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Supreme Theme : Singåra or Love
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ges; but it also shows the pleasing glow and affection of family life and the assurance of the love of husband and wife. There is a dreamy charm, in this picture, of the magic city of Alakā; the grandeur and holiness of the Himalayan precincts; the pious, innocent and fearless peace of an ascetic's hermitage; also the exciting thrill and wonder as heaven and earth seem to come together; and the bliss of ecstasy that follows the gushing union of the two worlds.
(6)
What then does Kālidāsa aim at conveying through his pictures of love ?
Kalidāsa is certainly aware of the different facets of love. His treatment distinctly shows that the love of man and woman has an important and significant place in the life of the universe. He has never looked upon, therefore, the physical attraction between the two sexes as anything that is low, sinful and condemnable. The physical basis of love is determined by nature and biology; and it is not confined to human relations. Nature and the entire worldly creation of life is enveloped in this relation and bound by the silken thread of this love. Kālidāsa docs not stop with the discovery of emotional similarity and correlation between nature and man. In his artistic creation there are couples like creeper and tree, deer and doe, the male and the female bee, the male and famale swans, river and ocean, river and cloud, cloud and lightning, couples who like the human husband and wife are passionately attached to each other and love one another with an intensity of love. The characters created by the poet are fully conscious of the emotional attachment existing in the universe. So, the Yak sa sincerely wishes that the cloud may not be separated from the lightning even for a moment.63 Yaksa and Purūravas discover several loving couples in nature; Sakuntalā arranges the marriage of her Vanajyotsnā creeper with the Sahakāra tree, and celebrates the first blossoming of the creepers like the festivity of child-birth.64
Nature too comes into youth. The signs of physical changes that appear in a girl with the advent of youth are visible in Vernal Beauty (Personified as a girl).,65 Vernal Beauty adorns herself like a young maiden;06 and wind is tempted to make overtures of love to the youthful creepers, because wind had fallen in love once with Anjanā.67
The animals and birds are not able to escape the appeal of love when nature is stepping into the spring of life. The doe goes near the black antelope and scratches her itching left eye on the tip of his horn with complete trust and without fear.68 When the antelope is scratching the doe with his horn she closes her eyes in the bliss of physical pleasure.69 When the male and the female bee are perched on a single flower, the male lets the female bee sin the flowery juice first and takes his drink only after her.70 But as separated lovers the female bee, though thirsty, does not touch the flower; she waits like a devoted wife for her companion's arrival and their reunion 71
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