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A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s5: 5. The Meghadūta

A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s5

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5. The Meghadūta

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In distinction to the *Ṛtusaṃhāra* the *Meghadūta*² is unquestionably a work of Kālidāsa’s maturity; the mere fact that he adopts for it and maintains throughout with only occasional harshness a metre so elaborate as the Mandākrāntā is conclusive proof that he was no novice, though we may admit the possibility that he desired by this metrical *tour de force* to establish his capacity once and for all, and to exhibit himself as a great poet. Suggestions for the subject-matter may have been taken from the *Rāmāyaṇa*,¹ where Rāma’s deep longing for his lost Sītā offers an obvious prototype for the Yakṣa’s sorrow for the wife from whom he is severed, and the description of the rainy season in iv. 28 has some points of similarity. But the idea is carried out with marked originality and beauty. A Yakṣa banished for a year by Çiva his master, because of failure of duty, is reminded by the approach of the rainy season of his wife, lamenting him in their abode at Alakā, and begs a passing cloud to bear to his beloved the news of his welfare and the assurance of his devotion. From Rāmagiri, his place of exile, the cloud is bidden go, in the company of the cranes and the royal swans *en route* for Lake Mānasa, to the region of Māla and to mount Āmrakūṭa. Thereafter it is to seek the Daçārṇa country with its city of Vidiçā, and then must drink the waters of the Vetravatī before proceeding to visit Ujjayinī, after crossing the Nirvindhyā and the Sindhu. The shrine of Mahākāla must be visited, the Carmaṇvatī crossed, and the holy Brahmāvarta after passing Daçapura; there the cloud will visit the field of Kurukṣetra, the scene of Arjuna’s great deeds, and drink the water of the Sarasvatī, for which Balarāma, who fought not for love of his kin, abandoned his beloved wine. Thence it must go to where the Ganges descends from the Himālaya near mount Kanakhala, and then to Kailāsa, passing through the gap of mount Krauñca which Paraçurāma made as a path to the south. Then the water of lake Mānasa will refresh the cloud, and on the top of the mountain is Alakā where the beloved of the Yakṣa dwells. The delights of the divine city are fully depicted, and the poet then describes to the cloud the home he is to seek out; it can be seen from afar off through its archway; in the garden is a coral tree, its mistress’s pet, and a flight of emerald steps leads to a well in which golden lotuses grow, and the swans, delighted, think no more even of their beloved Mānasa. There is the beloved, sorrowful, and blighted by separation, emaciated, seeking by many a device to while away the long days until her husband’s return. Gently she is to be wakened from her slumber by the cloud, which is to give her a message of tender love from her husband, and an assurance of his faith and certainty of reunion.

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² Ed. E. Hultzsch, London, 1911 (with Vallabhadeva’s comm.); ed. and trans. Pathak, Poona, 1916; ed. TSS. 54, 1919.

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¹ There is in the *Kāmavilāpa Jātaka* (ii. 443) a very distant parallel.

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At first sight the effect of the poem seems to be marred by an element of unreality in the longing of the Yakṣa, whose separation is but temporary and who as an attendant of Çiva cannot in truth fear either death or even injury for his beloved from his absence. The message would have read very differently had it been sent, as in Schiller’s *Maria Stuart*, by a helpless captive awaiting in resignation or despair an ineluctable doom. But to understand the poem aright we must remember that the poet doubtless felt that it was, as later writers expressly allege, the duty of the poet to suggest rather than to say outright; the loves of the two immortals is a symbol of human love; perhaps¹ Kālidāsa had some experience of his own which the poem indicates, for the vivid colours in which he describes the Yakṣa’s abode seem to be drawn from real life. Certainty is wholly unattainable, but in any event it is difficult to praise too highly either the brilliance of the description of the cloud’s progress or the pathos of the picture of the wife sorrowful and alone. Indian criticism has ranked it highest among Kālidāsa’s poems for brevity of expression, richness of content, and power to elicit sentiment, and the praise is not undeserved.

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¹ Bhau Dāji, *Lit. Rem.*, pp. 50 f.

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Popularity has had the penalty of many interpolations of the text. There is a remarkable mass of evidence available; in the eighth century Jinasena, applying the art of Samasyāpūraṇa, worked the whole of the text of 120 verses as he knew it into an account of the life of the Jaina saint Pārçvanātha;² it exists in a Tibetan³ version in the Tanjur, and in a Sinhalese rendering; many stanzas are quoted in works on poetics; it was repeatedly⁴ imitated from the *Pavanadūta* of Dhoī in the twelfth century onwards; we have from that century and later many commentaries, including that of Vallabhadeva,¹ who gives 111 verses, of Dakṣiṇāvartanātha (*c.* 1200), who has 110, and of Mallinātha,² who has 118.

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² Pathak’s ed. (1916) rests on this. A *Nemidūta* of Vikrama in 125 verses ends each with a line from a rather interpolated text.

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³ H. Beckh, *Ein Beitrag zur Textkritik des Kālidāsas Meghadūta* (1907); G. Huth, SBA. 1895, pp. 268 ff., 281 ff.; date 13th cent.

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⁴ Aufrecht, ZDMG. liv. 616, mentions other imitations; cf. IHQ. iii. 273 ff.

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¹ Hultzsch places him in the 10th cent., but see Pathak's ed., pp. xiv ff. He knew Bilhaṇa and Hemacandra, but is cited in 1140 A.D.

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² This famous commentator, who also explained the epics of Kālidāsa, Bhāravi, Bhaṭṭi, and Māgha, and Vidyādhara's *Ekāvalī* (see ed., pp. xxiv ff.) lived *c.* 1400. A comm. on the *Nalodaya* is given, *Madras Catal.*, xx. 7923.

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Inevitably many other lyric poems were ascribed to Kālidāsa, including two of some merit, the *Ghaṭakarpara* and the *Çṛṅgāratilaka*, but there is no real probability of proving them his.

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