Ralph T.H. Griffith - The Birth of the War-God

In 14 Volumes

I Indian Poetry
Edwin Arnold

II A Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East Indies
Robert N Cust

III Lays of Ancient India
Romesh Chunder Dutt

IV The Birth of the War-God
Ralph T H Griffith

V The Bengali Drama
P Guha-Thakurta

VI Miscellaneous Essays Relating to Indian Subjects Vol I
Brian Houghton Hodgson

VII Miscellaneous Essays Relating to Indian Subjects Vol II
Brian Houghton Hodgson

VIII Metrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers
J Muir

IX The Spirit of Oriental Poetry
Puran Singh

X The History of Indian Literature
Albrecht Weber

XI The atakas of Bhartihari
B Hale Wortham

XII Behar Proverbs
John Christian

XIII A Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs
Herman Jensen

XIV Folk-Tales of Kashmir
J Hinton Knowles

THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD

A POEM BY KLIDSA

RALPH TH GRIFFITH

First published in 1879 by
Trbner & Co Ltd

Reprinted in 2000 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1879 Ralph T H Griffith

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

The Birth of the War-God
ISBN 0-415-24503-6
India: Language and Literature: 14 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-24289-4
Trbner's Oriental Series
ISBN 0-415-23188-4

THE

BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD

Translated from the Sanskrit into English Verse

BY

RALPH T. H. GRIFFITH, M.A.

PRINCIPAL OF BENARES COLLEGE.

Second Edition.

LONDON:
TRBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
1879.

[All rights reserved.]

OF the history of KLIDSA, to whom by general assent the KUMRA SAMBHAVA, or BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD, is attributed, we know but little with any certainty; we can only gather from a memorial verse which enumerates their names, that he was one of the Nine Precious Stones that shone at the Court of VIKRAMDITYA, King of OUJEIN, in the half century immediately preceding the Christian era.* As the examination of arguments for and against the correctness of this date is not likely to interest general readers, I must request them to rest satisfied with the belief that about the time when VIRGIL and HORACE were shedding an undying lustre upon the reign of AUGUSTUS, our poet KLIDSA lived, loved, and sang, giving and taking honour, at the polished court of the no less munificent patron of Sanskrit literature, at the period of its highest perfection.

Little as we know of Indian poetry, here and there an English reader may be found, who is not entirely unacquainted with the name or works of the author of the beautiful dramas of SAKONTAL and THE HERO AND THE NYMPH, the former of which has long enjoyed an European celebrity in the translation of SIR WILLIAM JONES, and the latter is one of the most charming of PROFESSOR WILSON'S specimens of the Hind Theatre; here and there even in England may be found a lover of the graceful, tender, picturesque, and fanciful, who knows something, and would gladly know more, of the sweet poet of the CLOUD MESSENGER, and THE SEASONS; whilst in Germany he has been deeply studied in the original, and enthusiastically admired in translation,not the Orientalist merely, but the poet, the critic, the natural philosopher,a GOETHE, a SCHLEGEL, a HUMBOLDT, haying agreed, on account of his tenderness of feeling and his rich creative imagination, to set KLIDSA very high among the glorious company of the Sons of Song.*

That the poem which is now for the first time offered to the general reader, in an English dress, will not diminish this reputation is the translator's earnest hope, yet my admiration of the grace and beauty that pervade so much of the work must not allow me to deny that occasionally, even in the noble Sanskrit, if we judge him by an European standard, KLIDSA is bald and prosaic. Nor is this a defence of the translator at the expense of the poet. Fully am I conscious how far I am from being able adequately to reproduce the fanciful creation of the sweet singer of OUJEIN; that numerous beauties of thought and expression I may have passed by, mistaken, marred; that in many of the more elaborate descriptions my own versification is harsh as the jarring of a tuneless chord compared with the melody of KLIDSA'S rhythm, to rival whose sweetness and purity of language, so admirably adapted to the soft repose and celestial rosy hue of his pictures, would have tried all the fertility of resource, the artistic skill, and the exquisite ear of the author of LALLA BOOKH himself. I do not think this poem deserves, and I am sure it will not obtain, that admiration which the author's masterpieces already made known at once commanded; at all events, if the work itself is not inferior, it has not enjoyed the good fortune of having a JONES or a WILSON for translator.

It may be as well to inform the reader, before he wonder at the misnomer, that the BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD was either left unfinished by its author, or time has robbed us of the conclusion; the latter is the more probable supposition, tradition informing us that the poem originally consisted of twenty-two cantos, of which only seven now remain.*

I have derived great assistance in the work of translation from the Calcutta printed edition of the poem in the Library of the East-India House; but although the Sanskrit commentaries accompanying the text are sometimes of the greatest use in unravelling the author's meaning, they can scarcely claim infallibility; and, not unfrequently, are so matter-of-fact and prosaic, that I have not scrupled to think, or rather to feel, for myself. It is, however, PROFESSOR STENZLIE'S edition, published under the auspices of the Oriental Translation Fund (a society that has liberally encouraged my own undertaking), that I have chiefly used. Valuable as this work is (and I will not disown my great obligations to it), it is much to be regretted that the extracts from the native commentators are so scanty, and the annotations so few and brief.