Shakuntala Shacoontala Shacountala Shacuntala : was daughter of Vishwāmitra by the Apsarā Menaka; found abandoned in a forest she was brought up by Rishi Kaṇwa in his hermitage as his own daughter. The love, marriage, separation, & re-union of Shakuntalā & Dushyanta are the subject of Kālidāsa’s drama Abhijñāna Śākuntalam.
... Indian public has been pointed to Shacuntala as the ideal Hindu woman. Sita, Draupadi, Savitri, Damayanti,—these are familiar to us as ideals, but Shacuntala is Mr. Risley's own addition. To us she is a beautiful poetic creation, not an exemplar of feminine conduct. We observe that the Bengalee is full of admiration for Mr. Risley's poetic rapture over Shacuntala. We do not know whom we should co... and Shacuntala in a miraculous fashion! At no Swayamvara that we are aware of, did the women come forward as peacemakers between the abducting hero and the disappointed suitors. Mr. Risley has been misled by pitchforking his early memories of Roman history into Indian epic and narrative. And need we say that there was neither Swayamvara, nor fighting nor peacemaking in the story of Shacuntala? This ...
... first and fourth acts as well as the exaltation of love and the passion of beauty which throb through the whole play, lift it into a far rarer creative atmosphere. It is a worthy predecessor of the Shacountala, that loveliest, most nobly tender and most faultless of all romantic plays. Other indications of this development may be observed. The conventional elements of an Indian romantic comedy, the humours... gracious and smiling beauty. In the Urvasie the space given to them is far more limited and their connection with the main action less vital; and they are less skilfully handled: finally in the Shacountala we have only vestiges of them,—a perfunctory recognition of their claims to be admitted rather than a willing use of them as good dramatic material. The prologues of the three plays point to a similar... assured; only the slightest apology is given for displacing the classics in favour of a new play and the indulgence of the audience is requested not for the poet but for the actors. The prologue of the Shacountala on the other hand breathes of the dignified and confident silence of the acknowledged Master. No apology is needed; none is volunteered. The prologue of this play contains an apparent allusion ...
... the Agnimitra to the Raghu. Chapter VIII. The Urvasie.. dramatic workmanship & conception; character of the poetry; relation to Meghaduta. 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 ...
... language or incorrectness in content? SATYENDRA: Don't know. PURANI: Though he is a scholar in Sanskrit, he has not read Shakuntala and considers this a great virtue! He has learned Sanskrit in order to read the Gita and the Upanishads. SRI AUROBINDO: Not Shakuntala because it is erotic? PURANI: Probably. Mahadev Desai has put forth Vinoba's philosophy in the Hindu today. Vinoba says:... He could have added Diogenes too. It seems Vinoba doesn't like literature. Only history and philosophy interest him. PURANI: Yes, I told you he is proud of not having read Shakuntala. SRI AUROBINDO: Not only Shakuntala, but literature in general doesn't interest him. PURANI: Yet he is said to be a great lover of art. Somebody told him that he is an ascetic and doesn't appreciate beauty. ...
... elegance and sweetness and a Virgilian majesty of diction ennoble the finer epistles of these Heroides; there is too a Virgilian pathos sad & noble breaking out in detached lines and passages, as in Shacountala's sorrowful address to the leaf and the single melancholy line, এই কি রে ফেল ফল প্রেম তরু শাখে, but the more essential poetical gifts, creative force, depth or firmness of meditation, passionate feeling ...
... varied and splendid panorama 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 ...
... S Sacrifice, Vedic I Sadhu 97 Sanskrit 32 Sat-chit-Ananda — (Satya-Tapas-Jnana) 14 Satan 16 Semele 34 Shakespeare 16, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27, 101, 103 Shakuntala 8 Shelley 104 Shitala 31 Shyama 80 Shyama 80 Siddhas 82 Siddhacharyas 11, 82, 83, 87 Soma 2, 12 Somadevata 37 Sophocles 40, 43 South America 55 ...
... feeling, and in the hands of great artists have blossomed 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... in his youth he was engrossed with his love for a beautiful girl whom he had made his wife, the daughter of the Gundhurva King, Chitroruth, by the sky-nymph Menaca; an earlier sister therefore of Shacountala. Their joy of union was not yet old when Priyumvada perished, like Eurydice, by the fangs of a snake. Ruaru inconsolable for her loss, wandered miserable among the forests that had been the shelter ...
... impressions received from others. This supreme power, European scholars agree, is wanting in Hindu dramatic literature. A mere poet like Goethe may extend unstinted & even superlative praise to a Shacountala but the wiser critical & scholarly mind passes a far less favourable verdict; there is much art in Hindu poetry, it is said, but no genius; there is plenty of fancy but no imagination; beautiful ...
... 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 and Chitraleqha, Dharinie and Iravatie and Agnimitra are living beings who are our friends, whom we know. The difference ...
... thing it has gained from a close acquaintance with European models. The hideous grotesques of old Hindu Art, the monkey-rabble of Ram and the ten heads of Ravan, are henceforth impossible to it. The Shakuntala itself is not governed by a more perfect graciousness of conception or suffused with a more human sweetness than Kopal Kundala and the Poison-Tree . Page 111 ...
... 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, each one delivers a mantra ...
... 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, each one delivers ...
... Calcutta High Court, and one of the pioneering Orientalists of that time. Jones was 37 when he arrived in Calcutta in 1783. During the rest of his life of roughly nine years, he not only translated Shakuntala (1789), but also Hitopadesa (1786), Institutes of Hindu Law or the Ordinances of Manu (1794), and Gita Govinda (1799). He also wrote nine odes to Indian gods and goddesses, the first example... Sure enough, his fortunes in his own home country have dwindled considerably. Both as a writer and as a scholar, he is more or less forgotten. But can we afford to forget the man who translated Shakuntala tor the first time into English? The other grave in this cemetery is that of the young Eurasian poet, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1931). Born of an Indo-Portuguese father and an English ...
... 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 so you have ...
... DR. SAVITA GAUR: Scholar, 1714, Sohanganj, Subzi Mandi, Delhi- 110 007. Tel. 232 787. DR. SAVITRI SHARMA: Scholar, J-A/2 B, Ashok Vihar, Phase-I, Delhi-110 052. Tel. 714 2571. DR. SHAKUNTALA PUNJANI: Scholar, 5/8, Roopnagar, Delhi- 110 007. Tel. 251 5034, 294 3035. DR. SHARDA JAIN: Scholar, S-O/77, Pitampura, Delhi-110 034. DR. SHARDA PANDEY: Scholar, J.P. 97, Mauriya Enclave ...
... corners of the play, which is all Kalidasa allows us to consider, she is wholly delightful, innocent, even modest, at any rate not immodest. Certainly she is more frank and playful in her love than Shacountala or even Malavica could venture to be, but something must be allowed to a goddess and her demeanour is too much flavoured with timidity, her advances too easily dashed to give any disagreeable impression... towards him And wet with sacred milk." & her farewell to the Hermitess sets a model for the expression of genuine & tender friendship. Urvasie is doubtless not so noble & strong a portraiture as Shacountala, but she is inferior to no heroine of Sanscrit drama in beauty & sweetness of womanly nature. In dramatic tone and build therefore this is an admirable creation, but there is so far no hint of... of the laughing, light-hearted and innocent child, which remains with us as vividly as the most carefully-drawn character in the piece. The scene of the child playing with the lion's cub in the Shacountala has the same inevitable charm; ninety-one poets out of a hundred would have hopelessly bungled it, but in Kalidasa's hands it becomes so admirably lifelike and spontaneous that it seems as natural ...
... 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 quietly bowed ...
... deal with the substance,—and even that in most translations of Indian work is only the dead substance with the whole breath of life gone out of it. Still even here Goethe's well-known epigram on the Shakuntala will be enough by itself to show me that all Indian writing is not of a barbarous inferiority to European creation. And perhaps we may find a scholar here and there with some literary taste and judgment ...
... thy terror such of even a little Division from her nearness. Me thus afflicted, Me so forlorn thou art averse to bless With just a little tidings of my love. And again in the Shacountala, the lovers are thus gracefully warned O Chocrovaque, sob farewell to thy mate. The night, the night comes down to part you. Fable as it is, one who has steeped himself in Hindu poetry... suggestiveness, the emotion convincing & fervent behind a certain high restraint, the imagery precise, right & helpful, not overdone as in the Raghuvansa & yet quite as full of beauty & power. The Shacountala and the Cloud Messenger are the ne plus ultra of Hindu poetic art. Such a poem asks for & repays the utmost pains a translator can give it; it demands all the wealth of word & sound effect, all the ...
... 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 Krishna, 180, 218 Kronos, 159 ...
... Mother, beloved of Siva!... O Mother of the world, dispel all ills.... Mother Durga! Giver of force and love and knowledge…. Today is Durga-puja, 28th Ashwin 1398 (15th October 1991). Shakuntala, Krishna and several others are decorating the Meditation Hall under Milli-di’s guidance. People keep dropping in to have a glimpse. My mind goes back to the days of yore. The first Durga-puja took... halls were also tastefully decorated with flowers, garlands and vines. The Mother’s chair was decorated with a Benarasi silk sari and this is done with the same dedication and skill even today by Shakuntala, Krishna and others. The Mother’s chair was placed exactly where the large photo of the Mother stands today. Every year the Mother would bless us on the Mahaashtami and the Vijayadashami day with ...
... composite hues and tones. Of the temperament of that civilisation the Seasons is an immature poetic self-expression, the House of Raghu the representative epic, the Cloud Messenger the descriptive elegy, Shakuntala with its two sister loveplays intimate dramatic pictures and the Birth of the War-God the grand religious fable. Kalidasa, who expressed so many sides and facets of it in his writings, stands for ...
... of scholarship seems to be the Page 176 chief justification,—but it presents in this matter of personality and persistent characteristics no sufficient point of contact either with the Shakuntala or the Kumarasambhava or even with the House of Raghu. But in the Seasons, Kalidasa's personality is distinctly perceived as well as his main characteristics, his force of vision, his architecture ...
... least Rama and Ravana are as vivid and great and real characters as the personalities of Homer and Shakespeare, Sita and Draupadi certainly not less living than Helen or Cleopatra, Damayanti and Shakuntala and other feminine types not less Page 251 sweet, gracious and alive than Alcestis or Desdemona. I am not here affirming any superiority, but the bottomless inequality and inferiority ...
... profound interpretation of human action and motive and they do not fall short in this kind. A great charm of poetic beauty and subtle feeling and atmosphere,—reaching its most accomplished type in the Shakuntala of Kalidasa, the most perfect and captivating romantic drama in Page 365 all literature,—or an interesting turn of sentiment and action, a skilful unobtrusive development according to ...
... on the base of internal evidence, a few remarks have been made, for instance that Ritusamhara seems to be an early work, and that of the three plays Malavikagnimitra must have been the first and Shakuntala the last. Page 38 Period in India's development It is the work of scholars and historians to debate about the possible date of birth of Kalidasa. However what is important ...
... For how many lives on this earth are not chequered lives? One rises, one falls; one gains, one loses. Rama is all set to be crowned King of Ayodhya and at that very moment he is sent into exile. Shakuntala awaits her marriage and then she is cursed by a Rishi and forgotten by her lover. Vishvamitra is about to reap the fruit of thousands of years of tapasya when he gets angry and loses everything in ...
... should raise is "What is life meant for?" "What is the purpose of life?" He also referred to George Santayana who had said that it is not enough to be wise, one should listen to the heart. Dr. Shakuntala Punjani said that the ancient gurukul system of education was an ideal system, and she felt that it is only in that system of education that moral education can be rightly imparted. Prof. K ...
... Constantinople. But these expectations have remained unfulfilled. European knowledge has followed other paths and the seed of the nineteenth century has been Newton’s apple and not Sir William Jones’ Shakuntala or the first edition of the Vedas. The discovery of Sanscrit has, it is true, had a considerable effect on the so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, Science of Religion ...
... attracted by beauty, even when he is attracted by a thought or philosophy it is the beauty of the thought that appeals to him. Disciple : Tagore has said in reviewing 'Shakuntala' that the love which Dushyanta felt for Shakuntala at the first sight was only passion, a result of mere physical, at most vital, attraction. But when he meets her again after separation in the Marichi Ashram his love has... there was no element of passion in it. Sri Aurobindo : That is not at all true; all that one can put from one's own imagination. But Dushyanta is not shown outgrowing his vital passion in Shakuntala , he was made to forget it by the power of the curse. That does not mean that his attraction has lessened. Disciple : I am reminded of the controversy about the date of Kalidas's works. ...
... barbarian with Cashmere In the bad bargain. COOMOOD We will not let him have you. We'll find a mantra that shall call Urjoon From Eden's groves to wed you; great Dushyanta Shall leave Shacoontala for these wide eyes Which you have stolen from the antelope To gaze men's hearts out of their bodies with, You lovely sorceress; or we'll have Udaian To ravish you into his rushing car, Edur's ...
... other and yet there is a sufficient kinship in the whole. I have done it of course in my own way; yours tends to a more harmonious and coloured beauty and you achieved what was necessary in your Shakuntala's Farewell , where each line was a cut gem by itself and there was sufficient variation of movement or at least of rhythmic tone; but here the materials of Page 507 a good poem are there ...
... She must have been very different as a young woman, passionately interested in theatre and indeed all the arts. She still was. of course. I remember seeing her at a rather imperfect performance of Shakuntala, half empty theatre, and only about three of the cast proficient in the traditional acting and speaking, with a flower in her gray hair, a true woman of the theatre. I shall miss her very much if ...
... 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 two books – Kalidas's Shakuntala and Vikramorvashi – and presented them to me as a token of his love for me. He also gave me a few verses composed by himself, one styled Songs to Myrtilla and Other Poems and the other Urvashi ...
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