Urvasi: In Legend and Literature

By G. DHARMA RAO, M.A.
(Principal, Bhadrak College)

Each country has its own myths. Thay are, as Andrew Lang observes, of various kinds–myths of the origin of the world, and of man and the arts of life; star, solar and lunar myths; myths of fire stealing, and romantic and heroic myths. Almost all of them are based on incidents in which gods and mortals jostle against one another. The anthropological value of these attempts of primitive man to understand himself and the Universe is being increasingly admitted in these days. But to the student of literature, mythology is not mere fiction, and the characters figuring therein are so full of vitality that the creative nexus underlying them has acted as a perennial source of inspiration to poets of all ages. Several English and Continental poets have coined new myths out of the old Greek and Scandinavian ones.

Among early romantic myths is that of the bride or bridegroom who violates a command of a mystic nature and consequently disappears. The Greek legend of Eros and Psyche discussed by Walter Pater in “Marius the Epicurean,” and handled by Robert Bridges in one of his poems, the Scandinavian myth relating to Freja and Oddur, and the Vedic one of Pururavas and Urvasi, are instances in point. It is of interest to note that the rule which forbids the seeing or naming the husband by the wife finds its sanction in the nuptial etiquette of the most widely distributed primitive races.

The Pururavas-Urvasi legend occurs in more than one place in the Rig Veda e.g., in the Satapatha Brahmana (XI-v-i) and elsewhere. Pururavas, a king of the lunar race, falls in love with Urvasi, a divine nymph. But the immortal lady consented to take a mortal husband under three conditions, one of which was that she might never see him naked. The Gandharvas (demi-gods) wanted to get her and they stole her two pet lambs tied to her bed. When Urvasi cried that she was robbed and helpless, Pururavas jumped up from his bed without even putting on his garment, in order to pursue the thieves. But the Gandharvas caused a lightning to flash just then, and Urvasi perceived the king naked. Since the pledge was broken, Urvasi vanished, and Pururavas, not seeing her on his return from pursuit, wailed and lamented. In his wanderings through Kurukshetra he came upon a pond wherein three nymphs, of whom Urvasi was one, were swimming in the guise of swans. Here occurs a dialogue (Rig Veda X, 95) which is dramatic. Pururavas begs her to come to him but in vain. In despair he talks of killing himself. She replies:

“Nay, do not die, Pururavas, nor perish,
Let not the evil-omened wolves devour thee.
With woman there can be no lasting friendship,
Hearts of hyaenas are the hearts of women.”
(Griffith’s Translation)

But later, she took pity on him and said, “Come here the last night of the year from now; then shalt thou lie with me for one night and then a son of thine will have been born.” Pururavas accordingly meets her at the appointed time in a golden palace, when she informs him that the Gandharvas would grant him a boon the next morning and that he should make his choice then. When Pururavas requested Uravasi to choose for him, she advised him to say to the Gandharvas, “Let me be one of yourselves.” The legend mentions that in this connection the Gandharvas taught him a fire-sacrifice through which a mortal gets metamorphosed into a Gandharva.

This legend appears mutatis mutandis throughout Sanskrit literature; in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, in Hari Vamsa and Vishnu Purana, and in Kalidasa’s play ‘Vikramorvasiyam.’ The poems of Rabindranath and Aurobindo show what hold this theme has on master-minds; and in modern Telugu poetry, Krishna Sastri’s ‘Urvasi’ occupies a unique place, being a rendering of the same motif in terms of his mood and personality. The Rig Vedic legend is characterised by passion and pathos, the Vedic Urvasi being essentially la belle dame sans mercie. The myth is brought near to human life and emotion and has life, warmth, and colour. But in Kalidasa’s play, it is changed into a rather “unconvincing comedy of semi-courtly life”, the denouement being brought about by the intervention of deus-ex-machina, viz., Indra and the magic stone. The impulsive and fierce-souled nymph of the Veda is transformed in the drama into a passionate but selfish woman, often behaving like a courtesan, though in the end she becomes a loyal and obedient wife. Again, the Pururavas of the Vedic legend is drawn in a few but bold strokes, while Kalidasa’s hero is mainly sentimental. The interest of the fourth Act which is full of the tumult of his passion is lyrical, not dramatic. Kalidasa believed in free love, no doubt, but in wedding Pururavas to Urvasi, he probably showed his acceptance of the Varnashrama tradition of his times. Indeed, there are touches here and there which show Urvasi’s love for Pururavas even after the birth of a son. In the fifth Act, after Ayus joins his parents, Urvasi sheds tears, and when questioned by Pururavas as to the cause of her sorrow, replies,

“O King, my heart held captive in thy hands
I stood bewildered by the curse; then Indra
Uttered his high comrnand, ‘When my great soldier,
Earth’s monarch, sees the face that keeps his line
Made in thy womb, to Eden thou returnest.’
So when I knew my issue; sick with the terror
Of being torn from thee, all hidden haste,
I gave to noble Satyavati the child,
In Chyavan’s forest to be tamed.”
(Aurobindo’s Translation)

Later when Narada says,

“All thy allotted life
This Urvasi is given thee for wife
And lovely help-meet,”

not only is Pururavas pleased, for he no longer has to retire to the forest as a hermit after resigning the kingdom to Ayus, but Urvasi too. She says, “Oh, a sword is taken out of my heart.” The nymphs then sing the joys of wedded life:

“O thou art blest, sister, in thy son
Crowned heir to empire, in thy husband blest
From whom thou shalt not part.”
(Aurobindo’s Translation)

And yet it is the beauty of Urvasi that draws the heart of Pururavas towards her at first. In the first Act, the hero gazing at her is reminded of the story of her birth from the thigh of sage Narayana and exclaims:

“And yet I cannot think of her
Created by a withered hermit cold:
But rather in the process beautiful
Of her creation, Heaven’s enchanting moon
Took the Creator’s place, or very Love
Grown all one amourousness, or else the month
Of honey, and its days deep-mined with bloom.”
(Aurobindo’s Translation)

We are all familiar with the traditional story of the origin of Urvasi–that she rose from the sea along with Lakshmi, the goddess of plenty, when the gods and Titans churned the ocean with the help of serpent Vasuki and Mandhara hill, and that Indra took this eternally young woman to paradise as a dancer and used her as a temptress to seduce any sage that practised austerities to win his throne. Kalidasa makes her come down to earth as a consequence of the curse of the sage Bharata.

In the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, however, she emerges as a different figure, embodying all that is elusive, mysterious and fascinating in feminine beauty. In one of his poems (‘Fugitive’ II–I) Tagore calls her the Lady of Manifold Magnificence. Her path is strewn with light, and the worlds echo her music. The varied and scattered beauties of nature are but her manifestations, but in the heart of man she casts aside her variety and springs up as a lovely lotus of love. In another poem (‘Lover’s Gift’-54) written subsequently, Tagore contrasts her with Lakshmi. In the beginning of time, God dreamt a dream and out of the churning of the dream arose (1) Lakshmi, the symbol of plenty in nature and of the motherliness of humanity, and (2) Urvasi standing for the efflorescence of nature and the ravishing, haunting beauty of woman. But in this poem Urvasi is a symbol lacking uniqueness.

One of the greatest poems of Tagore is ‘Urvasi’ which far outshines his previous attempts to body forth this character. Here Tagore leaves out Lakshmi altogether, and unlike Kalidasa, ignores her relationship with Pururavas and her later attempt to seduce Arjuna, his descendent. According to Tagore, she is no wife, no mother, no daughter, but feminine beauty which since the beginning of time not only gladdened man and enriched his experience, but has always the power of deluding him and leading him into evil. She bears in her right hand the bowl of ambrosia, and the goblet of poison in the left. Ever since she arose from the sea foam (like Aphrodite, her Greek counterpart) she has been casting her spell on man by her charms, making his whole being pulsate in a thrill of joy. To Urvasi, the eternally young woman, the distinction between death and immortality does not exist. Her beauty does not go through the stages of infancy and youth like that of an individual woman. Rather is she like the sun that rises full-orbed in the east. She is free from the coyness of a human woman and is therefore without a veil. She corresponds to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (La Giocanda) but Mona Lisa in spite of the mysterious smile on her face, is a woman with a history. Rabindranath’s Urvasi has no historical association, for she is no wife, no mother, no daughter. Her radiance is that of the flower that does not grow on any earthly stem. At the magic spell of her beauty, even the waves of the sea grow calm and the giant-snake Vasuki becomes harmless. She is the creative spirit of life which thrills the earth with flowers and makes man’s heart restless with desire. But her home is in heaven, and her duty is to entertain the gods with song and dance. Hence on earth when spring comes, the winds, on account of separation from her, heave a sigh, and even the moon is sad. She is the spirit of freedom too and man hopes that one day she will visit the earth and banish ugliness.

Aurobindo’s poem on Urvasi strikes a different note. To some extent he follows the traditional account. After Urvasi departed to heaven, deserting Pururavas, the latter goes in search of her. Here the poet creates a meeting between him and Lakshmi, the patroness of Aryasthan, whose words to the bereaved lover are prophetic, besides revealing Aurobindo’s philosophy of life:

Sprung of the moon, thy grandsire’s fault in thee
Yet lives: but since thy love is singly great,
Doubtless, thou shalt possess thy whole desire.
Yet hast thou maimed thy future and discrowned
The Aryan people: for tho’ Ila’s sons
In Hastina, the city of elephants
And Indraprastha, future towns shall rule
Drawing my peoples to one sceptre, at last
Their power by excess of beauty falls.
Thy sin, Pururavas, of beauty and Love:
And this the land divine to impure grasp
Yields of barbarian from the outer shores.

Thus Urvasi here symbolises the beauty that tempts and enfeebles man, and drags him away from his duty to the country and dedication to higher causes, blinding him to his future. Worship of beauty should not weaken the individual, especially the king. It should strengthen character.

It is a far cry from the Urvasi of the Vedas who is ‘La belle dame sans mercie’ to Rabindranath’s creation which suffers a change into ‘something rich and strange.’ Krishna Sastri’s lyrics in Telugu on this theme contain occasional echoes from Tagore but on the whole it may be said that his Urvasi is cast in a different mould. In fact she grows out of his previous poems, ‘Krishna-Pakshamu’ (The dark fortnight) in which he sings of the abyss of darkness, despair and despondency into which he has fallen. When Urvasi flashes on his vision from her heavenly heights, he exclaims:

“Thou art the diamond tiara
In Indra’s jewelled crown,
And I a streak of darkness dense
Crouching in fear in Hades’ dark nooks.
Where, but on heaven’s altar
Lit with the stars, the sun and moon,
Can our hand-clasp be?
How can thou step down from heaven,
Or me fly up like a bird?”

Here and there his Urvasi reminds us of Rabindranath’s Lady of Manifold Magnificence:

“Thou art the streaming dew-drops of the early dawn,
Daughter begotten of the union
Of rainy August and cloudless Autumn.”

He further visualises her as the “pale brow of night, the lady of sorrows heaving sighs of darkness,” and identifies her with the plaintive tune running through his former full-throated elegies (cf. Rabindranath’s line ‘Thy body is washed with the world’s tears’). The traditional Urvasi seduced sages out of their austere penances, but Krishna Sastri’s Urvasi inspires him with song. He cries exultingly:

“Let the divine radiance of thy red feet but graciously shine on me, and I shall weave it into my verses, and lay them before thy presence like the fragrant camphor-incense of a devotee.”

One striking difference between Krishna Sastri and Tagore is that the former, besides greeting Urvasi as the inspirer of his lyrics, establishes a personal relationship with her. She speaks to him:

“I came to life like the dream of Time’s first dawn, and when I brushed past the bosom of the dark, thrilling into light, this bright form of mine was smutted with black. I am the first lover, and the first to be parted in love.”

Again, “I am the meeting
And the parting
’Tween the ocean’s wave
And the foam of heavenly Ganga.”

Here is another echo from Tagore:

“The cool nectar immortal
And the deadly poison infernal
Are my sisters and companions.”

Elsewhere she says:

“Aeon after aeon
Have I laughed as day, and wept as night:
All this laughter and all these tears
Have I garnered for thee,
As my dower, our bond of union.
I am the first to be torn in love
And the first lover.”

In a beautiful poem Krishna Sastri tells us that the song of Urvasi brought to his life, parched up with desire and frustration, a sense of joy and fulfillment. It came on him like a flood in waves of varied rhythm. “Like the laughter of moon-beams playing on the edges of a cloudlet, like tears of dew flowing down the golden highways of the sky at dawn, like the swish of air in the blue sky behind the wings of a flying dove, and like the fragrance streaming dreamlike from the sleeping jasmine maiden’s petalled lids.” And this music has a strange effect on him, now depressing him with its heavy sweetness and the next moment lifting up his heart to ethereal regions, past the clouds, the blue sky, and the stars. There is in these verses a Shelleyan felicity of phrase and interlinked rhythm.

Yet in another verse of rather over-wrought and elaborate metaphor, he pictures the downward descent of this Lady’s looks through all the intermediate steps between heaven and earth. The imagery is rich and the drapery rather too profuse. The Lady’s looks are “like flower petals from the garland on Indra’s neck, like the dance of the blue bees swarming round the lotuses on the celestial Ganga, like star festoons, like dreams.” They come down in hot and eager haste as he crouches in the dust with eyes move less like stones. She is thus to him the embodiment of womanly love and pity.

This love makes him dream strange dreams. In a flight of fancy, he imagines himself walking hand in hand with this Lady along the paths of Nandana, the garden of heaven. A creeper maiden is asleep in her bed of flowers. Urvasi plucks a flower and lets drop a tear. Touching his feet she says: “My love, are not these flowers sufficient token of my love? Look up, and see how I have reared those white flowers in the blue canopy of heaven? And he replies in a voice choked with emotion: “I was like the winter tree whose flowers had fallen into dust, but now I am like the young sapling in the morning of the first spring.”

Love poetry has ever been the delight of readers. There are several romantic myths woven round the love-theme and the same myth gets a fresh re-orientation as it passes through the imagination of one poet after another. It is a rare pleasure as well as an interesting study to pursue the transformations of the Urvasi myth in the various literatures of our country.