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A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s4: 4. The Ṛtusaṁhāra

A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s4

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4. The Ṛtusaṁhāra

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The opinion of India which makes the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*, cycle of the seasons, a youthful work of Kālidāsa, has recently³ been assailed on many grounds. Thus it has been complained that the poem lacks Kālidāsa’s ethical quality, that it is too simple and uniform, too easy to understand. The obvious reply is that there is all the difference between the youth and the maturity of a poet, that there is as much discrepancy between the youthful work of Virgil, Ovid, Tennyson, or Goethe, and the poems of their manhood as between Kālidāsa’s primitiae and the rest of his work. Nor is it the slightest use to argue that Sanskrit poets differed from other poets since they were essentially learned and artificial; the poets mentioned are precisely of the analogous type, men who worked steadily at their art until at their prime they could create structures which make their youthful attempts seem childish folly. In point of fact the *Ṛtusaṁhāra* is far from unworthy of Kālidāsa, and, if the poem were denied him, his reputation would suffer real loss. The contention that Mallinātha commented on the other three of his poems but not on this is met effectively by the consideration that its simplicity rendered it poor game for the very learned commentator to deal with. The fact that the writers on poetics do not cite from the poem has an obvious explanation in the same fact; these authors never exhibit the slightest trace of liking what is simple, and they could find in the later poems abundant material to use as illustration. More deplorable still are some of the æsthetical arguments adduced; complaint is made that the poet begins with the summer, whereas the spring was the usual beginning of the year, forgetting that Kālidāsa was not composing an almanac or writing a *Shepheard’s Calendar*. Again, heat or its derivatives (*tap*) is found seven times in Canto i, as if this did not accord with summer, as does eagerness (*samutsukatva*) with the rains and longing (*utkaṇṭh*) with autumn. The poet is censured for asserting that the swans excel maidens in beauty of gait and the branches rob their arms of loveliness; later, he was not guilty of such discourtesy. He mixes a metaphor in speaking of clouds as having the lightning as creeper; as we have seen, Vatsabhaṭṭi borrows the phrase, and exploits two other verses of the poem, proving its antiquity and rendering most probable its authorship. It is objected that he uses here only the construction *ā mūlataḥ*, in lieu of the ablative, though equally once only in the *Kumārasambhava* he has *āmekhalam*; the freshness and liveliness of the seven verbal forms (ii. 19) is unparalleled and, therefore, not by Kālidāsa. Even the lack of developed use of figures of speech is adduced against him, and the use of *saṁhāra* in the title has been questioned as unique. Poets happily do not feel themselves bound to be parrots.¹

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³ Walter, *Indica*, iii. 6 ff.; Nobel, ZDMG. lxvi. 275 ff.; JRAS. 1913, pp. 401 ff.; Hari Chand, *Kālidāsa*, pp. 240 ff. *Contra* Keith, JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff.; Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, pp. 66 ff. Kielhorn, Bühler, Hultzsch, Macdonell, von Schroeder, among others, accept Kālidāsa’s authorship; often ed., e. g. Gajendragadkar, 1916.

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¹ His developed style is seen in his pictures of spring (*Kumāras.* iii; *Ragh.* ix), and summer (*Ragh.* xvi).

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The poem is far from a mere description of the seasons in their outward aspect, though Kālidāsa exhibits delicate observation and that loving sympathy with nature which seems innate in Indian poets. Throughout he insists on the relation of the diverse moods of the year to the loves of man and maiden or husband and wife. Though the days of summer are a burden, the nights are the more delightful, when the moon is bright and coolness refreshes the earth; at midnight the young delight in song and dance and wine; the moon in jealousy of youthful love retires in sorrow. The rainy season comes in kingly guise, the clouds the elephants which bear him, the lightning his standard, the thunder his drum. The emotion of love is awakened by the sight of the clouds which bend down to kiss the peaks of the mountains. Autumn comes like a young bride, clad in a garment of sugar cane, girdled with ripening rice, and with face of lotus blooms. Winter’s cold makes all the more welcome, all the more close and tender, the embraces of lovers. In the cool season the nights are cold, the moon shines chill, the lovers close the window of their chamber, wrap themselves warmly in their garments, and enjoy every moment of the still feeble rays of the sun, or rest beside the fire. But spring brings to them and to all nature new life and joy; we see now why the poet begins with summer; it enables him to end with the season in which young love, in harmony with the birth of a new year, is made perfect. The poem in every line reveals youth; the lack of the ethic touch¹ is in perfect accord with the outlook of the young, and though Kālidāsa was to write much finer poetry, he was also to lose that perfect lucidity which is one of the charms of the poem to modern taste, even if it did not appeal to writers on poetics.

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¹ Stenzler, ZDMG. xliv. 33, n. 3.

Cites (3)