Kalidasa and Tagore

As the first leading poet to gain world recognition in the early part of this century, Rabindranath Tagore was a great name and great influence in my youthful days. He has set the literary example in all Indian languages for at least three decades. As a college student the first prize I received was the works of Tagore. When Tagore visited Madras 50 years ago, I had the privilege of seeing his noble figure, hear him reading his poems both in Bengali and English and witnessed the drama performance by his troupe. I paid a tribute in a short lyric which is the very first piece in my collection of poems called Kavita. It is sustained by double entendre (Slesha), in that the homage applies to the Sun and the poet.

“Salutation to thee, O poet, bearing the name of the Sun. In the dawn of the spring of Indian Renaissance your immortal melodies are echoed in all directions, like the voice of the season’s koel. You are banishing from our midst the darkness of igno­rance and filling it with the light of knowledge. You have esta­blished overlordship both in the East and in the West. Your radiant figure and poetry open the lotus or our eyes and heart. Everlasting is the full glow of your literary orb. The light of the world art thou, the universal poet.”

I may mention here that in Aadityahridayam, the Sun is praised as Kavirviswomahaateja, the universal poet, the Great Light.

My contact with the poetry of Kalidasa was also a half century at about the same time as I had the glimpse of Tagore. It is by rendering seasons Ritusamhaaram, the earliest writing of that poet and my earliest writing too. I never thought at that time that, a day would come when I could have the satisfaction of having rendered all the works of Kalidasa into Telugu and be the recipient of an award from Sahitya Academy. However it has come to pass. Meghadoota, Sakuntala and Raghuvamsahave been published from time to time and now Vikramorvasihas been published. Kumaarasambhavamand Maalavikaare in the press and they will be published shortly.

My latest tribute in verse to Kalidasa runs thus: Saaptapadiina maitri. Here also is the double entrendre (Slesha). I have praised the poet as Siva in disguise. Let me explain.

“O poet, you have made poetry your consort by taking the seven steps in accordance with the Vedic rites. Kumaarasambhavam Kaavya born of your union makes conquest of the world fills your fame all found. It is like the union of Parvati and Siva, be­getting Kumara who, as Commander of godly hosts, has made a conquest of the whole world. You are Siva himself in disguise.”

This has reference to the fact that Siva approaches Parvati in disguise. There is a whole dialogue between them and the word ‘Saaptapadiina maitri’ is used in the seventh verse of his address. This is availed of in the context of Kalidasa’s compositions being seven in number. I may also mention that all the three dramas of his begin with an invocation of Siva as also Raghuvamsawith the famous Vaagardhaviva sampruktau.”

This is only to set out my homage to these two great poets divided by sixteen centuries, if not more.

What is common to them and their greatness? Both are truly the national poets of India, one of ancient India and the other of modern India. Essentially both are lyric poets of the highest order. Both are urban and urbane. Sanskrit poetry before Kalidasa is very much of the forest retreat, having sprung in Ashramas of Valmiki or Vyasa. Their primacy is as sages and secondarily they are poets. Ramayana and Mahabharata are not city products. They are forest produce. With Kalidasa, the city poet – the poet of Royal court – takes shape. Ujjayani is the city where he had his house and family and well-being. He specially instructs the cloud messenger not to noise Ujjayani and the delight of being seen with uplifted eyes by the damsels of that nice city, though it is a little out of the way. The Maha Kala temple, Gandhavati pool nearby, the swift flowing Shipra stream, the lofty palaces are mentioned with an egoistic glow. Meghadootais a personal lyric. The lovelorn Yaksha is sending his message to his beloved wife in the home town of Alaka in the distant Himalayas. No name is given to the lover or the beloved. I prefer to think that the lover is no other than the poet himself. Perhaps he had an exile from the Vidish Kingdom to Vidnortha Kingdom in the politics of his times and had to be away from his beloved wife and his own Vipralambha mood has been glamorised, given an extended shape, to cover the Vindhya region and the whole of North India deep into the Himalayan range. Every hill and dale and stream is painted pink with Sringara covering the full scale national landscape in the short poem of 120 verses. Kalidasa can be acclaimed the national poet by this very physical range.

By his Sakuntalatoo his national stature is heightened. The story is of the birth of Bharata. If it has not been a drama, it would have been a Bharatasambhava. It is after Bharata this nation takes its name as “Bharat.” The non-pareil excellence of Sakuntalaneed not be dilated. It is acclaimed as the best Indian drama, and earned fulsome praise of the German poet Goethe. The flowers of the spring and the fruits of autumn are there well-combined.

The other two phys Vikramorvasiand Malavikaare centred round the palace and perfectly structured but have necessarily to bow before the excellence of Sakuntalaboth in range, emotion and artistry.

            Kumaarasambhavam is the long poem of divine love and Raghuvamsais the longer poem of the life of generations of kings of the solar race. Even in the classics the lyrical element is to the fore in describing the royal pair of Dilipa and Sudakshina or of Aja and Indumati or describing the royal hunt of Dasaratha or the colourful return journey of Rama and Sita to Ayodhya.

The city is a place of pleasure unlike the rural scene. So it is, the city poet is devoted to Sringara. But what is significant is that the poet is tradition-bound and the erotic element is kept within the bounds of Dharma. Sri Aurobindo has in a monograph spoken of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa being the national mouthpieces of the three national impulses in three successive ages. The moral impulse of the Aryan race found its expression in Valmiki, the intellectual impulse in Vyasa and the sensuous impulse in Kalidasa. They thus became national poets and their writings, national epics. It is a mighty truth.

I may add that the “Jivan Devata”, goddess of life, has been truly expressed in the well-known words Satyam, Sivam, Sundaram. I will put them as science of life, the ethics of life and the beauty of life. The divinity that these words envisage is life itself. The science of life is detailed by Vyasa in Mahabharata. The ethics of life is portrayed in Valmiki’s Ramayana. The beauty of life is treasured in Kalidasa’s poems and plays. Not that the three do not overlap but it is only to emphasize the dominant element.

Tagore with his advent in the twentieth century shares the scientific, moralistic and artistic elements of the three great poets. But obviously his poetic heart is nearest to Kalidasa. The great epics, Tagore has not attempted. He has chosen the short lyric as his medium for poetic utterance. Respect for the divine, love for the feminine and delight in the juvenile are featured respectively in his Gitanjali, Gardener and the Crescent Moon. The Western influence, however, affected the imagery about the godhead. The Brahma concept of formless deity has made the hymns to God somewhat vague. The traditional concept of vesting the divine with form exemplified in the numerous images in temples, in paintings and in books had to be subdued in an age when idolatry was being decried. Even in regard to compos­ing the national song for the nation, there is the manifest difference between “Vandemataram” of Bankim Chandra and “Jana gana mana” of Tagore.

Even in regard to wooing the feminine form, the luxuriant emphasis on physical features found in Sanskrit poetry has yielded place to the less tangible but more suggestive factors. This also may be due to Western influence. It may also be due to the realisation that the line pursued by the Sanskrit poets has been exhausted, they having carried it to the limits of perfection. I will give only one example of the refined way of dealing with the feminine by Tagore and in a way it illustrates his type of simile too.

“My beloved is dark even as the singing koel is dark, she is dark even as the shadow of a flowery meadow, she is dark even as midnight longing of first love.” Similies are classified as Morta, Amurta, Murtaamurta, that is, with a shape, without a shape, with and without a shape. Koel has shape. Midnight longing has no shape. Shadow of the meadow has an unsubstantial shape and so is also shapeless.

Let me refer in contrast to a shapely concrete, simile of Kalidasa, in Meghadoota: “O cloud! rest a while on the top of the Aamrakoota hill and tinge it blue. The hillsides are a sheet of golden hue with the mango trees alround fully laden with the ripe fruits all over. To the celestial pairs sojourning in the high skies afar, the hill will verily look like the bared bosom of earth.” This is very much in tune with the menta1 pasture of the lovelorn Yaksha and vividly brings to our mind how much his beloved and her bosom are stationed before his mind’s eye.

Great as his poetry was, the personality of Tagore was greater than his poetry itself. Ordinarily the factual personality of a poet is inferior to his poetic personality. But with Tagore it was different. It was due to his times as well. On the world scene, Tagore projected India, well-known as the land of spiritualism. In his person he therefore embodied the spirit of India. The moral, intellectual and sensuous impulses which Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa had embodied in their works were integrated into a great spirit at impulse of the race and found manifestation in the various writings of Tagore. He was patriot, prophet and poet combined. That is why Mahatma Gandhi himself called him “Gurudeva.” A nation in subjection struggling to free itself with the weapons of intellectual and moral persuasion produced this untarnished figure of an ancient sage verily come to life in a modern age, holding his head high expounding the “religion of man” and explaining to the busy West the “philosophy of leisure.”

“After the upsurge of life. O lord, let me have release into peace everlasting” are the final words of Kalidasa in the Bharatavakya of “Sakuntalam”.

“Mine is the abode of peace” said Tagore and founded Santiniketan.