Sakoontala; Or, The Lost Ring. Kalidasa

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СКАЧАТЬ By a curious regulation, the Jester is always a Bráhman, and therefore of a caste superior to the king himself; yet his business is to excite mirth by being ridiculous in person, age, and attire. He is sometimes represented as grey-haired, hump-backed, lame, and ugly. In fact, he is a species of buffoon, who is allowed full liberty of speech, being himself a universal butt. His attempts at wit, which are rarely very successful, and his allusions to the pleasures of the table, of which he is a confessed votary, are absurdly contrasted with the sententious solemnity of the despairing hero, crossed in the prosecution of his love-suit. His clumsy interference in the intrigues of his friend only serves to augment his difficulties, and occasions many an awkward dilemma. On the other hand, the shrewdness of the heroine's confidantes never seems to fail them under the most trying circumstances; while their sly jokes and innuendos, their love of fun, their girlish sympathy with the progress of the love affair, their warm affection for their friend, heighten the interest of the plot, and contribute not a little to vary its monotony.

      Fortunately, in the '[S']akoontalá' the story is diversified and the interest well sustained by a chain of stirring incidents. The first link of the chain, however, does not commence until the Fourth Act, when the union of the heroine with King Dushyanta, and her acceptance of the marriage-ring as a token of recognition, are supposed to have taken place. Then follows the King's departure and temporary desertion of his bride; the curse pronounced on [S']akoontalá by the choleric Sage; the monarch's consequent loss of memory; the bride's journey to the palace of her husband; the mysterious disappearance of the marriage-token; the public repudiation of [S']akoontalá; her miraculous assumption to a celestial asylum; the unexpected discovery of the ring by a poor fisherman; the King's agony on recovering his recollection; his aërial voyage in the car of Indra; his strange meeting with the refractory child in the groves of Kasyapa; the boy's battle with the young lion; the search for the amulet, by which the King is proved to be his father; the return of [S']akoontalá, and the happy reunion of the lovers;—all these form a connected series of moving and interesting incidents. The feelings of the audience are wrought up to a pitch of great intensity; and whatever emotions of terror, grief, or pity may have been excited, are properly tranquillized by the happy termination of the story.

      Indeed, if a calamitous conclusion be necessary to constitute a tragedy, the Hindú dramas are never tragedies. They are mixed compositions, in which joy and sorrow, happiness and misery, are woven in a mingled web—tragi-comic representations, in which good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are allowed to blend in confusion during the first Acts of the drama. But, in the last Act, harmony is always restored, order succeeds to disorder, tranquillity to agitation; and the mind of the spectator, no longer perplexed by the apparent ascendency of evil, is soothed, and purified, and made to acquiesce in the moral lesson deducible from the plot.

      The play of '[S']akoontalá,' as Sir W. Jones observes, must have been very popular when it was first performed. The Indian empire was then in its palmy days, and the vanity of the natives would be flattered by the introduction of those kings and heroes who were supposed to have laid the foundation of its greatness and magnificence, and whose were connected with all that was sacred and holy in their religion, Dushyanta, the hero of the drama, according to Indian legends, was one of the descendants of the Moon, or in other words, belonged to the Lunar dynasty of Indian princes; and, if any dependence may be placed on Hindú chronology, he must have lived in the twenty-first or twenty-second generation after the Flood. Puru, his most celebrated ancestor, was the sixth in descent from the Moon's son Budha, who married a daughter of the good King Satya-vrata, preserved by Vishnu in the Ark at the time of the Deluge. The son of Dushyanta, by [S']akoontalá, was Bharata, from whom India is still called by the natives Bhárata-varsha. After him came Samvarana, Kuru, Sántanu, Bhíshma, and Vyasa. The latter was the father of Dhritaráshtra and Pándu, the quarrels of whose sons form the subject of the great Sanskrit epic poem called Mahá-bhárata, a poem with parts of which the audience would be familiar, and in which they would feel the greatest pride. Indeed the whole story of [S']akoontalá is told in the Mahá-bhárata. The pedigree of [S']akoontalá, the heroine of the drama, was no less interesting, and calculated to awaken the religious sympathies of Indian spectators. She was the daughter of the celebrated Vi[s']wámitra, a name associated with many remarkable circumstances in Hindú mythology and history. His genealogy and the principal events of his life are narrated in the Rámáyana, the first of the two epic poems which were to the Hindús what the Iliad and the Odyssey were to the Greeks. He was originally of the regal caste; and, having raised himself to the rank of a Bráhman by the length and rigour of his penance, he became the preceptor of Rámachandra, who was the hero of the Rámáyana, and one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. With such an antecedent interest in the particulars of the story, the audience could not fail to bring a sharpened appetite, and a self-satisfied frame of mind, to the performance of the play.

      Although in the following translation it has been thought expedient to conform to modern usage, by indicating at the head of each Act the scene in which it is laid, yet it is proper to apprise the English reader that in scenery and scenic apparatus the Hindú drama, must have been very defective. No directions as to changes of scene are given in the original text of the play. This is the more curious, as there are numerous stage directions, which prove that in respect of dresses and decorations the resources of the Indian theatre were sufficiently ample.

      It is probable that a curtain suspended across the stage, and divided in the centre, answered all the purposes of scenes. Behind the curtain was the space or room called nepathya, where the decorations were kept, where the actors attired themselves, and remained in readiness before entering the stage, and whither they withdrew on leaving it. When an actor was to enter hurriedly, he was directed to do so 'with a toss of the curtain.'

      The machinery and paraphernalia of the Indian theatre were also very limited, contrasting in this respect unfavourably with the ancient Greek theatre, which appears to have comprehended nearly all that modern ingenuity has devised. Nevertheless, seats, thrones, weapons, and chariots, were certainly introduced, and as the intercourse between the inhabitants of heaven and earth was very frequent, it is not improbable that there may have been aërial contrivances to represent the chariots of celestial beings, as on the Greek stage. It is plain, however, from the frequent occurrence of the word nátayitwá, 'gesticulating,' 'acting,' that much had to be supplied by the imagination of the spectator, assisted by the gesticulations of the actors.

      For further information relative to the dramatic system of the Hindús, the reader is referred to the notes appended to the present translation. It is hoped that they will be found sufficient to explain every allusion that might otherwise be unintelligible to the English reader.

      MONIER MONIER-WILLIAMS.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [Footnote 1: In the Aihole Inscription (edited by Dr. Fleet) of the Western Chálukya King Pulike[S']in II, dated [S']aka 556=A.D. 634–35, actual mention is made of Kálidása and Bháravi by name, and Professor Kielhorn has informed me that he found a verse from the Raghu-van[S']a quoted in an inscription dated A.D. 602.]

      [Footnote 2: As to the other two, the most celebrated, called

       Vikramorva[S']í, has been excellently translated by Professors H.H.

       Wilson and E.B. Cowell, and the Málavikágnimitra, by Professor Weber,

       the eminent Orientalist of Berlin.]

      [Footnote 3: The following is an extract from, the Bombay Times of February 3, 1855. It is given literatim, and the orthographical errors and mutilation of the story prove that in those days a good and complete version of India's most celebrated drama was not obtainable.

      'HINDU DRAMA. 'SATURDAY, 3D FEBRUARY 1855.

      'An outline of the play to be performed at the Theatre this СКАЧАТЬ