at the other, in sweet secrecy again, Bridal outpantings of her broken name. Who save Kalidasa could match the happy audacity of this compact phrase about the name being uttered brokenly because of the quivering gasps of excited delight during the act of union? The fine this-worldly ...
... literature what Shakespeare is to English, Goethe to German, Tolstoy to Russian, or Dante to Italian and, to go into the remoter past, what Virgil was to Latin and Homer to Greek or, in our country, what Kalidasa was to ancient Sanskrit. Each of these stars of the first magnitude is a king, a paramount ruler in his own language and literature, and that for two reasons. First, whatever formerly was immature... and a literature that are not so immature but have already attained development and elegance, a creative vibhuti has brought about a second type of-transformation. Virgil, Shakespeare, Goethe and Kalidasa did a work of this category. It cannot be said that English was undeveloped or quite rustic before Shakespeare, although the image of the grandly real, something truly familiar and intimate that ...
... said that they are endowed with a great sense of beauty as well. History testifies otherwise. Puritan England is a glaring proof how even decency can be an embodiment of ugliness. And the pen of Kalidasa gloriously proves that obscene things are not always bound to be ugly. When does the obscene happen to become ugly? On coming down to a particular stage of nakedness? It does not seem to be... was high-serious, vibrant with an essential sap of Truth. Sakuntala appeals to our heart, for she was an embodiment of beauty. We can appreciate Lady Macbeth for the intensity of her sombre soul. Kalidasa has excelled in depicting the beauties of form. Shakespeare sought not beauty but the wide surge of vital truths. Petrarch abounds in the beauty of form. He created more and yet more beauty of form ...
... stone or modelled in bronze. All these images however, or most of them, belong to one category or genre. They are painted pictures, still life, on the whole, presented in two dimensions. Kalidasa himself has described the nature or character of this artistic effect. In describing a gesture of Uma he says, 'she moved not, she stopped not' (na yayau na tasthau); it was, as it were, a movement... luminaries. In the world of poetry Dante is a veritable avatar. His language is a supreme magic. The word-unit in him is a quantum of highly concentrated perceptive energy, Tapas. In Kalidasa the quantum is that of the energy of the-light in sensuous beauty. And Homer's voice is a quantum of the luminous music of the spheres. The word-unit, the language quantum in Sri Aurobindo's ...
... from their toils released Al! animals on earth." -Inferno II. 1-3. Page 169 category or genre. They are painted pictures, still life, on the whole, presented in two dimensions. Kalidasa himself has described the nature or character of this artistic effect. In describing a gesture of Uma he says, 'she moved not, she stopped not' (na yayau na tasthau); it was, as it were, a movement... heavenly luminaries. In the world of poetry Dante is a veritable avatar. His language is a supreme magic. The word-unit in him is a quantum of highly concentrated perceptive energy, Tapas. In Kalidasa the quantum is that of the energy of the light in sensuous beauty. And Homer's voice is a quantum of the luminous music of the spheres. The word-unit, the language quantum in Sri Aurobindo's poetry ...
... truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much... lyric cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the still small voice.¹ Thus, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit ¹ Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. ...
... full of problems, questions of morality and immorality. SRI AUROBINDO (to Purani): Have you been struck by a great number of problems in Raghuvamsha? Kalidasa being concerned with morality and immorality? PURANI (laughing): I thought Kalidasa was the last person to be concerned with them. He was more concerned with beauty, the aesthetic aspect. No ethical question troubled him. SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... Sagar, Sangit, tr. of, 77ff, 411; on Vyasa & Valmiki, 79ff; tr. from the Ramāyāna, 8 1ff; from the Mahabharata, 84ff; on Nala and Savitri, 85-6; Vidula, 87; translation from Bhartrihari, 88; from Kalidasa, 90ff; The Birth of the War-God, 92ff; The Hero and the Nymph, 94ff; on Vikramorvasie, 98fn; Urvasie, 99-107; Love and Death, 108; Baji Prabhou, 1148; Perseus the Deliverer, 120-9; ... Jinnah,M.A.,529,702,710 Joan of Arc 55,191 Johnson, Lionel, 99 Jones, Sir William, 13 Joyce, James, 535 Julius Caesar, 140 Kabir, 9, 497 Kalidasa. 10,50, 69ff, 90H, 337, 695 Kama, 169, 172 Kanungo, Hemachandra, 216, 326 Kant, Immanuel, 416 Kara-Kahini, 307fn, 308ff, 314H, 318, 320 Karmayogin, The ...
... Speeches. Volume 3 — The Harmony of Virtue, EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS: The Harmony of Virtue; Bankim Chandra Chatterjee; The Sources of Poetry and Other Essays; Valmiki and Vyasa; Kalidasa; The Brain of India; Essays from the Karmayogin; Art and Literature; Passing Thoughts; Conversations of the Dead. Volume 4 — Writings in Bengali: Hymns to Durga; Poems, Stories; The... Devil's Mastiff; The Golden Bird. Juvenilia. Volume 8 — Translations, From Sanskrit and Other Languages: From Sanskrit Passages from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, Kalidasa; The Century of Life (The Nitishataka of Bhartrihari); etc. From Bengali: Songs of Bidyapati; Bande Mataram (Hymn to the Mother); thirteen chapters from Anandamath (Bankim Chandra Chatterji's ...
... Then follow five chapters on Indian literature, the first three being devoted to the Veda, the Upanishads and the two great epics - the Ramayana and the Mahabharata - respectively; the fourth, to Kalidasa and the poets of the Classical age, and the last, to Purana and Tantra, to the Tamil poets, and the minstrels of God all over the country. What Sri Aurobindo is attempting is nothing less than a bird's... vital and young in strength than the Latin epic poetry, the Indian epic poems were fashioned to serve a greater and completer national and cultural function... . 43 Sri Aurobindo finds in Kalidasa a poet who ranks with Milton and Virgil, but with Page 505 "a more subtle and delicate spirit and touch in his art than the English, a greater breath of native power informing ...
... large and powerful interpretative and intuitive vision of Nature and life and man and whose poetry has arisen out of that in a supreme revelatory utterance of it. Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Valmiki, Kalidasa, however much they may differ in everything else, are at one in having this as the fundamental character of their greatness. Their supremacy does not lie essentially in a greater thought-power or... The religious poetry of the later Indian tongues has for us fervours of poetic revelation which in the great classics are absent, even though no mediaeval poet can rank in power with Valmiki and Kalidasa. The modern literatures of Europe commonly fall short of the Greek perfection of harmony and form, but they give us what the greatest Greek poets had not and could not have. And Page 39 ...
... Urvasie and The Hero and the Nymph Was Love and Death your first achievement in blank verse, or did a lot of trial and experiment precede it? Was the brilliant success of your translation from Kalidasa its forerunner? There was no trial or experiment—as I wrote, I did not proceed like that,—I put down what came, changing afterwards, but there too only as it came. At that time I had no theories... with it and rejected it. I made also some translations Page 223 from the Sanskrit (in blank verse and heroic verse); but I don't remember to what you are referring as the translations of Kalidasa. Most of all that has disappeared into the unknown in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career. 4 July 1933 The Hero and the Nymph and Baji Prabhou It is curious how you repeatedly ...
... row come Dante, Kalidasa; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton. In the third stands in solitary grandeui:Goethe.1 Those in the first- row have supreme imaginative originality and expressive power and creative genius, the widest scope and the largest amount of work. Those in the second are a little wllnting in cine or other of the required qualifications. Dante and · Kalidasa. would have gone ...
... the waking state and brought down to transfigure earth-existence. But before he retired from public life, he had already written, besides a large number of shorter poems and some translations from Kalidasa and Bhartrihari, two perfecdy admirable narratives in blank verse which were published several years later in book-form. Both of these are Indian in matter and spirit, and the shorter pieces... with transience, nor by death he ends , Or again, relish the psychological subtlety of word and rhythm, where to the essentially Shakespearean note is added a sensuous felicity peculiar to Kalidasa: "Priyumvada!" He cried, and at that well-loved sound there dawned With overwhelming sweetness miserable Upon his mind the old delightful times When he had called her ...
... so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourself – ma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the ...
... Panchtantra and Hitopadesh and Jataka stories; b) History of Sanskrit drama with special reference to (i) Bharata Muni and Abhinavagupta (ii) famous Sanskrit dramas prior to Kalidasa; c) Kalidasa: his poetry and drama; d) Post-Kalidasian drama; e) Katha Sarit Sagar; f) Use of Prakrit in Sanskrit dramas; g) Bare outline of the great stories and ...
... so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourself— ma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad ...
... truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much... cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the still small voice.1 Thus, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit 1 Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. ...
... that is no reason why the atrocious Nadir Shah's picture should be banished from the domain of art. In the pen of Kalidasa is found the spiritual description of sex-appeal. If this picture Page 72 proves tendentious to some readers, then, is the fault to be ascribed to Kalidasa the poet? His very purpose was to give expression to this idea. Under certain circumstances this idea may prove ...
... lucid in intuition, while its character or "nature" reveals itself poignant and intimate through inspiration. One is the formative force, the other the kinetic or executive. The following line of Kalidasa is an embodied figure of truth and beauty: Page 76 The fir trees shiver in the sprays cast by the descending torrents of the Bhagirathi. While these lines of Shakespeare – ... The shard-bone beetle with his drowsy hum Hath rung night's yawning peal... bring before our mind the sportive dance of truth and beauty. The rhythmic swinging movement as described by Kalidasa more dearly reveals and fixes a static form; the picture that floats on the horizon of our mind through the lines of Shakespeare seems to fling far the waves of a dynamic movement. In a way, the ...
... me from it all. Pilot eternal, friend unknown embraced, O, take me to thy shoreless self at last. 103 The most ambitious, perhaps, of the verse translations are from Kalidasa. The rendering of Meghadutam in terza rima has so far not been recovered, but one hopes against hope it will be. The Hero and the Nymph, a verse rendering of Kalidasa's Vikramorvasie, was first... in 1911, and there is no better version—or one as good— in English. The prose patches are racy, and the blank verse is supple, full of modulations, and proves equal to the demands made upon it by Kalidasa. The scene in which the hero, Pururavas, moves distraught because of separation from Urvasie, is a prolonged improvisation, and there are echoes of Lear in the storm-scene: Page 46 ...
... ancient India was for every student and not for the exceptional few, and it implied, not a tasting of many subjects after the modern plan, but the thorough mastery of all. The original achievement of a Kalidasa accomplishing the highest in every line of poetic creation is so incredible to the European mind that it has been sought to cleave that mighty master of harmonies into a committee of three. Yet it ...
... allusions and incidents evidencing a moved delight in the painted form and beauty of colour and the appeal both to the decorative sense and to the aesthetic emotion occur not only in the later poetry of Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti and other classical dramatists, but in the early popular drama of Bhasa and earlier still in the epics and in the sacred books of the Buddhists. The absence of any actual creations of ...
... yet with much attention to completeness of detail? Of her spiritual and philosophic achievement there can be no real question. They stand there as the Himalayas stand upon the earth in the phrase of Kalidasa, pṛthivyā iva mānadaṇḍaḥ , "as if earth's measuring rod," mediating still between earth and heaven, measuring the finite, casting their plummet far into the infinite, plunging their extremities into ...
... freshness and greatness and pulse of life, a simplicity of strength and beauty that makes of them quite another kind than the elaborately constructed literary epics of Virgil or Milton, Firdausi or Kalidasa. This peculiar blending of the natural breath of an early, heroic, swift and vigorous force of life with a strong development and activity of the ethical, the intellectual, even the philosophic mind ...
... kinship between these two very widely separated great ages of poetry, though there was never any possibility of contact between that earlier oriental and this later occidental work,—the dramas of Kalidasa and some of the dramatic romances of Shakespeare, plays like the Sanskrit Seal of Rakshasa and Toy-Cart and Elizabethan historic and melodramatic pieces, the poetry of the Cloud-Messenger and ...
... good critic in England as well as a poet, one too whose attitude towards myself and my work had been consistently adverse, yet Page 347 enthusiastically praised my version and said if Kalidasa could be translated at all, it was only so that he could be translated. This imprimatur of an expert may perhaps be weighed against the discouraging criticism of Mendonҫa. The comment on my translation ...
... according to Sri Aurobindo, may be classified: subtle-physical mind (as in Homer and Chaucer, where the inner imaginative response is mostly to external gesture, movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate or vehement, of sensation, passion, emotion is directly expressed); intellectual mind (as in Vyasa, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante and Milton, where the ...
... greatness of Shakespeare and Spenser." 4 After marking the frequent poetic perfection not only of the great Elizabethans but also of Indian poets of a similar inspiration of the Life-spirit, like Kalidasa, Sri Aurobindo puts his finger on the weak spot in the new manifestation: "A poetry of spiritual vision and the sense of things behind life and above the 1. The Future Poetry, Ed. 1972, ...
... poetry, a legiti-macy is given to express this Ananda by laughter also while we are dealing with the work of poets. Even the Gods are said to laugh — they who are the masters of the Spirit's Delight. Kalidasa charac-terises the whiteness of Mount Kailasa as the eternal laughter of a God. And Homer's Gods are constantly breaking into laughter over the follies of men. Aeschylus, one of the greatest of the ...
... genius is more rich: Phanopoeia rather than Logopoeia is the Indian tendency in poetry. I am sure there would have been quite an opulence of imagery in place of the bare statement of Simonides if Kalidasa had felt a rhythmic relationship with Leonidas and written the epitaph. Of course, Vyasa is an exception among Indian poets. Sri Aurobindo has considered him a great master of bare strength. Among ...
... While we are about Bacon we may quote what Sri Aurobindo says in another context - the discussion of "Sight" as "the essential poetic gift" which renders Homer, Shake-speare, Dante, Valmiki, Kalidasa supreme poets. "There is often more thought in a short essay of Bacon's than in a whole play of Shakespeare's, but not even a hundred cryptograms can make him the author of the dramas; for, as he ...
... but infallible fantasy. Out of His infinite personality He creates all these characters & their inevitable actions & destinies. So it is with every divine creator,—with Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Kalidasa. It is perfectly true that each has his own style of language & creation, his own preferred system or harmony of the poetic Art, just as the creator of this universe has fashioned it in a particular ...
... refreshment of an hour, an accompaniment or diversion in their constant pursuit of the recognised ideal to which they are wedded." Urvasie is the fairest of the Apsaras—and Sri Aurobindo, unlike Kalidasa, does not fail to present her as she has been pictured by Hindu mythology. Two fine passages may be Page 339 pointed out in this connection. One is the passage in which Pururavus ...
... World-Soul's venture across the ages to revel here and now the arcade Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpieces of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super-Vyasan rarity—the Gita—in the midst of the Mah ā bh ā rata. But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination, have their own ...
... type: he had read in them as typically Indian and typically un-English a luxuriant effeminacy, a backboneless love-reverie on a rich divan. How far the epic Valmiki and Vyasa or even the voluptuous Kalidasa with his bold imagination and firm shaping hand could be charged with these so-called Indian qualities is a question merely y requiring to be asked in order to be at once brushed aside. Nor did ...
... the soul of it is divine with a Page 375 human mask; the mystical poet's work is the unmasking of the divine Spirit in that divine body." 41 Great poets like Kalidasa and Shakespeare have given poetry a body that is divine, but the substance of the experience-field is human. However the human is not the negation of the Divine; in the Vedantic vision all is ...
... from mere mind: they worked towards an inner illumination which can only be regarded as profoundly spiritual. And the very epochs most coloured by the sensuous approach, like the epoch of the poet Kalidasa, has still a deep instinct of Dharma and an intellectual assent to it. Dharma is not simply religion; it is the inherent law of things, making naturally for collective harmony and stability as ...
... tradition and cultures of the East and the West and some of their principal languages, and he had imbibed the literature and the poetry of their epics and lyrics, Homer and Shelley as well as Vyasa and Kalidasa. He admired Plato greatly and classical Greek culture as a whole – “where living itself was an education” – witness his essay on Heraclitus and the four thousand hexameters of his unfinished epic ...
... before long, he would be able to write articles and deliver speeches in Bengali. And he learned Sanskrit, the language that gave him access to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana , to the plays of Kalidasa, to the Upanishads and the Bhagavat Gita — to the age-old wisdom of India and its sanatana dharma , ‘the eternal religion’. Up until then Aurobindo had been an indifferent agnostic, and he ...
... of Sanskrit, of which the elementary notions, along with those of Bengali, had been part of the I.C.S. curriculum in England. Thus he read much secular Sanskrit literature, especially the works of Kalidasa, the pre-eminent poet of the golden age of Sanskrit. He translated his plays Meghaduta and Vikramorvasie, later published under the title The Hero and the Nymph. And it is self-evident that ...
... On Thoughts and Aphorisms Aphorism - 507 507—Kalidasa says in a daring image that the snow-rocks of Kailasa are Shiva's loud world-laughters piled up in utter whiteness and pureness on the mountain- tops. It is true; and when their image falls on the heart, then the world's cares melt away like the clouds below into their real nothingness. ...
... researchers have postulated times different from mine, but I don't believe anybody has really suggested, as you say, 250 B.C. as the date. You draw my attention to the article "The Pandyas and the date of Kalidasa" in the March 1994 Mother India, p. 191. But you are mixing up the poem Mahabharata and the Bharata War whose story it recounts. The author of this article is talking of the poem and not of ...
... World-Soul's venture across the ages to revel here and now the arcade Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpieces of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super-Vyasan rarity - the Gita - in the midst of the Mahabharata. But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination, have their own ...
... clear evidence of a most unexpected kind. In the course of reading the proofs of the Centenary Edition of his works I came across an early writing, entitled "Some Selected Notes", on an epic by Kalidasa. Sri Aurobindo quotes a commentator on Kalidasa's mention of peacocks. The commentator gives an interpretation which says that peacocks are not attached to their environment. Sri Aurobindo rules ...
... source of 200,215 Integral Yoga. See yoga intellect bright and dark 307 intelligence 82,215 intuition 235 Overmind 323,347 Iqbal 70 K Kabir 126 Kalidasa 182,205,216,218 Katha Upanishad 115 kavayah satyaśhrutah 184 Kavi 163 Kazantzakis, Nicos 60,213 Keats 18,197,336 knowledge Agni and 306 lustrous lid and 36,37,311 ...
... Mookerji, Ancient India, map facing p. 484. 6.Sircar, Select Inscriptions, p. 390, fn. 4. 7."Kusan Chroniten und Hephthalite", Klin (1933), p. 345. 8. Cf. Buddhaprakash's "Kalidasa and the Hunas", The Journal of Indian History, Vol. I XXXV, Part I. Page 276 "Maka". The Irānian ring of the last two is clear. "Maka" occurs even as a place-name: a south-eastern ...
... the mainstream of Indian life and literature even as he learnt several native languages including classical Sanskrit. Not only did he study the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, works of Kalidasa and other authors; he also mastered Vedic, Upanishadic and other Scriptural writings to the extent that he wrote extensively on these subjects and issues concerned with them. In fact we see on them ...
... was recognised as a good critic in England as well as a poet, one too whose attitude towards myself and my work had been consistently adverse, yet enthusiastically praised my version and said if Kalidasa could be translated at all, it was only so that he could be translated. This imprimatur of an expert may perhaps be weighed against the discouraging criticism of Mendonca. The comment on my translation ...
... World-Soul's venture across the ages to revel here and now the arcade Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpiece; of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super-Vyasan rarity — the Gita — in the midst of the Mahabharata. But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination, have their own ...
... that here matters the most. Not that all great Sanskrit poetry is so, nor do all spiritual compositions give us such poetry; but Valmiki and Vyasa are at first poets as much as they are, unlike Kalidasa, Rishis and the underlying aesthesis of their poetry is overhead. The first quality of this Rishihood we recognise in Vyasa is his wonderful sense of detachment, even while remaining in ...
... exquisite blending of the Greek and Elizabethan, but Sri Aurobindo's poetry, epic in range, is almost entirely Greek. Sanskrit literature, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, may have opened a new world of vision and taste and supplied him with new subject-matter to transmute and make his own, but in flawless power and self-sufficiency, specially of the later ...
... reached my desk, I. was horrified to see the state of my torn books. I lifted these books to put them in good order. These were my favourite books,—books of Tagore and Whitman, of Shakespeare and Kalidasa, Ramayana and Mahabharata. And beneath them all were a few torn pages of the Gita. As I took these pages in my hand, I tumbled and sat down in my chair. I felt exhausted and, in no time, went to sleep ...
... of Human Body Parvati's Tapasya Nachiketas Taittiriya Upanishad Sri Rama Sri Krishna in Brindavan Nala and Damayanti Raghuvamsham of Kalidasa Svapna Vasavadattam The Siege of Troy Gods & the World Homer and the Iliad -Sri Aurobindo and Ilion Socrates Alexander the Great The ...
... highest effort of which he was capable. The teacher varied his method with each pupil, and education was devised to suit each individual's need of growth and development. In Abhijnana Shakuntalam, Kalidasa gives a beautiful portrayal of the Ashram of Kanva, a great Rishi revered by common people and kings alike. In this Ashram there were both boys and girls, and while the atmosphere was surcharged with ...
... I am your slave": as soon as the Lord of the Moon had uttered these words, she forgot the pain of her arduous efforts. For indeed, hardship when rewarded gives birth to renewed vigour. from: Kalidasa, Kumarasambhava, 5th canto Page 31 × . See glossary at the end of the text. ...
... Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master Chapter 3 On the Disciples' Humour Kalidasa, the great Sanskrit poet, once addressed this plea to Saraswati, the goddess of learning: "Arasikesu rasasya nivedanam, sirasi ma likha, ma likha, ma likhaV - "To offer rasa to one who is devoid of humour, let this not be my fate, never, never!" Yes, it is not so ...
... Letters on Literature and Poetry 1949 Life-Literature-Yoga 1952 Conversations of the Dead, 1909-1910 1951 The Phantom Hour (a short story), 1910-1912 1951 Kalidasa, 2 Vols., 1898-1904 1929 Vyasa and Valmiki, 1893-1905 1956 The Future Poetry, 'Arya', December 1917 -July 1920 1953 Collected Poems and Plays, 2 Vols. 1942 Poems ...
... nature, the physical propensities and the sense-objects is less prevalent in our country. The teeming wealth of sensuality that is found ¹ The highest heaven. Page 160 in Kalidasa and Jayadeva has hardly any parallel in the literature of any other country. But the oriental approach is quite different from the occidental. The consciousness and the attitude with which Europe ...
... The dishes and utensils were not of brass, they were all earthenware vessels, I believe. And the washing was done in the waters of the pond. What kind of pond it was could only be described by a Kalidasa, but perhaps some idea could be had from Bankimchandra's description of the Bhima tank: "The dark shades of the palms dancing to the rhythms of the dark waters" and so on. That is to say, it had more ...
... the anustup metre, has a clarity and edge of its own, a packed neatness and a crystalline power of suggestion; and a succession of great poets—Valmiki, Vyasa, Page 337 Kalidasa—have found in it almost an ideal, at least a wonderfully elastic, medium for poetic expression, inexhaustible in its potentialities, rather comparable to blank verse in the Age of Shakespeare or ...
... The dishes and utensils were not of brass, they were all earthenware vessels, I believe. And the washing was done in the waters of the pond. What kind of pond it was could only be described by a Kalidasa, but perhaps some idea, could be had from Bankimchandra's description of the Bhima tank: "the dark shades of the palms dancing to the rhythms of the dark waters" and so on... . That is to say, ...
... chiselled and polished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening age—Vyasa and Valmiki. Upama Kdliddsasya— Kalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and elemental, brief and instinct with a vast ...
... Indra 31 Ionian 52 J Japan 92 Jeanne d'Arc 48 Jules Romains 39 Jules Supervielle 55 Juno 34 Jupiter 32 Jouve 76, 77 K Kali 78 Kalidasa 17, 18, 27, 32 Kanhu 83 Kanwa 8 King Lear 20 King Zeus 34 Krishna 31, 78 Kronos 4 Kumbhodara 17 Kutsa 8 L Lalan the Fakir 84 Laocoon 18 ...
... gods to come over to their side in the struggle. We have heard of the Raghus whose war-chariots drove right up to the heaven from the earth to come to the help of the gods- anakam ratham vartmanm (Kalidasa). Asuras however have a greater sway over man in a natural manner, because of man's earthly constitution. For the natural man is moved and controlled mostly by his external mind and vital; over him ...
... say, smell. So you can hear earth's vibrations, you can touch it, see it, taste it—for some earth has a very savoury taste—but its own special quality is smell: it is odorous, it is sweet-scented. Kalidasa speaks with ecstasy of the strange scent that the earth emits when the fresh rains fall upon it. So, the five senses open out to the five elements, each sense linked to its own element, each ...
... did not change. During this period many subjects were taught and the system was much more elaborate. Disciple : What is the classical time you refer to ? Sri Aurobindo : The time of Kalidasa, for instance. You see the subjects women had to study in those days. You will see there were so many arts and accomplishments they had to learn. Then there was a time when Buddhist Universities ...
... I will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis must have reached your ears-Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I do not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom Kalidasa speaks in his Shakuntala), Madhuchchanda. All of them are seers of mantra, hearers of mantra, creators of mantra; all of them occupy a large place in the Veda. Each one of them has his speciality ...
... offerings, to whom– kasmai devāya? One need not be startled at the answer: it is the toadstool. But the mushroom growth assumes a respectable figure in the guise of its Sanskrit name, chatraka. Kalidasa did one better. His magic touch gave the insignificant flora a luminous robe – śilīndhra, a charming name. The great poet tells us that the earth is not barren or sterile – kartum yat ca mahīm ...
... seem to be emanations of Beauty, Harmony, Love – Mahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship Page 209 of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspirations seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and the detailed surety ...
... could be more suitable to an epic than the career of Napoleon? It is surprising—the large number of epic poets in Sanskrit. The very language is epic. Valmiki, Vyasa, even classical poets like Kalidasa, Bharavi and others have all achieved epic heights. NIRODBARAN: Has your own epic Savitri anything to do with the Mahabharata story? SRI AUROBINDO: Not really. Only the clue is taken from M ...
... and who marks at the same time the height to which its creative genius has attained or perhaps can ever attain. Homer and Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare, Goethe and Camoens, Firdausi in Persian and Kalidasa in classical Sanskrit, are such names – numina, each being the presiding deity, the godhead born full-armed out of the poetic consciousness of the race to which he belongs. Even in the case ...
... loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose ...
... polished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this .respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening age – Vyasa and Valmiki. Upamā Kālidāsasya --Kalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and elemental, brief and instinct with a vast ...
... I pursued these studies, I continued writing poetry. Until then I had drawn my inspiration from western, often Greek, sources. But now the literature of my country - the Mahabharata, the dramas of Kalidasa and other Sanskrit masterpieces - opened up new creative possibilities for me. For example. Love and Death, Urvasie, Savitri are all drawn from episodes in the Mahabharata." "Did you then spend ...
... smell. So you can hear earth's vibrations, you can touch it, see it, taste it – for some earth has a very savoury taste – but its own special quality is smell: it is odorous, it is sweet-scented. Kalidasa speaks with ecstasy of the strange scent that the earth emits when the fresh rains fall upon it. So, the five senses open out to the five elements, each sense linked to its own element, each sense ...
... sometimes found us awake! I am sure that it was Sri Aurobindo's radiant Presence which was the source of all our energy and kept us fit as a fiddle, in spite of many days of scanty sleep. I have read in Kalidasa that during Shiva's deep meditation, a constant stream of energy — Tapas — went out to fill his two attendants to enable them to keep vigil over the world of Nature. Even after the Mother's departure ...
... Ilion, 399 India, 32, 106, 143, 196, 269, 289-90, 338, 357, 361 Indra, 275, 371 Italy, 196 JACOB, 121 Japan, 54, 78, 196 Job, 305 Jupiter, 328 KALI, 80, 249, 297 Kalidasa, 278, 390-1 – Hero and the Nymph, 390 – Vikramorvasie, 39 1n Krishna, 134, 183, 206-7, 350 228, 297, LAKSHMI, 249 Lear, 391 Leo X, 196 Lindberg, 316 MAETERLINCK ...
... third series.- 1st ed. 1949 Life-Literature-Yoga .- 1st ed. 1952 Conversations of the Dead, 1909-1910.- 1st ed. 1951 The Phantom Hour (a short story), 1910-1912.- 1st ed. 1951 Kalidasa, 2 volumes, 1893-1905 (Baroda).- 1st ed. 1929 Vyasa and Valmiki, 1893-1905 (Baroda).- 1st ed. 1956 Page 322 The Future Poetry, 'Arya' Dec. 1917-July 1920.- 1st ed. 1953 Collected ...
... Sanskrit literature, and presently to familiarise himself with Marathi and Gujarati as well. He was thus able by and by to read and appreciate the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the masterpieces of Kalidasa, the shatakas of Bhartrihari, not to mention the classics of modem Bengali literature. Sri Aurobindo was in this manner happily restored to his great cultural heritage, and never again would he ...
... the dance choreography, in addition to the direction and everything else connected with the programme. I could not say anything to Her. In the midst of lines from such luminaries like Sri Aurobindo, Kalidasa, Rabindranath, music by such talented musicians like Bhubaneswar Mishra, Raghunath Panigrahi, Maya Mitra and Sahana-di, Tarit-da and Sunil-da, I just wondered how my ordinary dance-compositions would ...
... of Time it flowed, ever widening, ever enriched. Of the few epics that have come down to us, two are written in Sanskrit: the Ramayana of Valmiki, and the Mahabharata of Vyasa. In the hands of Kalidasa at a later age, it became a thing of grace. But Sanskrit was not the language of poets only, of philosophers only, it lent itself equally well to the needs of science and mathematics: astronomy, astrology ...
... source of inspiration appears in the title of some of the poems, and it has helped perhaps the tendency to lavishness. Sanskrit poetry, even when it clothes itself in the regal gold and purple of Kalidasa, or flows in the luscious warmth and colour of Jayadeva, keeps still a certain background of massive restraint, embanks itself in a certain firm solidity; the later poetry of the regional languages ...
... extent for the loss of the ancient height and amplitude. While this kind of narrative writing goes back to the epics, another seems to derive its first shaping and motive from the classical poems of Kalidasa, Bharavi and Magha. A certain number take for their subject, like that earlier poetry, episodes of the Mahabharata or other ancient or Puranic legends, but the classical and epic manner has disappeared ...
... spiritual content of the earlier Indian mind, but it is still an Indian mind which in these delicate creations absorbs the West Asian influence, and lays stress on the sensuous as before in the poetry of Kalidasa, but uplifts it to a certain immaterial charm, rises often from the earth without quite leaving it into the magical beauty of the middle world and in the religious mood touches with a devout hand ...
... and modern Europe. The people and the civilisation that count among their great works and their great names the Veda and the Upanishads, the mighty structures of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti and Bhartrihari and Jayadeva and the other rich creations of classical Indian drama and poetry and romance, the Dhammapada and the Jatakas, the Panchatantra, Tulsidas, Vidyapati and ...
... or the most noble sublimity." This is justification enough to take for themes these legends and myths. But there are other aspects of 'influence' also. From the Indian tradition Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are present in Savitri as far as possible in the genius of the English language. Both inspiration and vision of the early Vedic poets have left their mark on Savitri; but it is the Upanishads ...
... le brilliance of the Supreme. She is the Word that explains, since Vak is vimarśa. The Divine Mother is Vak. She is the true knowledge which explains the Supreme in the right way. That is why Kalidasa compared Parvati to the Word that explains the Meaning which is Parameshwara: vāgarthāviva sampriktau vāgarthapratipathtaye: jagatah pitarau vande pārvati parameśwarau. The Divine Mother ...
... the Aitereya Upanishad: Yea, the Spirit brooded over Him and of Him thus brooded over the mouth broke forth, as when an egg is hatched and breaks; 17 Ibid., pp. 108-09. 18 Kalidasa, Malavikagnimitra (ed. paranjape), pune, 1918. 19 Rig Veda Samhita,. X129. Page 247 from the mouth broke Speech and of Speech fire was bom. The nostrils broke forth ...
... that here matters the most. Not that all great Sanskrit poetry is so, nor do all spiritual compositions give us such poetry; but Valmiki and Vyasa are at first poets as much as they are, unlike Kalidasa, Rishis and the underlying aesthesis of their poetry is overhead. The first quality of this Rishi-hood we recognise in Vyasa is his wonderful sense of detachment, even while remaining in the midst ...
... right of epic to the Indian Mahabharata, Ramayana and Bhagavata Page 92 of the Sanskrit language and Shahanama of the Persian besides literary epics like the Raghuvaṃśa of Kalidasa and Jānakiharanam of Kumardas. The Indian epics represent "the ancient historical or legendary traditional history turned to creative use as a significant mythus or tale expressive of some spiritual ...
... written? Is there a mechanism, a technique, a guiding principle of aesthetic creation which can be summoned by the writer to help him in this respect? And is not that demand as wrong as suggesting that Kalidasa or Shakespeare follow classroom texts for writing a poetic composition or drama? A poet with great art at his command has to be either a rich and ready instrument to receive genuine inspiration, ...
... the flower oppressed, So love from thy bruised bosom, Urvasie... According to Mr. Ezekiel, normal critical categories are irrelevant to such monstrosities of phrase. Much of the young Kalidasa would receive short shrift at this rate. From the early period we may cull also a few locutions that look forward to Sri Aurobindo the mystic to be. There is that strange vision: Time ...
... the name is possible. Sri Aurobindo: What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is full of images? Then on April 1st he wrote something about Virgil and myself, so I asked him: Question: I hope you ...
... His early verse takes much pleasure in English flowers and landscapes and there is an unforgettable prolonged revelling in the memory of the English countryside in an essay by him on translating Kalidasa. Throughout his life English literature - English poetry in particular - was a living presence, and a speech in Baroda evinces an appreciative recollection of the temper of "liberal education" at ...
... reveal Page 54 here and now the arcane Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpieces of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super- Vyasan rarity — the Gita — in the midst of the Mahābhārata . But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination, have their ...
... before these things can be done. Because all that is not yet done, is not a ground for being dissatisfied with the present work done. I hold before myself the example of Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Kalidasa, Shakespeare—of all the great poets. I am afraid this is all ambition. Ambition has to be outgrown, if one wants to succeed in sadhana. The will to use the energies for the best, not for ego but ...
... 13th 16) Vyapti from Saurin of the idea of making the tea. Immediately after I heard him talk of it, & a minute after he came and made it. Feb 14ṭḥ 17) Memory by inspiration. The passages of Kalidasa written out & translated by me a year and a half ago, not since read or remembered, were again read two or three times in the morning without particular attention to the words except to one or two ...
... ." 505) O Aristophanes of the universe, thou who watchest thy world and laughest sweetly to thyself, wilt thou not let me too see with divine eyes and share in thy worldwide laughters? 506) Kalidasa says in a daring image that the snow-rocks of Kailasa are Shiva's loud world-laughters piled up in utter whiteness & pureness on the mountaintops. It is true; and when their image falls on the heart ...
... for poetic light and rapture. This intensity belongs to no particular style, depends on no conceivable formula of diction. It may be the height of the decorative imaged style as often we find it in Kalidasa or Shakespeare; it may be that height of bare and direct expression where language seems to be used as a scarcely felt vaulting board for a leap into the infinite; it may be the packed intensity of ...
... not be. 18 February 1936 What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not Page 165 full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyasa or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? 18 February 1936 Poetry does not consist only in images or fine phrases. When Homer writes simply "Sing, Goddess, the baleful ...
... the United States ] of (1) The Life Divine (2) the Essays on the Gita (3) The Synthesis of Yoga (Yoga of Works) (4) Superman (and other essays) (5) The Hero and the Nymph (with essay on Kalidasa). As regards the Collected Poems numerous corrections have to be made in Perseus and the essay on classical metres, but as these are mainly misprints there is no objection to their being made ...
... short, but well-formed and of symmetrical limbs. This highly beautiful and mighty Rama is supremely intelligent, and of eloquent speech. Centuries later, Rama was described again by the poet Kalidasa echoing Valmiki's description: Young, with arms long as the pole of the yoke, with sturdy shoulders, with a chest broad as a door panel, and a full broad neck, Raghu was ...
... mutuality and unity, each is perfected by the other and creativity is endless. This present monograph is entitled Parvati's Tapasya. It presents an episode of the life of the goddess as recounted by Kalidasa in his epic Kumarasambhava. The great poet describes one of the greatest instruments used by ancient Indian seekers in their quest, the method of tapasya, here undertaken by Parvati herself for ...
... hardly any creation worth the name is possible. What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? After what you have seen of my English poetry, is there any chance for me? Certainly I have looked at the Ox. Dictionary ...
... subtle – even in a certain sense as deep as those of modern humanity; but they were finished and completed things, net and clear and full of power. The simple unambiguous virile line that we find in Kalidasa or in the Ajanta, in Homer or in the Parthenon, no longer comes out of the hands of a modern artist. Our delight is in the complexity and turbidity of the composition; we are not satisfied with richness ...
... something of Supernature. He has no imagination, either. He says Valmiki has depicted Ayodhya as a rich, luxurious city. SRI AUROBINDO: Should it have been described as a poor village? Then if he read Kalidasa he would squirm with agony. PURANI: For such people everything should be simple, bare, austere and poor. I don't understand why poverty should be made to appear so great. SRI AUROBINDO: Because ...
... full-length span of action and achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma and Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahmacharya and Garhasthya. The integral ideal was epitomized by Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the Raghus: They devoted themselves to study in their boyhood, in youth they pursued the objects of life; when old they took to spiritual austerities ...
... Jehovah, 220 Johnson, Samuel, 212 Junkerism, 88, 89 Juno, 220 KABALA, 151, 214 Kahler, Erich, 358-9 -Man the Measure, 358 Kali, 327 Kalidasa, 8, 55, 136, 197 Kant, 326, 345 Kanwa, 247 Keats, 120, 194 Kepler, 301, 308 Khilafat, 51 Kierkegaard, 362, 375-6 Koran, the, 70 ...
... history with our present. d) All that pre-eminently constitutes India as a nation has been expressed continuously through the Sanskrit language. Three greatest national poets, Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa have written only in Sanskrit, and it may be asked as to how, without the knowledge of Sanskrit, at least at the minimum level, one can hope to enter into the spirit that is so vibrant in the writings ...
... with much attention to completeness of detail? Of her spiritual and philosophic achievements there can be no real question. They stand there as the Himalayas stand upon the earth, in the phrase of Kalidasa, prithivya iva mandandah, "as if earth's measuring rod", mediating still between earth and heaven, measuring the finite, casting their plummet far into the infinite, plunging their extremities into ...
... universal fraternity, the sense of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, this cannot be achieved if our students do not have a direct contact with texts of the Vedas and the Upanishads, of Vyasa, Valmiki and Kalidasa, of the great Indian scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, linguists and artists or of great men and women of action, and if this is not coupled with an original acquaintance of some ...
... educated Indians of today; the sheer poetic excellence of the Veda should have merited the full attention of the whole nation; even the three great national poets of Indian history, Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa, and their works are hardly known and only very briefly mentioned in our history books; the great achievements which were registered by ancient Indians in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, natural ...
... Chandragupta Maurya (v) Ashoka III (i) Kushans and Kanishka (ii) Chandragupta, Samundragupta and Vikramaditya (iii) Gupta Period: the Golden Age of India (iv) Kalidasa, Varahamihira, Aryabhatt, Brahmgupta (v) Fa-Hieun's account of India IV (i) Harsha Vardhana (ii) Huen Tasang's account of India V (i) The coming of Islam ...
... in the history of English literature. Sri Aurobindo has also written five dramas, Perseus the Deliverer, Rodogune, Viziers of Bassora, Vasavdutta and Eric. He has also translated two plays of Kalidasa from the original Sanskrit into English. When Sri Aurobindo withdrew in 1926 into his room for concentrating in the required way on the 'Supramental Yoga', Mother organised and developed his Ashram ...
... Socrates Sri Krishna in Brindavan Sri Rama The beloved and victorious Hero Arguments for the Existence of God Taittiriya Upanishad Selected Episodes from Raghuvarhsam of Kalidasa Other titles published by SAIIER and Shubhra Ketu Foundation The Aim of Life The Good Teacher and the Good Pupil Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body HOME ...
... Excellence of the Human Body •Parvati's Tapasya •Nachiketas •Taittiriya Upanishad •Sri Rama •Sri Krishna in Vrindavan •Nala and Damayanti •Episodes from Raghuvamsham of Kalidasa •The Siege of Troy •Homer and the Iliad-Sri Aurobindo and Ilion •Gods and the World •Socrates •Crucifixion •Alexander the Great •Joan of Arc •Catherine the ...
... the Human Body •Parvati's Tapasya •Nachiketas •Taittiriya Upanishad •Sri Rama •Sri Krishna in Vrindavan •Nala and Damayanti •Episodes from Raghuvamsham of Kalidasa •The Siege of Troy •Homer and the Iliad-Sri Aurobindo and Ilion •Gods and the World •Socrates •Crucifixion •Alexander the Great m •Joan of Arc •Catherine ...
... worth the name is possible. SRI AUROBINDO: What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is full of images? Then on April 1st he wrote something about Virgil and myself, so I asked him: QUESTION: I hope you didn't ...
... worth the name is possible. SRI AUROBINDO: What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? MYSELF: What thinkest Thou of this anapaest poem, Sir, Written by my humble self? Pray, does it stir Any soft ...
... full-length span of action and achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma and Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahma- charya and Garhasthya. The integral ideal was epitomized by Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the Raghus: They devoted themselves to study in their boyhood, in youth they pursued the objects of life; when old they took to spiritual austerities ...
... 118 Italy, 253 JAPAN, 228, 253 Jeanne d'Arc, 192 Jerusalem, 115, 122-3 Joyce, 88 Jouve,216-17 Judas, 120 Jung, III Juno, 182 Jupiter, 108, 180 KALI, 24n., 218 Kalidasa, 39, 85, 98, 176, 181 -Shakuntala, 162 Kant, 246 Kanwa, 162 lOIn., 162, 170, Kasyapa, 133 Keats, 68, 78n., 98 -"Ode on the Poets", 78n Ken, 68n -"A Morning Hymn", 68n ...
... fore, The tender paddy plants move to and fro With no respite. The dance, the rhythmic movement have given whatever form beauty has. On the whole we can describe the goddess of poetry of Kalidasa as standing, in his own words, 'immobile like a movement depicted on a picture,' but in the creation of Rabindranath we see that 'the singing nymph passes by breaking the trance –.' In every ...
... 246 Iran, 46 Isaie, 394 JACOB, 397 Jagai-Madhai, 65, 73 Janaka,21 Japan, 421 Jeanne d'Arc, 116, 118, 198 Jehovah, 46, 98 Jung, 134-5, 139, 147 Jupiter, 25 KALI, 383 Kalidasa,210 Kant, 137, 139, 389 Kanwa, Rishi, 151 Kinnara, 47 Krishna, 9, 58, 76, 82, 93, 101, 105, 112, 116, 161,317 Kurukshetra, 66, 109, 116 LAo- TSE, 134 Laplace, 370 Lazarus ...
... not that these lesser instruments are to be neglected in the creation of world-literature. Page 56 But they are to be seen from a higher, a transcendent plane. It is for this reason Kalidasa, a poet of physical joy and sensual pleasure, Valmiki, a poet of vital feeling and enchantment of the heart, and Vyasa, a poet of intellect and thinking power, are poets of all ages and countries ...
... its high status as a pan-Indian language and also as a language in which highest treasures of Indian systems of knowledge have been stored. The three greatest poets of India — Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa have written in Sanskrit, and just like no educated Englishman can be unread on the works of Shakespeare, no Indian should be unable to read the works of these great poets. In addition, provisions ...
... highest effort of which he was capable. The teacher varied his method with each pupil, and education was devised to suit each individual's need of growth and development. In Abhijnana Shakuntalam, Kalidasa gives a beautiful portrayal of the Ashram of Kanva, a great Rishi revered by common people and kings alike. In this Ashram there were both boys and girls, and while the atmosphere was surcharged ...
... criticisms on it. For, men endowed with the power of true appreciation of poetry are rarely found in the present generation. We are more familiar with the commentaries on the works of Shakespeare and Kalidasa than with their originals. However, to be at home in the central theme of the Vedas, the method that we should follow is: to proceed from the Page 71 known to the unknown. In ...
... Petrarch, Shelley or our Tagore seem to be emanations of Beauty, Harmony, Love—Mahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspiration seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and the detailed surety ...
... expression in poetic speech. At the very outset I shall speak of Sanskrit, the mother of languages which first gave voice to the Word, and here I shall take as its representative the great poet Kalidasa. You have no doubt heard about his Meghaduta. The whole of this Meghaduta is composed in a wonderful metrical form, and how sweet is the very name given to this metre, mandakranta; the name ...
... done my duty. And as to my decision, that would be unshaken, "as long as shone a sun and a moon", yavaccandra-divakarau. I was now reminded of the story of Parvati in the Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa. Mahadeva comes in disguise to beguile her mind. He says, "What you have set your heart on is but Page 329 a ghost, a goblin, a dirty creature. Is it meet to have such a low despicable ...
... side in the struggle. We have heard of the Raghus whose war chariots drove right up to heaven from the earth to come to the help of the Gods— Page 53 ā n ā kctm ratham vartman ā m (Kalidasa). The Asuras however have a greater sway over man in a natural manner because of man's earthly constitution. For the natural man is moved and controlled mostly by his external mind and vital; over ...
... will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis must have reached your ears —Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I do not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom Kalidasa speaks in his Shakuntala), Madhuchchanda. All of them are seers of mantra, hearers of mantra, creators of mantra; all of them occupy a large place in the Veda. Each one of them has his ...
... offerings, to whom— kasmai devāya? One need not be startled at the answer: it is the toadstool. But the mushroom growth assumes a respectable figure in the guise of its Sanskrit name, chatraka . Kalidasa did one better. His magic touch gave the insignificant flora a luminous robe- śilī ndhra , a charming name. The great poet tells us that the earth is not barren or sterile - kartum yat ca ...
... deny the right of epic to the Indian M ā h ā bh ā rata, R ā m ā yana and Bh ā gavata of the Sanskrit language and Sh ā han ā m ā of the Persian besides literary epics like the Raghuvanśa of Kalidasa and J ā nakiharanam of Kumardas. The Indian epics represent "the ancient historical or legendary traditional history turned to creative use as a significant mythus or tale expressive of some spiritual ...
... Prince of Edur (Ashram, 1961). Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (Ashram, 1995) The Future Poetry (Ashram, 1953). Vyasa and Valmiki (Ashram, 1956). Kalidasa (Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, 1929). Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda (Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, 1940). Heraclitus (Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, 1941). Hymns ...
... K.R. Srinivasa 29,46,415,421 Jacobi,Jolande272,273 James, William 13 Jones, Rufus M. 305,330 Joyce, James 267,428 Jung, C.G. 437 Kalidasa 46,52,340,341,374,376 Karmayogin 11-12 Kazantzakis, Nikos 330,377,398-408,436, 441,460,461 Keats, John 174,313,315,365 Kenner, Hugh 391-393 Knight ...
... Bengali. In the year 1895 the first collection of Sri Aurobindo's poems, Songs to Myrtilla , was published "for private circulation". Sri Aurobindo used to read Homer, Dante, the Mahabharata, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti, during this period. He instructed the Bombay firms Messrs Radhabai Atmaram Sagun and Messrs Thacker Spink & Co. to send him catalogues of new publications from which he would select ...
... where they remain for the rest of their lives. 1928 Publication of The Mother. February 16 Meeting with Rabindranath Tagore. 1929 April Publication of Kalidasa. 1930-1938 The limited correspondence with disciples begun after Sri Aurobindo's retirement in 1926 assumes very large proportions during this period. Much of it has been ...
... with money and also used his influence with some well-known people in Madras on Amrita's behalf. Amrita was able to take his matriculation. Sri Aurobindo sometimes used to read to him from Browning, Kalidasa, Shakespeare and the Mahabharata. At times he read his own poem Savitri and his drama Eric . Moni, Nolini and Saurin went to Bengal in February 1914. They returned in September. On 29 ...
... Aurobindo learnt Sanskrit from one Bhasker Shashtri Joshi. In fact Sri Aurobindo began Sanskrit in England and continued his studies at Baroda where he read the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, works of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti by himself. If he talked with anyone on the subject it was to get information and compare notes – not to learn the language. 3. He mentions Mohanpuri Goswami as one who gave ...
... Ashram block) where they remain for the rest of their lives. 1928 — Publication of The Mother. February 16 Meeting with Rabindranath Tagore. 1929 — April Publication of Kalidasa. 1930-1938 — The limited correspondence with disciples begun after Sri Aurobindo's retirement in 1926 assumes very large proportions during this period. Much of it has been collected and ...
... possible? How indeed had a change so catastrophic really come to pass? Having spiralled up to the peaks of divine endeavour in the Vedic and Upanishadic Ages, and in the Ages of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa, how had the curve of Indian civilisation been deflected from its high altitudes, how had its movements been strained lower and lower, even to be level with the rugged and forbidding sterility of ...
... “Kumarasambhavam” Pujalal was reported to have said that some critics do not consider the later cantos of Kalidasa's Kumarasambhavam (“Birth of the War-God”) to be his own. Sri Aurobindo: “They say so because these cantos are erotic But they are certainly Kalidasa's; that is my opinion. Poetically An are on the same level as the others but they seem inferior because they may be still ...
... of their appearance in the Karmayogin . The original titles are given. Some of these writings were later revised by Sri Aurobindo. Volume 1. Early Cultural Writings Two Pictures Kalidasa's Seasons Suprabhat: A Review Indian Art and an Old Classic The Brain of India The Revival of Indian Art The National Value of Art The Men that Pass Conversations of the Dead ...
... Translation of Prose into Poetry I think it is quite legitimate to translate poetic prose into poetry; I have done it myself when I translated The Hero and the Nymph on the ground that the beauty of Kalidasa's prose is best rendered by poetry in English, or at least that I found myself best able to render it in that way. Your critic's rule seems to me rather too positive; like all rules it may stand in ...
... Page 169 and then showing a weakness unworthy of the nation to which they belong and the work to which they have been called. OTHER WRITINGS BY SRI AUROBINDO IN THIS ISSUE Kalidasa's Seasons II: The Substance of the Poem The Katha Upanishad I.3 Anandamath: Prologue Page 170 ...
... cant and try, out of selfish and infidel fears, to thwart in the minds of the young the work which by these celebrations God has been doing. OTHER WRITINGS BY SRI AUROBINDO IN THIS ISSUE Kalidasa's Seasons III: Its Poetic Value The Katha Upanishad II.1 Anandamath I Suprabhat: A Review Page 177 ...
... which it is put and assumes the colour thereof. Milton's inner Being represents height, density, weight and seriousness. Dante's inner Being represents intensity, virility and Tapasya (askesis). Kalidasa's inner Being represents beauty, while that of the Upanishadic seers represents luminosity. The truth of the inner Being escapes both character and morality. It can be grasped only through one's ...
... perished." The way he said that made everyone burst into laughter. "But it is a pity I lost two translations of poems," Sri Aurobindo said more seriously. "One of them was a translation of Kalidasa's Meghaduta in terza rimas. It was rather well done." "Yes, indeed a pity," sympathized the poet in Nirod. "But the stories were nothing to speak of—except one. I can say something of this ...
... all my stories had been eaten away by white ants. So my future fame as a story-writer perished. (Laughter) But it is a pity I lost two translations of poems. One of them was a translation of Kalidasa's Meghaduta in terza rimas. It was rather well done. NIRODBARAN: Yes, indeed a pity. SRI AUROBINDO: But the stories were nothing to speak of except one. I can say something of this one because ...
... friendship and familiarity between us and now I am thus untimely called away to die." That is a perfectly human feeling, quite as possible, more easily possible, to an Indian than to a European (witness Kalidasa's Shakuntala ) and can very well be acceptable. But the turn given it in English is abrupt and bold though quite forcible and going straight home—in Bengali it may sound strange and not go home. If ...
... difference between the moderns and the ancients. For example, if a wasteland is taken for the subject-matter, then we do not look for the poet's account or his description of it as in the case of Kalidasa's Himalaya. If a wasteland could speak for itself, then the poet would be the organ of his speech, the poet could identify himself and be one with it. Similarly if 'hollow men' are the poet's theme ...
... unfinished, nor even because the power in it is not equally sustained and is too evidently running thinner and thinner as it proceeds, but because it could not have come to a successful completion. Kalidasa's Birth of the War-God was left unfinished, or finished by a very inferior hand, yet even in the fragment there is already a masterly totality of effect; there is the sense of a great and admirable ...
... into a varied vigorous originality mingles Paradise Lost most with the chief immediate influence - Stephen Phillips's Christ in Hades and Marpessa - and the principal background influence - Kalidasa's Vicramorvasie. And this blank verse is of particular interest because of a certain question raised by Sri Aurobindo in connection with Milton: "One might speculate on what we might have had if... the whole to develop from his early work are, to my mind, discoverable in Sri Aurobindo's Love and Death, written in his twenty-seventh year - discoverable everywhere except in those moments when Kalidasa's glorious voluptuousness comes to the fore. Of course, we cannot expect to illustrate our point by any passage very closely parallel in matter to anything in Paradise Lost. We can only make a suggestive ...
... couplet: Na dhanam na janam na sundarim Kavitam va Jagadisha kamaye Mama janmanishvare Bhavatad bhaktirahaituki tvayi. Page 37. "Pearls never... them": from Kalidasa's Kumarasam- bhavam: Na ratnamanvishyati mrigyate hi tat Saraswati — the Goddess of learning, art, music, etc. Page 42. "Even death ... dharma": from the Gita: Svadharme ...
... conscience. If you observe this dictum your path will be smooth and you will be happy.' He finished these words and got up. He went straight to his book case, and knowing my love for Sanskrit picked up Kalidasa's Shakuntala and Vikramorvasie and presented them to me as a token of his love. He also gave me / his book of poems: Songs to Myrtilla and another, Urvasie. I Page 222 ...
... him. It was to this person that in the first years of Sri Aurobindo's stay in Pondicherry when British political agents were still at work against him, the manuscript of his English translation of Kalidasa's Meghaduta ("The Cloud-Messenger") was given for safe-keeping. The work was kept at the bottom of a trunk. Unfortunately, white ants got interested in it and finished it off before any human could ...
... with the age. Urvasie is a poem of approximately 1,500 lines, and is divided into four cantos: the length and cast of a small epic like Paradise Regained. The story is substantially Kalidasa's still, but it is here rendered as a metrical romance in blank verse. Admirably proportioned, Urvasie is interspersed with many passages that evoke colour and sound with a compelling sureness... Urvasie on an epic scale almost, and also to underline what may be called its "national" significance; he accordingly made certain departures from the purely dramatic unfolding of the theme in Kalidasa's Vikramorvasie. The Urvasie myth has indeed shown an easy adaptability and a limitless flexibility through the ages. Hymnist and ritualist, chronicler and romancer, theologian and playwright, ...
... with the work of self-help and national efficiency, if not quite so effectively as before, yet with energy and success. AUROBINDO GHOSE OTHER WRITINGS BY SRI AUROBINDO IN THIS ISSUE Kalidasa's Seasons I: Its Authenticity The Katha Upanishad I.2 Page 160 ...
... sentimental or sententious commonplace." Even the nineteenth-century blank verse of Sri Aurobindo — Urvasie, Love and Death, The Hero and the Nymph (the last-named a translation of a drama of Kalidasa's) — are free from the typical Tennysonese, and it is free not merely by being impetuously enjambed as against Tennyson's mixture of end-stopping Page 251 and overflow. Somewhere ...
... sentimental or sententious commonplace." Even the nineteenth-century blank verse of Sri Aurobindo - Urvasie, Love and Death, The Hero and the Nymph (the last-named a translation of a drama of Kalidasa's) - are free from the typical Tennysonese, and it is free not merely by being impetuously enjambed as against Tennyson's mixture of end-stopping and overflow. Somewhere in- my writings I have put ...
... into dramas and epics of the most delicate tenderness or the most noble sublimity. One who glances at the dead and clumsy narrative of the Shacountala legend in the Mahabharata and reads after it Kalidasa's masterpiece in which delicate dramatic art and gracious tenderness of feeling reach their climax, at once perceives how they vary with the hands which touch them. But you are right. The Hindu ...
... an aspect ordinarily quite incongruous with it and so a pregnant strain is created which may be defined as the miraculous interpretation of one sense in terms proper to another, an instance being Kalidasa's imagining the snowy mountain Kailasa to be the laughter of the god Shiva. Often the three forms of exaggeration grade off into one another and it is difficult to distinguish them: most of Chesterton's ...
... to the most long and brilliant day in the evolution of the race. But it was a night filled at first with many and brilliant constellations and even at its thickest and worst it was the darkness of Kalidasa's viceya-tārakā prabhāta-kalpeva śarvarī , "night preparing for dawn, with a few just decipherable stars." Even in the decline all was not loss; there were needed developments, there were spiritual ...
... as well as prema ?—they were supposed to go together as between husband and wife in ancient India. The performances of Rama in the viraha of Sita are due to Valmiki's poetic idea which was also Kalidasa's and everybody else's in those far-off times about how a complete lover should behave in such a quandary. Whether the actual Rama bothered himself to do all that is another matter. As for the ...
... them, at least. "Paradise Lost", yes. In the other Milton's fire had dimmed. In English Paradise Lost and Keats' Hyperion (unfinished) are the two chief epics. In Sanskrit Mahabharat, Ramayan, Kalidasa's Kumar Sambhav, Bharavi's Kiratarjuniya. In Bengali Meghnadbodh. In Italian Dante's Divine Comedy and Tasso's (I have forgotten the name for the moment 138 ) are in the epic cast. In Greek of course ...
... "Tri-Kalinga" is only mediaeval and not early: Cunningham has no real justification in supposing it to be an ancient term. But we may bear in mind the people named Vanga who are mentioned in Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa (Canto IV) and put in the Ganges-delta. Scholars like D.C. Sircar 4 identify them with the Gangaridai of the Classical accounts. More accurately, we should equate them with the ...
... power of expression – it may be on any plane. For example, it may be on the plane of vital aesthesis, or any other. All poetry need not be psychic. Disciple : Do you find the psychic element in Kalidasa's poetry? Sri Aurobindo : Psychic? I don't think there is much psychic element in his poetry. Vital and aesthetic if you like, – that he has in an extraordinary degree and you find even a certain ...
... purposive future. The early issues of the Karmayogin carried Sri Aurobindo's English translations of the Isha, Kena and Katha Upanishads. The paper also published his renderings from Kalidasa's Ritusamhara and the first thirteen chapters of Bankim Chandra's Anandamath, besides several of Sri Aurobindo's poems. Who, Baji Prabhou, Epiphany, The Birth of Sin and An Image. Among ...
... This shows his fidelity to the Christian faith where God is never described except as a distant unapproachable presence. Milton does not transgress this tradition. We can compare this with Kalidasa's description of Shiva in Kumārasatnbhavam, where he makes of this godhead almost an earthly being. Also it stands against the Homeric tradition of anthropomorphism. Or read Meanwhile at ...
... decried by the self-styled serious Page 21 people, but even the Gods are said to laugh - they who are the masters of the Spirit's Delight. The dazzling whiteness of Mount Kailasa is in Kalidasa's visionary eyes "the eternal laughter of a God". And Homer's Gods? - Are they not constantly breaking into laughter over the follies of men below? 5 In this connection, let us recall the witty remark ...
... tpratipadyate hi janah. "The fire blazes when the fuel is stirred ; the serpent, when provoked, expands its hood ; for a man generally regains his proper greatness, under some provocation." (Matali in Kalidasa's Sakuntalam). 30. Savitri, p. 25. 31. ibid.,p. 21. Backgrounds and Antecedents 1. Savitri, p. 30. 2. ibid., p. 38. In the course ...
... work of expressing with precision & power the substance. Even his most romantic pieces have a virgin coldness & loftiness in their beauty. To intellects fed on the elaborate pomp and imagery of Kalidasa's numbers... Vyasa may seem bald and unattractive. To be fed on the verse of Spenser, Shelley, Keats, Byron and Tennyson is no good preparation for the severest classics. It is indeed I believe ...
... 'incarna-tional' or as Shakespeare says, 'gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name'. I don't find this in Sri Page 30 Aurobindo's writings, though I do richly in Tagore, in Kalidasa's wonderful Meghaduta, in the Vedic Hymns, even in Kabir, a religious poet. In fact not all Indians of repute admire Sri Aurobindo as a poet either. Keshav Malik agrees with me - true, Keshav ...
... can hardly agree. Even in the ugliest corner of life there is something fine and even beautiful that saves it. Or the talk might turn on poets and poetry. Once he said that, although Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa was an earlier work and the more brilliant, Kumarasambhava was more deep and mature. Or the conversation skirted casually around Laurence Binyon, Stephen Phillips, Robert Bridges ...
... were supposed to go together as between husband and wife in ancient India. The performances of Rama in the viraha of Sita are due to Valmiki's poetic idea which was Page 102 also kalidasa's and everybody else's in those far-off times about how a complete lover should behave in such a quandary. Whether the actual Rama bothered himself to do all that is another matter. As for the ...
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