Fiktive Gestalt Shakuntala - Śakuntalā: texts, readings, histories

akuntal

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the University of Chicago Press (Chicago) for permission to include di Parvan (Chs. 62-69) from The Mahbhrata Vol. I, The Book of the Beginning, trans. by J.A.B. van Buitenen (1973); and to Columbia University Press (New York) for permission to reproduce akuntal and the Ring of Recollection, the play by Kalidasa, from Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.) Theater of Memory (1984); and to the University of Pennsylvania (Department of Special Collections, Van Pelt Dietrich Library Center) for the Monier-Williams reproductions.

akuntal

Texts, Readings, Histories

Romila Thapar

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK

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Copyright 1999, 2010 Romila Thapar

Copyright 2011 Columbia University Press

di Parvan in J.A.B. van Buitenen, The Mahbhrata, vol. 1, copyright 1973 University of Chicago Press

akuntal and the Ring of Recollection copyright 1984 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-52702-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thapar, Romila.

Sakuntala : texts, readings, histories / Romila Thapar.

p. cm.

Originally published: New Delhi : Kali for Women, 1999.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-231-15654-7 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-15655-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-52702-6 (ebook)

1. Kalidasa. Sakuntala. 2. Sakuntala (Hindu mythology) 3. Sakuntala (Hindu mythology) in literature. I. Title.

PK3796.S5T43 2010

891.22dc22

2010014597

A Columbia University Press E-book.
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References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Contents

Remembering Barbara Stoler Miller

akuntal Patralekhan (Ravi Varma)

Shobha Deepak Singh

T HE genesis of this lengthy essay lies in a lecture I was asked to give during the tenth anniversary celebrations of the publishing house, Kali for Women, in 1995. Given the occasion, a theme with a gender orientation was thought to be appropriate. I had earlier toyed with a comparison of the two akuntalsthat of the epic and that of the Klidsa play, but not in any detail. I decided to revive this theme and although the limited comparison of the two texts had been made often enough, I was interested in probing a little further into the texts, as well as bringing into the discussion the commentaries on the theme when the play began to be translated into a wide range of languages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The attempt here is to see how the theme was treated in different historical periods and why there was this difference.

This became a veritable treasure hunt with pointers which have taken me far from the epic and the play, but which I nevertheless think are relevant. Given the nature of the forms in which these variations were presented, the interface of culture and history inevitably crept in. And so like Alice, it grew and grew and given half a chance it would grow still more. But I have decided to pause at this point. The intention of the essay is not to present a definitive study of the narrative and its treatment, but rather to suggest that when a theme changes in accordance with its location at a historical moment, the change can illumine that moment, and the moment in turn may account for the change. It is not an attempt to include all references to the narrative, only those which I think reflect varying nuances of the interplay between culture and history, underlining the changes in the historical context and the effect of the latter on the former. The essay is largely only in the nature of a comment, first on the variant versions and then on the readings of the Klidsa play. Hence the interventions of the translated texts and the statements of those who gave the story a direction. This is therefore an essay in the literal sense and has been an enjoyable, at times even a light-hearted, diversion from some of the other history that I have been writing.

The links between culture, history and gender are briefly touched upon in the first section. In the second section the version of the story as given in the Mahbhrata is discussed, largely in the context of how the epic tradition treated the narrative. The third section introduces the striking change in the narrative and the meanings of the embellishments, now treated as a work of literature in the tradition of courtly culture through the Klidsa play, Abhijna-kuntalam. The fourth section refers to the continuation of the tradition of the narrative in various more popular forms, although still within the framework of Sanskrit writing, and contrasts it with some glimpses at a different level of how it was viewed by literary theorists around A.D. 1000. The span from the popular to the courtly culture is itself of some interest. The fifth section changes tack, as it were, and moves to a discussion of adaptations and translations of the Klidsa play, initially in Braj-bh and then in Urdu. These are very different in spirit from the translations in English and other European languages, where the reception of the play in nineteenth century Europe and India made it a part both of European literary movements and British perceptions of Indian culture; these are discussed in the sixth and seventh section. Tagores essay on the play becomes the focus of the eighth section, which also considers the modern Indian context within which the play was viewed. The representations have not always been in a literary form, and visual forms are touched on in passing, where relevant.

The choice of illustrations is not entirely arbitrary. Where possible depictions of the same events have been chosen to highlight the contemporising of the story even in the manner of illustrating it. The reading of the Bhita plaque as the arrival of Duyanta at the hermitage is in a different style from the deposition of the same event in the miniature paintings from Nalagarh. akuntal with her companions was clearly a favourite theme in the nineteenth century. The obvious Orientalist mood of the sketches illustrating the translation by Monier-Williams is quite strikingly unhistorical. The focus at one level is on different versions of the narrative seen essentially in terms of historical change. But the underlying argument is that there are manifestations of culture and cultural ideologies in the way akuntal is projected as a woman, and to that extent there is a historical interface between culture and gender.

I was first introduced to the story from family photograph albums, in one of which there were photographs of the presentation of the playduly abridgedin my mothers school where she, as a young girl, played the lead. When I reached the age of going to the moviesand it was much later then than it is nowI was taken to see Shantarams Shakuntala, much talked about as a box-office hit. Later, the Klidsa play had to be read for a Sanskrit exam, an activity which destroys sensitivity to poetry. But I returned to it many years later, intrigued by the difference in character in this version and that of the epic, and perceived fresh nuances of meaning with each reading. This essay has proceeded from those readings.