A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c4.22

c4.22

Now it seems to me that Dilīp, Raghu, Aja, Daśaratha and Rāmacandra are really the pivotal characters of *Raghuvamśa*. If we take the lives of them all and roll them up into one, we can very well have a faithful picture of an ideal king, who is devoted to the rules of *varṇāśrama-dharma*. Throughout the *Rāmāyaṇa*, in the character of Rāma, beginning from the episode of his marriage to the killing of Śambūka, we have the picture of such a king, who is loyal to his father, loyal to his people, who marries for progeny, shows heroism by conquest and carries the fruits of civilisation to other countries. What Kālidāsa meant by threading the pearls is that he has really rolled up into one the great ideas of Vālmīki and manifested them in the character of different kings beginning from Dilīpa. His success with these two Kāvyas was largely due to his natural genius and also because the thing he took up was hallowed with the glory of the past. In *Śakuntalā* he staged his theme in a fairly supernormal manner. It was a prolongation of earth to heaven and as such it was not normal or natural. We find here also the same loyalty on the part of the king to *varṇāśrama-dharma* and the romance with Śakuntalā was also not clearly of the ordinary social order. Śakuntalā was the daughter on the one hand of Viśvāmitra and on the other, of Menakā, of an ascetic Kṣattriya and a heavenly nymph. As such the love was not unsocial. In the other drama *Vikramorvaśī* also, he availed himself of a Vedic story and described the love of the king with a heavenly nymph. Had Kālidāsa been a modern man, he should have probably staged his drama in a different manner. Believer as he was in some amount of free love, the social conditions did not allow him to depict it otherwise than with an Apsarā. According to the older smṛtis and traditions available to us, we find that a love affair with a courtesan's daughter was thoroughly allowable in social practice. In the third love affair described by Kālidāsa, he takes a Yakṣa and his wife. In the fourth love affair in *Mālavikāgnimitra*, which was his maiden work, he was not so daring and took opportunity of the fact that it was the constant practice of the kings to have more than one wife. In that case also, Mālavikā was also a princess. She was brought in the family by circumstances of an unnatural character and though the queen had protected her from the sight of the king, he accidentlly saw her portrait and gradually fell into love with her. The *parivrājikā* performed her part in the manner somewhat foreshadowed in the *Kāmaśāstra*. The other love affair that Kālidāsa describes was that of Śiva and Pārvatī and here also only in the 5th canto, that we find a great ideal depicted in the effort of Pārvatī to attain, through penances, such proper worth as may make her deserving of her great husband, and this is the most important message of the book. Otherwise, the Kāvya, as a whole, falls flat on our ears. The 1st and the 2nd cantos are bores. The 3rd canto attains some vigour and the 4th canto is a mere parody of the tragic consequences following the effort of Kāma to fascinate Śiva. The 6th and 7th cantos can well be read or omitted. We thus see that the divine episode, even when delineated by a master genius like Kālidāsa, really failled because it had not the realities of life. Its value with us is the great idea that physical beauty by itself cannot really win the heart of great souls and also the idea that it is only then when a great souls is wedded with a woman who by her moral austerities can make herself pure and attract her husband through her purity and spiritual greatness and the crucifixion of the baser tendencies of life, that great leaders of nations such as Kārttikeya can be produced.