Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Kalidasa and Nature

K. Balasubramania Iyer

Kalidasa and Nature
K. BALASUBRAMANIA AIYAR
It has been said that the poet holds the mirror up to Nature. Literary criticism, both Indian and Western, estimates the true worth of a poet and the real essence of his poetry by the poet’s attitude to Nature as revealed in his works. The great literary critic, Dandin, when mentioning the various ‘alankaras’ of genuine poetry, gives an honoured place to ‘svabhavagyana’ and says: ‘Truth about Nature is the culmination of all sciences and is the ideal of all poetry.’ Judged from this standpoint, we may state, without fear of exaggeration, that Kalidasa, of all, is Nature’s poet. His devotion to Nature rose to the height of a spiritual reverence and attained the sublimity of a religious conviction. The great English poet, Wordsworth, once expressed the regret that he was not born a Pagan, so that he may worship the beautiful aspects of Nature in the true spirit of heathen devotion: -
Great God, I had rather be
A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.
Kalidasa, much more than even Wordsworth, is profoundly convinced of the divinity of Nature. Instead of the conventional beginning of poems, adopted by Sanskrit writers, of an invocation to one’s own ‘Ishta Devata,’ he begins the ‘Kumarasambhava’ by the solemn affirmation of the divinity of the Himalayas. It will be wrong to think that this ascription of divinity is merely poetic, in the sense of being unscientific or untrue. The evolution from percept to concept is a familiar method in Science. Physicists describe certain gases as obeying or disobeying Boyle’s Law as if it were an enactment for their guidance, and as if Science set forth an ideal, the perfect gas, for their imitation. The language seems to imply that gases are wanting in perfection, in that they fail to observe the exact letter of the law. Speaking in the same strain, one will have to say that Hydrogen is nearest to perfection, that Oxygen and Nitrogen are good enough in the affairs of everyday life and that Carbon-di-Oxide and Chlorine are poor sinners which yield to temptation. Sometimes, moral qualities are attributed to inanimate matter when we judge them according to the fulfillment of the purpose for which we use them. For example, we refer in scientific parlance to good and bad radiators, or good and bad insulators, as if it were a duty on their part to radiate well or insulate well; as if there were failures on the part of Nature to come up to the proper standard. In using language like this and in ascribing moral qualities to Nature, Science is dealing with the perfect concepts as evolved from the percepts of Nature. In other words, it describes the good action or bad action of a certain object as viewed from the standpoint of the perfect concept of that body. Again, it is this perfect concept of a particular object in its relation to the inner truth of the universe which is affirmed by the doctrine of ‘Abhimani Devata’ known to Hindu religious ‘literature, which is as scientific as it is poetic. So, let us not run away with the feeling that when the poet is indulging in this divination of Nature, he is either roaming in the realms of pure fantasy or falling into the mire of illogicality.
When moral or spiritual qualities are ascribed to the inanimate objects of Nature, rhetoricians say that the poet who does so is using the figure of speech called ‘Pathetic fallacy,’ but it is neither pathetic nor is there any fallacy underlying it. Discussing this figure of speech, John Ruskin says in his Modern Painters, Volume III: ‘The state of mind which attributes to it (Nature) these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the "Pathetic fallacy." But he adds, ‘if we look well into the matter we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness.’ Hence we find Kalidasa saying: ‘The soul under the grip of highstrung emotion naturally flows out in compassion and inundates Nature, animate and inanimate alike.’ There is no falseness about it. (Kamarthahi prakriti kripana chetana chetaneshu.)
There are many aspects of the truth or reality of an object. Science and sense-perception may reveal only one aspect of the whole truth. For example, while mathematics confines itself when counting oranges to their aspect as units, and physical science may view them only as composed of atoms or electrical charges, art reveals their colour and beauty of outlines, and religion enunciates the truth of their relation to the sum-total of all objects–the universe. Kalidasa’s noblest creation, Sakuntala, is the child reared in the lap of Nature. She is the intimate friend of the forest-creeper and the boon companion of the Ashrama deer. She is the foster-daughter not only of the sage Kanva but also of the divinities of the wood, and just as the sage feels intense sorrow on the occasion of his parting with Sakuntala, the Sylvan deities are said to feel poignant grief at her departure. The sage addresses them in the same manner as he would address Sakuntala’s mother. To the poet’s fancy a beautiful damsel and a creeper are objects alike of beauty. They are one in the aesthetic sense. One touch of magic will transform, as in the Vikramorvasiya, the damsel into a creeper. The creeper entwines itself round a tree, as the beloved would cling to her lover.
Man’s relation to Nature in Kalidasa is an aesthetic and spiritual oneness experienced by the realisation of the essential unity of the beauty, truth and joy of man’s inner being with the beauty, truth and joy of Nature. One feels alike the play of the Unseen Hand in the joyful and beautiful aspects of Nature as in the workings of the feelings and emotions of the human personality. This conviction permeates the whole attitude of the poet to Nature. Looking at the vastness and grandeur of the sea, the poet exclaims: ‘The boundless sea is as much beyond cognition as the form of Vishnu, the Lord of the Universe.’ The Yaksha in the Meghasandesa appeals, in the fullness of his emotion, to the cloud for conveying his doleful message of love to his beloved in the distant city of Alaka. For, according to the poet, true emotion which holds a person in its grip and transforms his whole nature, knows no difference between animate objects imbued with feelings and inanimate Nature. Every human feeling or emotion, when it reaches the glory of its fullness and the acme of its perfection, becomes universalised and forms part of the nature of the Universal Spirit which pervades the whole of creation. The truth of this is well expressed by the Srimad Bhagavata when speaking of the universalised soul of Suka. The sage Vyasa called aloud for his son in grief, and the sound reverberated through-out the forest and found its echo in the trees of the forest. The poet, there, views man as the noblest work of God and as part of the same beautiful fabric of Nature, and feels convinced that man’s heart beats always in unison with the heart of Nature. Speaking of Sakuntala, the poet says that, though fond of adorning herself with the flowers of creepers, she would desist from doing so on account of her affection for the creepers, lest she should deprive them of their ornamentation. It is this solicitude for her creeper-friends that is responsible for her self-abnegation. A similar feeling impels the saint under the vow of Ahimsa to refrain from plucking with his finger-nails the flowers and tender sprouts of trees and plants. It is the realisation of the essential unity of man with Nature that makes the poet transfer all the feelings, emotions and tastes of man to the objects around and make them animate with life and joy. It is the projection of man’s personality, which is one with the personality behind the universe, upon the aspects of Nature. In the Meghasandesa, the Yaksha holds out the joy of aesthetic appreciation to the cloud to induce it to make its long pilgrimage to the distant city of Alaka. He, therefore, says that the supreme aesthetic joy of appreciating the beauty of the play of moonlight on the balcony of a fine palace, which is denied to the cloud in every other part of the country, is fully available to the cloud if it happens to go to the city of Alaka. The moonlight there can never be hidden by the darkness of the clouds, for it proceeds from the moon on the head of Siva living in the suburbs of the city and not from the moon high up in Heaven. This is the significance in the selection of the city of Alaka as the destination for the cloud in the Poem.
To Nature, ‘red in tooth and claw,’ however, he was indifferent. For, he saw in her only the beauty, joy and emotions of man. According to him, the truth of the Universe does not lie in the grim aberrations of Nature.

(Reprinted from Triveni, Jan. 1935)

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