Appointment with Kalidasa

Author(s): G K Bhatt
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 68

Glimpses of Personality
spots and places, flora and fauna, with loving observation, or he had the faculty, like Shakespeare, to learn and retain in memory all the information and bits of knowledge he picked up in his meeting with travellers from all over India. It is obvious from his literature that Kalidasa was remarkably knowledgeable (bahuśruta); and it is also true that his observation is minute, accurate and prone to beauty.
It is possible to find three or four rising levels in Kālidāsa's treatment of nature. The objective picture of nature, which result from keen and loving observation, are profusely scattered throughout his literature. But when a poet realises that nature is not merely an object to be looked at and admired but has an emotional life of its own, sometimes parallel to, sometimes contrary to, the human life, there is a distinct change in the poet's attitude to nature. The poet then speaks of emotional correspondence between nature and man by the process of description, as in the Rtusamhara, or touching it through rhetorical figures like simile and poetic fancy. One discovers a reflection of human emotion in nature or the changes in nature seem to be an image of human emotion. In Kālidāsa's Rativilāpa, Ajavilāpa, in the lament of Pururavas over the lost Urvasi, in Sakuntala's departure from her father's tapovana, or in the word-pictures drawn by Yaksa, we find this emotional association between man and nature. In such an attitude of mind, it is not surprising if the mournful lover discovered traces of the image or existence of his beloved in nature. Pur Uravas feels that nature has accorded him a reception worthy of a king; 48 king Dilipa is also given a royal reception by nature;44 Purūravas sees the image or some definite traits of Urvasi in the swan, peacock or river;45 this is indeed a merger of man's and nature's life. Once the poetic mind grasps this reflective identity of man and nature, it is but a natural step to imagine that it is not man who follows nature but that nature is imitating man. Purürava's charge that the swan has stolen the graceful gait of Urvašī46 must be understood from this apgle. This assumed identity between man and nature can be real for a poet; and in this next stage nature becomes a distinctive personality with a life of her own. Nature in the fourth act of the Sakuntala is such a live personality. And, therefore, when Sakuntala is preparing to leave her father's hermitage to go to her husband's palace Nature showers a wealth of wedding gifts on her; the cuckoo sweetly sounds the hour of departure; wind blows gently and with fragrance.47 The actual moment of departure is more intensely moving. The female deer let their mouthfuls drop from their open mouth, like children incapable yet to understand a grave situation and enjoying themselves in food and drink, suddenly becoming aware of something serious happening and then forgetting their food and gazing with open mouth; the peacocks stop dancing, like little grownup children stopping their play and looking dumbly at the married girl leaving the house; and the silent creepers shed their tears of drooping leaves, like elderly women moved by the separation of the girl, standing back to the wall and shedding tears with their faces hidden behind their skirts.48 Kālidāsa's treatment of nature progresses from charming objective pictures to the creation of a living, loving and moving