Kalidasa - Ritusamharam: A gathering of seasons

But his standing has always been very high: In the count of ancient poets, Kalidasa does at the first place stay: for the lack of one comparable, the next is nameless to this day. This well-known tribute to Kalidasa, written by an eminent poet-critic in the fourteenth-century Vijayanagara empire almost a thousand years after the great poets timeand as many years before the presentremains a testimony to his continuing fame. This celebrity also spread during the last two centuries to the Western world, and installed him in the literary pantheon there. His work is now described in the Encyclopedia Americana as filled with an unvarying freshness of inspiration and charm, delightful imagery and fancy, profound insights into emotions, and a oneness with the phenomenon of nature. Moreover, the fluidity and beauty of language are probably unmatched. As for Ritusamharam, it is a collection of subhashita, or well said poetic epigrams about the different seasons according to which ancient Indians divided the whole year.

This work consists of six cantos of lyrical versesone for each season. Four of thesethat is, spring, summer, autumn and winterare well known all over the world. There is also the rainy or monsoon season, a regular feature of South Asia. Yet anothertranslated here as The Onset of Winteris a season that was seen in older times as marking the change from autumn to winter. Each of the six seasons covered two lunar months of the ancient Indian calendar. The accolades showered on Kalidasas other creations are well known.

The poetry presented here has also been praised by many modern scholars. One may start with Dr S. Radhakrishnan, scholar and second President of India, who wrote in his overall introduction to the collection of Kalidasas works published by Indias national academy of letters, the Sahitya Akademi: The Ritusamhara gives a moving account of the six seasons. It reveals not only Kalidasas vision of natures beauty, but also an understanding of human moods and desires. A more recent and specific comment, made a quarter century later, was offered by R.P. Dwivedi, the compiler of this works critical edition that finally completed the Sahitya Akademis collection mentioned above.

It is a poem of a special type, he opined. It does not have a human protagonist nor does it propound any philosophic or religious dogma. It is probably the finest example of secular poetry, concerned with the vivid portrayal... of the seasonal cycle... Nowhere else... do we find such a portrayal of the rural countryside...

The simplicity of the poems theme is matched by the simplicity of its technique... and constitutes the fundamental charm of the poem. To these learned comments from modern India, one may add some from long-respected Sanskrit scholars abroad. British savant A.B. Keith wrote that in this work Kalidasa exhibits delicate observation and loving sympathy with nature, together with the relation of the diverse moods of the year with the loves of man and maiden. The eminent Austrian historian of Sanskrit, M.

Winternitz, followed a similar line. He wrote that the description with the delicate observation of nature, lovely sketches about the happiness of animals and plants, and glowing with often luxurious presentation of amorous pleasures in each of the seasons is one worthy of Kalidasa. To these scholarly observations, one may add the insights of a well-known literary translator of the Ritusamharam from around seventy-five years ago. This was the Sanskritist and political activist R.S. Pandit, who also translated some other Sanskrit works. Kalidasa, Pandit commented, sees the whole year with his minds eye...

He describes not merely the seasons in flux, but the feelings awakened by the changing seasons in every pair of lovers... Briefly, the poem is a lovers calendar for the young and the warm-hearted... And it is expected that the reader, who is not so young, will respond to the poets mood by remembering his own youth... with the joy of recapture. For this translator too, it has been a joy to read this work in the original. To then render it directly into free verse, in the English of today, has been a no-less enjoyable challenge.

The language of these lyric verses is simple, largely free of alamkaras or poetic figures of speech typical of classical Sanskrit, and thus easier to follow. Their imagery is picturesque and vibrant. The beauties of nature and the charm of human relations invoked in them do not appear to have any hidden or abstruse meaning other than what is actually said. What they do reveal is the poets deep feeling for natural scenes and human emotions portrayed in these poems. The invocations in Ritusamharam bring natural features to life. These include light and darkness, flaming fire and streaming rain, fierce heat and frosty cold, winds and clouds, hills and rivers, trees and flowers, farms and fields.

Also enlivened are animals, big and small, gentle or fierce, ranging from lions to elephants, pigs to buffaloes, frogs to beetles, bees to serpents. Birds of all kinds, from peacocks to cuckoos and geese, are also portrayed in lively detail. The splendour of nature is related colourfully to human beauty, longing and eagerness, and the delights of union between lovers. There is little of the verbal jugglery common in later Sanskrit verse. This translation too has been presented in terms relatively straightforward and more congenial for modern tastes. The original language of these verses is also noteworthy for a certain evident repetition: of words, phrases and images.

The well-known and still-studied century-old critique of this work by scholar M.R. Kale, with a commentary in Sanskrit, specifies fifty-nine instances of such repetition from a long... and by no means exhaustive list. Some of this is also reflected in the present translation which attempts fidelity, both to the original wording of the text and to its spirit and overall lyrical flow. This repetition also provides some explanation to the comparatively lower standing of this work amidst other Kalidasa classics as mentioned earlier. Kale commented that it is written in a style which falls below the level of Kalidasas other works.