by Kalidasa
Mālavikāgnimitram is a drama about drama, it is a play in which theatre arts play a central role in plot, character and action. At the start of Act II, the master dance teacher, Gaṇadāsa, makes his appearance on stage with a glorious eulogy to the tradition of classical dance (nāṭyam).
Sages value it as a peaceful,
living ritual to the gods.
Its two distinct parts blend together
like Uma joined in Shiva’s own body.
The ways of the world, rising from the Three Qualities,
are depicted on stage with various emotions.
And though different people are of varying tastes,
dance delights them—one and all. 15
Although dance offers the audience a path to pleasure and entertainment (sam-ārādhanam), it also embodies a sacred ritual (kratu) that re-enacts the ultimate unity of the universe. The term ārādhanam that ends this powerful verse also means adoration and worship. These multiple meanings that are so common to every Sanskrit word give the text a rich complexity to interpret layered levels of meaning. For Kālidāsa, the primary goal behind the artistic endeavour is soteriological or spiritual. He adds that the three guṇas, or constituent qualities of existence, are linked to the enactment of various emotions (nānā-rasam) such that the aesthetic experience of drama inspires the audience to transcend the actions of the material world (loka-caritam). Here Kālidāsa also makes an oblique reference to the fundamental theory of Indian aesthetics—the rasa theory—first described and systematized by Bharata in his seminal Nāṭya-śāstra, the definitive ancient Sanskrit compendium of Indian arts. The historical reality of there having been a single text written by a single author at a specific moment in time is almost unimaginable. In all likelihood, many of the ideas and practices described in the text were in circulation through a wide network of itinerant court poets, musicians and dancers. Kālidāsa was a master of this dramatic theory, he was steeped in its practice, philosophy and mythology, and yet his influential body of innovative works also helped shape literary norms and practices for centuries. For example, later theorists stipulated the lower limit for cantos in an epic and acts in a play to be eight and five respectively—a determination likely based on Kālidāsa’s compact Kumārasambhavam and Mālavikāgnimitram. In other words, the practice and theory of art were, as they still are today, enmeshed in a perpetual state of mutual interchange and revision.
Skilled poets like Kālidāsa were attached to royal courts and much of their artistic sensibilities were derived from a formalized, dare we say elitist, code of aesthetics. Dramas like the Mālavikāgnimitram were staged in royal playhouses for cultured audiences who could appreciate the subtleties of language and art. After Mālavikā’s performance on stage in Act II, the knowledgeable Sister Kauśikī recites a stunning verse that summarizes the aesthetic experience of Indian dance:
Her body expressed deep meanings
concealed in words,
her footfalls in rhythm
merged into feelings,
while her graceful arms flowed
in line with her imagination
as emotion displaced emotion
in a display of passion. 16
Here we notice the intrinsic connection between the physical and psychological domains of art. The entire body is used as a vehicle to express the inner life of the heart. Emotions displace emotions (bhāvo bhāvam nudati) as the overall sentiment builds and intensifies (rāga-bandhaḥ). In this context it is clear that Kālidāsa’s art demanded connoisseurship—a cultured audience who could appreciate the aesthetic goal of the drama. These privileged members of court were rasikas or sa-hṛdayas, people that could share in the emotional depth and content of the drama.
According to the rasa theory, the bhāvas are latent emotions based on personal experience that are transformed by the appreciation of any art form into states of emotional integration known as rasas. 17 Each rasa is a savouring of an emotional experience in its most intensified form—an essence of a flavour, a psycho-physiological nectar. One is not led into the world of the play, rather, dishes of varying flavours are presented to be imbibed and relished internally. The hero and heroine of a play are known as nāyaka and nāyakā respectively. Both of these words, along with the general term for acting, abhinaya, derive from the verbal root nī, ‘to lead’, and suggest that the duty of an actor was to lead the play to the audience. Actions portrayed outside on the stage are to resonate within the mind and heart of a rasika and inspire him or her to experience an internal transformation linked to personal memory and feeling. According to later theoreticians, like the celebrated eleventh-century Kashmiri polymath Abhinavagupta, the cascade of emotions built up by the poetic action of a drama should ultimately propel the observer to an impersonal state of supreme peace, or śānta. Here then lies the fundamental metaphysical or salvational dimension of Indian aesthetics that underlies all artistic pursuits.
Nāṭaka is a general word for drama, and is used as such by Kālidāsa in the prologue, but the term also refers to a more specific genre of heroic romance in which the dominant rasas are śṛṅgāra (erotic) and vīra (heroic). The Mālavikāgnimitram is more properly classified as a prakarana, in which the plot is non-mythological and presumably ‘secular’ or, in other words, a lighter genre that often includes a good degree of hāsya rasa, or comedy. Unlike Kālidāsa’s other works that are populated with deities, celestial beings and demigods, all the characters in Mālavikāgnimitram are mortal, real people, albeit highly stylized depictions of archetypal personae. Nature and the ways of the human heart, inspired by a kernel of historical fact, are enough to inspire the poet to delve into the myriad mysteries of love in a playful tenor. As Goodwin has observed, ‘a comic treatment of themes is not an insignificant treatment. Many critics have noted that Mālavikāgnimitram contains perhaps the most idealistic statement on shared love to be found in Kālidāsa (the “poet of love,” according to a common judgement).’ 18 The verse he refers to is Agnimitra’s passionate proclamation in Act III:
I find no pleasure in the union of lovers
when one is passionate and the other indifferent.
It is better when bodies waste away
in a hopeless coming together,
for at least the two have equal affections. 19
An enduring quality of Kālidāsa’s poetry is his ability to explore the depths of the human psyche in every possible scenario. Even in the considerably lighter tone of Mālavikāgnimitram, he manages to pierce the emotions of the heart and address the central conflict between dharma and kāma, duty and desire. This fundamental friction energizes all his plots, from King Duśyanta’s passion for a hermit maiden in Abhijñānaśākuntalam to Śiva’s burning of the god of love in Kumārasambhavam. Here the poet exhibits how he can tackle the same lofty themes in a jocular and unpretentious manner.
Language
One of the most remarkable aspects of a Sanskrit play is that much of its dialogue is written in Prakrit. The canonical understanding of these two linguistic categories proposes a distinction between the complex, grammar-bound and transregional quality of a singular Sanskrit versus the organic, natural and regional features of multiple Prakrits. Sanskrit and Prakrit were not conceived of as separate languages per se but rather different ‘registers of speech within a single linguistic context’. 20 It is this speech of ancient court life that Kālidāsa brings to the page through the use of these linguistic registers. Kings and most other men speak in Sanskrit, while women speak in Prakrit. The Mālavikāgnimitram presents two important exceptions: Gautama, like all vidūṣakas, speaks in Prakrit, while the ascetic nun Kauśikī speaks in refined Sanskrit.
For too long scholars of ancient India have thought of the Prakrits as evolutionary degradations of a pure classical Sanskrit. Sanskrit was believed to be sakala-bhāṣā-janinī, the mother of all languages, making all the Prakrits into vulgar derivatives. This is in large part due to the remarkable standardization of classical Sanskrit by the anci
ent grammarian Pāṇini—who gave us a meticulously detailed morphological framework, not to describe a living language but to actually generate a new language. The reality was that Sanskrit was a literary idiom, rarely if ever used in everyday speech, and then too only among an elite class. This refined, artificial register came to be viewed as an unadulterated language of purity, a deva-vāṇi, or language of the gods, set in stark contrast to the flexible morphology of multiple Prakrits. Rather than a top-down model of linguistic evolution, it is much more likely that various Prakrits gave rise to a formalized register like Sanskrit. The very term prākṛta means natural, as well as original.
The passage below 21 captures the formal Sanskrit of the king, dance master and nun along with comedic Prakrit parley between the queen and Gautama. It is but a mere glimpse of the text’s dynamic shifts in register and diction. I hope the inclusion of the original text will highlight the phonetic sound contrasts between the various registers, and also give some degree of transparency to my translation process.
KAUSHIKI: deva prayoga-pradhanam hi nātya-śāstram. kim-atra vāg-vyavahāreṇa? (Dance is a matter of practice, actually, so why have a contest of words?)
AGNIMITRA: katham vā devī manyate? (What do you think, my queen?)
DHARINI: jai mam pucchasi edāṇam vivādo evva ṇa me roadi. (If you ask me, this whole thing is annoying!)
GANADASA: na mām devīsa māna-vidyataḥ paribhavanīyam-anumantum-arhati. (Your majesty, don’t fear that I might be defeated by one with equal skill.)
GAUTAMA: hodu dekkhāmo urabbha-samvādam. kim muhā veaṇadāṇeṇa? (Your grace, let’s watch the rams butt heads! They’re being paid, aren’t they?)
DHARINI: ṇam kalahappiosi. (You love a good fight, don’t you!)
When we speak of a ‘Sanskrit play’, the reference to Sanskrit here is not as the language but rather the dramatic tradition that seems to have developed in conversation with a rich theoretical apparatus embodied in hallowed Sanskrit texts like the Nāṭya-śāstra. These textual sources developed indigenous theories of language use, and Bharata enumerates several different Prakrits, three in particular (Māhārāṣṭrī, Śaurasenī and Māgadhī), that were employed in dramas and demarcated with regional designations. These linguistic differentiations marked a person’s class, provenance and social stature. Concerns about language and class have played a crucial role in postcolonial political agendas, but it would be prudent to remember that these contentious issues are embedded in a deeper, more ancient historical consciousness that interlinked language, society and state power.
The pointed deployment of these registers in dramas was the poet’s tool for delineating sharp characters and imbuing them with very specific sociocultural attributes and personae. Unfortunately, much of this richness is lost on the Sanskrit reader who generally reads the Prakrit passages with the aid of a chāyā, or shadow. This was a tool developed by commentators to gloss every Prakrit line with a Sanskrit equivalent. It has been my attempt in the present translation to enliven the contours of the original, which have sadly been veneered over in edited manuscripts. In this sense, a translation recovers something of the original that is almost unavailable to even a modern Sanskrit reader.
Translation
‘Every translator has been a law to himself; and the result is anarchic confusion.’ 22
Kālidāsa is the most translated Sanskrit poet, and quite possibly the most translated Indian writer of all time. His poetry has been rendered into countless languages, Indian and non-Indian, and multiple translations of all his works already exist in English. There is a wealth of Indian literature that remains untranslated, even unread, so why translate Kālidāsa yet again? The answer is simple: language changes, and translations, like dictionaries, need to be updated from time to time. In the introduction to her popular English translation of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, Arshia Sattar has discussed the notion that classical literature needs to be retranslated every twenty years or so. Barbara Stoler Miller’s edited volume Theater of Memory was published in 1986 followed by Chandra Rajan’s popular Loom of Time in 1989. Both of these renderings offer an improvement on the stilted rhymes and parochial sensibilities of colonial-era British translations, but nonetheless, they retain a certain Victorian vocabulary characteristic of twentieth-century Indology which dates their compositions.
In the present translation I have tried to develop a diction that reflects the current spoken rhythms of colloquial English while keeping in the mind the text’s ancient courtly setting. The key in this regard was dealing with the multilingual fabric of the text. Dialogue between servants, like the sprightly conversation between Bakulāvalikā and Kaumudikā which sets the play in motion, are marked with short phrases, idiomatic breaks and simple contractions, while the speech of the noble king and nun are translated with long polysyllabic words in a more Latinized diction. The dynamic and often fast-paced repartee of the drama’s dialogue is peppered with versified interludes that are set apart from the main text as moments of heightened insight and declamatory revelation. I have translated these poems in an elevated diction, but refrained from attempting to translate the complex Sanskrit metres that couch them. The distinctive rhythms of the original, however, never strayed from my mind and I tried to capture the movement of each poem with a conscious effort to monitor line number, length, density and cadence.
There is a view among translation theorists that the literal and the literary fall on a spectrum in which authenticity is counterbalanced by felicity. The role of the translator, then, is to decide where to fall on the scale or, to put it another way, to negotiate how much to favour one aspect in sacrifice of the other. My own view on translation, especially in regard to works of classical literature, is to not see these two considerations as elements in a zero-sum equation. I believe strongly in sticking closely to the text; one could say I like being as literal as possible whenever the transfer of idiom ‘works’. At the same time, I never hesitate to rearrange syntax, contract phrases, expand ideas and play with words and sound combinations in the target language. The translation of Sanskrit literature into Western languages has a long history, much of which is steeped in the Western academic traditions of philology, linguistics and comparative studies. Most translations in this vein are valued for being scholarly and accurate, but many are literal to the point of being unreadable. In the 1960s and ‘70s, scholars like A.K. Ramanujan opened up new possibilities for the translation of South Asian literature. Works like the 1967 Interior Landscape combined rigorous scholarly detail with felicitous English free verse. As a reviewer recently observed: ‘It is difficult to overestimate the importance of The Interior Landscape . . . It showed that translation called for as much in the way of creativity as it did in the way of scholarship.’ 23 Since that landmark publication, there has been an inspiring trend among scholars of Indian classical literature to produce what I am often compelled to qualify as ‘scholarly literary translations’. In a very simple sense, these are rigorous scholastic attempts to craft translations that are both accurate to the source language and readable as literature in the target language.
The bare text of a play is called kāvya, and when it is arranged for performance it is deemed nāṭya. The text as I thought of it was a piece of literature and I laboured at translating it as kāvya, especially in regard to the verse interludes. Although spoken rhythms played within my mind while I translated each line of dialogue, my initial approach did not envision a play that would be staged. During the course of my translation, however, an opportunity arose where a partially staged reading of Act I could be organized. I was apprehensive about the prospect, but hearing the lines come to life through the voices of real actors made it clear that the present text could indeed work as a nāṭya. As with all talented playwrights, it is Kālidāsa’s subtext that really inspires the dramatic action. What we read on the page is but a soul without a body, yearning to be realized on stage—a text awaiting another form of translation. In Kālidāsa’s
time, these dramas were certainly staged for an elite aristocracy in formal royal playhouses with elaborate costumes and musical accompaniment. The contemporary audience’s reaction to the reading was most encouraging, the hāsya of the drama came through and people genuinely laughed at ancient jokes. I can only hope that others take to the text in a similar way and give it yet another life on stage.
Translating ancient literature into a modern language is a mode of retelling the past. In a broader sense, the very act of writing history is a process of translating, one that stretches and moulds the contours of time and the vicissitudes of the human drama. Kālidāsa is a powerful symbol in the modern imagination of ancient India: his writings and characters encapsulate what has been praised as the paragon of ancient Indian values, cultural norms and ethics. Whether we deem this ancient culture to be ‘Hindu’ or simply ‘Indian’ is a heated point of contention that rages on even today. What I have tried to show in this introduction is that pluralism in its broadest capacity has been a hallmark of South Asian society for millennia. When we let voices of the past speak to us in our contemporary tongue, we imbue the past with the present and project our hopes for the future. As I write, the political scene in India is infused with various appropriations of historical events, characters and memories. At this time it is all the more critical to read the past in the context of its composition, study ancient works with scholarly authority, and translate literature as an act of non-judgemental listening rather than as a product of a predetermined vision of what was, or ought to have been, the past.
In closing, I quote from Sri Aurobindo who spent hours in the study of Sanskrit texts, especially the works of Kālidāsa, which he painstakingly translated into florid English. In regard to the study and translation of ancient literature, his remarks, made almost a century ago, seem equally relevant to our modern world, in which we may flourish only by embracing rather than condemning the diversity of our peoples, ideas and speech.