The Sanskrit Epics

by Delphi Classics

  Thirteenth canto. Kumara is consecrated general. — Kumara takes an affectionate farewell of his parents, and sets out with the gods. When they come to Indra’s paradise, the gods are afraid to enter, lest they find their enemy there. There is an amusing scene in which each courteously invites the others to precede him, until Kumara ends their embarrassment by leading the way. Here for the first time Kumara sees with deep respect the heavenly Ganges, Indra’s garden and palace, and the heavenly city. But he becomes red-eyed with anger on beholding the devastation wrought by Taraka.

  He saw departed glory, saw the state

  Neglected, ruined, sad, of Indra’s city,

  As of a woman with a cowardly mate:

  And all his inmost heart dissolved in pity.

  He saw how crystal floors were gashed and torn

  By wanton tusks of elephants, were strewed

  With skins that sloughing cobras once had worn:

  And sadness overcame him as he viewed.

  He saw beside the bathing-pools the bowers

  Defiled by elephants grown overbold,

  Strewn with uprooted golden lotus-flowers,

  No longer bright with plumage of pure gold,

  Rough with great, jewelled columns overthrown,

  Rank with invasion of the untrimmed grass:

  Shame strove with sorrow at the ruin shown,

  For heaven’s foe had brought these things to pass.

  Amid these sorrowful surroundings the gods gather and anoint Kumara, thus consecrating him as their general.

  Fourteenth canto. The march. — Kumara prepares for battle, and marshals his army. He is followed by Indra riding on an elephant, Agni on a ram, Yama on a buffalo, a giant on a ghost, Varuna on a dolphin, and many other lesser gods. When all is ready, the army sets out on its dusty march.

  Fifteenth canto. The two armies clash. — The demon Taraka is informed that the hostile army is approaching, but scorns the often-conquered Indra and the boy Kumara. Nevertheless, he prepares for battle, marshals his army, and sets forth to meet the gods. But he is beset by dreadful omens of evil.

  For foul birds came, a horrid flock to see,

  Above the army of the foes of heaven,

  And dimmed the sun, awaiting ravenously

  The feast of demon corpses to be given.

  And monstrous snakes, as black as powdered soot,

  Spitting hot poison high into the air,

  Brought terror to the army underfoot,

  And crept and coiled and crawled before them there.

  The sun a sickly halo round him had;

  Coiling within it frightened eyes could see

  Great, writhing serpents, enviously glad

  Because the demon’s death so soon should be.

  And in the very circle of the sun

  Were phantom jackals, snarling to be fed;

  And with impatient haste they seemed to run

  To drink the demon’s blood in battle shed.

  There fell, with darting flame and blinding flash

  Lighting the farthest heavens, from on high

  A thunderbolt whose agonising crash

  Brought fear and shuddering from a cloudless sky.

  There came a pelting rain of blazing coals

  With blood and bones of dead men mingled in;

  Smoke and weird flashes horrified their souls;

  The sky was dusty grey like asses’ skin.

  The elephants stumbled and the horses fell,

  The footmen jostled, leaving each his post,

  The ground beneath them trembled at the swell

  Of ocean, when an earthquake shook the host.

  And dogs before them lifted muzzles foul

  To see the sun that lit that awful day,

  And pierced the ears of listeners with a howl

  Dreadful yet pitiful, then slunk away.

  Taraka’s counsellors endeavour to persuade him to turn back, but he refuses; for timidity is not numbered among his faults. As he advances even worse portents appear, and finally warning voices from heaven call upon him to desist from his undertaking. The voices assure him of Kumara’s prowess and inevitable victory; they advise him to make his peace while there is yet time. But Taraka’s only answer is a defiance.

  “You mighty gods that flit about in heaven

  And take my foeman’s part, what would you say?

  Have you forgot so soon the torture given

  By shafts of mine that never miss their way?

  Why should I fear before a six-days child?

  Why should you prowl in heaven and gibber shrill,

  Like dogs that in an autumn night run wild,

  Like deer that sneak through forests, trembling still?

  The boy whom you have chosen as your chief

  In vain upon his hermit-sire shall cry;

  The upright die, if taken with a thief:

  First you shall perish, then he too shall die.”

  And as Taraka emphasises his meaning by brandishing his great sword, the warning spirits flee, their knees knocking together. Taraka laughs horribly, then mounts his chariot, and advances against the army of the gods. On the other side the gods advance, and the two armies clash.

  Sixteenth canto. The battle between gods and demons. — This canto is entirely taken up with the struggle between the two armies. A few stanzas are given here.

  As pairs of champions stood forth

  To test each other’s fighting worth,

  The bards who knew the family fame

  Proclaimed aloud each mighty name.

  As ruthless weapons cut their way

  Through quilted armour in the fray,

  White tufts of cotton flew on high

  Like hoary hairs upon the sky.

  Blood-dripping swords reflected bright

  The sunbeams in that awful fight;

  Fire-darting like the lightning-flash,

  They showed how mighty heroes clash.

  The archers’ arrows flew so fast,

  As through a hostile breast they passed,

  That they were buried in the ground,

  No stain of blood upon them found.

  The swords that sheaths no longer clasped,

  That hands of heroes firmly grasped,

  Flashed out in glory through the fight,

  As if they laughed in mad delight.

  And many a warrior’s eager lance

  Shone radiant in the eerie dance,

  A curling, lapping tongue of death

  To lick away the soldier’s breath.

  Some, panting with a bloody thirst,

  Fought toward the victim chosen first,

  But had a reeking path to hew

  Before they had him full in view.

  Great elephants, their drivers gone

  And pierced with arrows, struggled on,

  But sank at every step in mud

  Made liquid by the streams of blood.

  The warriors falling in the fray,

  Whose heads the sword had lopped away,

  Were able still to fetch a blow

  That slew the loud-exulting foe.

  The footmen thrown to Paradise

  By elephants of monstrous size,

  Were seized upon by nymphs above,

  Exchanging battle-scenes for love.

  The lancer, charging at his foe,

  Would pierce him through and bring him low,

  And would not heed the hostile dart

  That found a lodgment in his heart.

  The war-horse, though unguided, stopped

  The moment that his rider dropped,

  And wept above the lifeless head,

  Still faithful to his master dead.

  Two lancers fell with mortal wound

  And still they struggled on the ground;

  With bristling hair, with brandished knife,

  Each strove to end the other’s life.

  Two slew each other in the fight;

  To Paradise they took
their flight;

  There with a nymph they fell in love,

  And still they fought in heaven above.

  Two souls there were that reached the sky;

  From heights of heaven they could spy

  Two writhing corpses on the plain,

  And knew their headless forms again.

  As the struggle comes to no decisive issue, Taraka seeks out the chief gods, and charges upon them.

  Seventeenth canto. Taraka is slain. — Taraka engages the principal gods and defeats them with magic weapons. When they are relieved by Kumara, the demon turns to the youthful god of war, and advises him to retire from the battle.

  Stripling, you are the only son

  Of Shiva and of Parvati.

  Go safe and live! Why should you run

  On certain death? Why fight with me?

  Withdraw! Let sire and mother blest

  Clasp living son to joyful breast.

  Flee, son of Shiva, flee the host

  Of Indra drowning in the sea

  That soon shall close upon his boast

  In choking waves of misery.

  For Indra is a ship of stone;

  Withdraw, and let him sink alone.

  Kumara answers with modest firmness.

  The words you utter in your pride,

  O demon-prince, are only fit;

  Yet I am minded to abide

  The fight, and see the end of it.

  The tight-strung bow and brandished sword

  Decide, and not the spoken word.

  And with this the duel begins. When Taraka finds his arrows parried by Kumara, he employs the magic weapon of the god of wind. When this too is parried, he uses the magic weapon of the god of fire, which Kumara neutralises with the weapon of the god of water. As they fight on, Kumara finds an opening, and slays Taraka with his lance, to the unbounded delight of the universe.

  Here the poem ends, in the form in which it has come down to us. It has been sometimes thought that we have less than Kalidasa wrote, partly because of a vague tradition that there were once twenty-three cantos, partly because the customary prayer is lacking at the end. These arguments are not very cogent. Though the concluding prayer is not given in form, yet the stanzas which describe the joy of the universe fairly fill its place. And one does not see with what matter further cantos would be concerned. The action promised in the earlier part is completed in the seventeenth canto.

  It has been somewhat more formidably argued that the concluding cantos are spurious, that Kalidasa wrote only the first seven or perhaps the first eight cantos. Yet, after all, what do these arguments amount to? Hardly more than this, that the first eight cantos are better poetry than the last nine. As if a poet were always at his best, even when writing on a kind of subject not calculated to call out his best. Fighting is not Kalidasa’s forte; love is. Even so, there is great vigour in the journey of Taraka, the battle, and the duel. It may not be the highest kind of poetry, but it is wonderfully vigorous poetry of its kind. And if we reject the last nine cantos, we fall into a very much greater difficulty. The poem would be glaringly incomplete, its early promise obviously disregarded. We should have a Birth of the War-god in which the poet stopped before the war-god was born.

  There seems then no good reason to doubt that we have the epic substantially as Kalidasa wrote it. Plainly, it has a unity which is lacking in Kalidasa’s other epic, The Dynasty of Raghu, though in this epic, too, the interest shifts. Parvati’s love-affair is the matter of the first half, Kumara’s fight with the demon the matter of the second half. Further, it must be admitted that the interest runs a little thin. Even in India, where the world of gods runs insensibly into the world of men, human beings take more interest in the adventures of men than of gods. The gods, indeed, can hardly have adventures; they must be victorious. The Birth of the War-god pays for its greater unity by a poverty of adventure.

  It would be interesting if we could know whether this epic was written before or after The Dynasty of Raghu. But we have no data for deciding the question, hardly any for even arguing it. The introduction to The Dynasty of Raghu seems, indeed, to have been written by a poet who yet had his spurs to win. But this is all.

  As to the comparative excellence of the two epics, opinions differ. My own preference is for The Dynasty of Raghu, yet there are passages in The Birth of the War-god of a piercing beauty which the world can never let die.

  Shishupala Vadha by Magha (Cantos I-IV)

  Translated by M. S. Bhandare

  Composed by Magha, the Sanskrit poet at King Varmalata’s court at Shrimala, then the capital of Gujarat (presently Rajasthan state) in the seventh or eighth century, Shishupala Vadha (The Slaying of Shishupala) is an epic poem of 20 sargas (cantos) of about 1800 highly ornate stanzas. Considered one of the six Sanskrit mahakavyas, or “great epics”, it is also known as the Māgha-kāvya after its author. The poem is admired more for its exquisite descriptions and lyrical quality than for any dramatic development of plot.

  Sourced from the Mahabharata, the original story tells how Shishupala, king of the Chedis in central India, after insulting Lord Krishna several times in an assembly, finally enrages him and is decapitated. The epic has a rich vocabulary that allegedly includes every known word in the Sanskrit language. Besides its poetry, the poem also revels in wordplay and complexly constructed verses. The second canto contains a famous verse with a string of adjectives that can be interpreted differently depending on whether they are referring to politics or grammar.

  Magha seems to have been inspired by the Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi, and intended to emulate and even surpass it. Like the Kiratarjuniya, Shishupala Vadha favours rhetorical and metrical skill more than the growth of the plot. The text is rich in vocabulary and often features elegant descriptions, with almost half the cantos having little to do with the main narrative. For example, while describing the march of an army, cantos 9 to 11 digress with a description of nature, sunrise and sunset, the seasons, courtesans preparing to receive men, the bathing of nymphs, and so on. Due to these intricate descriptions, the epic serves as an important source on the history of Indian ornaments and costumes, including its different terms for dress.

  Krishna slays Shishupala, British Museum, 1850

  CONTENTS

  Canto I.

  Canto II.

  Canto III.

  Canto IV.

  Canto I.

  1. HARI ( in the incarnation of Krishna ), the lord of Sri, in whom dwell all the worlds, while dwelling in the beautiful palace of Vasudeva for restoring order into this world, once saw the son of Hiranyagarbha ( Narada ) descending from the sky.

  2. “The movement of him who has the thighless one for his charioteer ( i.e.., of the Sun ) is sideways, and he who consumes the oblations ( i.e.., Tire ), it is well-known, flames in an upward direction; but this mass of light is falling downwards, spreading on all sides. What, indeed, can it be?” — wondering thus, the people looked on in bewilderment.

  3. At first, the Omniscient one made it out to be a mass of splendours; a little later, the outlines of a form being clearly perceived, he determined it to be a corporeal being, and subsequently, when its limbs were severally distinguished, he decided it to be a man; thus, by degrees He recognised him to be Nârada, 4. Him, white like heaped-up camphor-powder, when, for the moment, just below fresh, large clouds, clearly comparable to S’ambhu, white with ashes and with his ( black ) elephant-hide tossed up in the revelry ( of the Tândava dance ).

  5. Him, who, having the ( white ) refulgence ( like that) of the autumnal moon and wearing matted locks of the hue of lotus-filaments, was, as it were, the lord of mountains, bearing on its snowy regions thickets of creepers, embrowned by ripening.

  6. Him, imitating ( as it were ) the ( fair ) person of the Bark-vested one ( i.e.., Balarâma ), with his (dark) under-garment fastened with a golden girdle.

  7. Him, snow-white, wearing the sacred thread made of the fibres of creepers growing on a soil of gold and wove
n of the down on the body of the king of birds ( i.e.. Garuda ), and ( therefore ), looking, as it were, to be a cloud on high with lightnings constantly flashing in it at the close of the rainy season.

  8. Him, looking splendid in the beautiful Chamuru-skin, having naturally spotted, bright, fine hair, closely fitting his body, white like a shining fragment of a lotus-stalk, and therefore, looking, as it were, to be the ( white ) elephant of Indra, in his housings ( painted in various colours ).

  9. Him, holding in his hand a rosary of clear crystal beads, which seemed to be, as it were, to be strung with coral leads in the upper half in front, being tinged with the rays of his thumb-nail that was polished bright by friction with the lute strings that were ceaselessly struck with it.

  10. Him, looking now and again ( admiringly ) at his lute Makati, in which were becoming manifest duly regulated melodies of the particular gamuts, made up of notes, arranged in groups of fixed quantity, sounding at the touch of wind.

  11. Having dismissed the gods who were following him and who bowed to him ( as they retired ), he, the store of transcendantal knowledge, came to the abode of the wielder of the discus ( i.e.., Krishna ), who had destroyed the glory of the Daityas, — abode that was as beautiful as the palace of Indra.

  12. Scarcely had the repository of austerities, resembling a falling sun, descended on the ground in front of him, when Achyuta quickly rose from his high seat, looking like a cloud rising from a mountain.

  13. Then the son of Brahmâ ( i.e.., Nârada ) set his feet in front of the son of Devakî ( i.e.., Krishna ) on the earth which was somehow held up by the assemblages of serpents in the nether world on their bending hoods, raised up with great effort.

  14. He, the Primeval Soul (Krishna), duly worshipped him, the adorable, with Arghya and other materials of worship. Sages are never desirous of visiting, through love, the houses of those who have not performed meritorious actions.

  15. The people had not yet seen these two standing up (and looking) like the mountain of snow (Himalaya) and mountain of collyrium ( Nilagiri ), when the Ancient Sage ( Krishna ) made the sage sit on a seat placed by him with his own hands.