Kalidasa Meghaduta Translation
Kalidasa Meghaduta Translation
Kalidasa Meghaduta Translation
by
3
The Cloud Messenger
The Meghaduta or Cloud Messenger is a masterpiece of Sanskrit
literature, and was composed by the court poet Kalidasa some time
before AD 634 in northern India. A Yaksha or nature deity begs a
passing cloud to carry a message across the subcontinent to his
grieving consort in the fabled city of Alakā. The first part describes the
journey the cloud must make, which is north-westwards across
present-day Madhya Pradesh, and then northwards into Tibet. The
second part moves the story to Alakā, where the Yaksha depicts his
consort’s sadness, and tells the cloud what to say to her. Under this
fiction, Kalidasa presents a sympathetic portrait of northern India, and
weaves in the various moods of love traditional in classical Sanskrit
poetry.
About its author, who wrote five or six other great works, little is
known, but he may have served one of the pre-Gupta rulers of northern
India at Ujjain.
The poem is written in unrhymed stanzas of four lines in the slow-
moving Mandakrata measure. Many translations exist, generally in
the style of their period, some being designed to help Sanskrit
students understand the grammar and vocabulary of Kalidasa’s
elevated and harmonious language. The work here adopts the 1912
Hultzsch text, and uses five-line stanzas of rhymed pentameters to
render the simple magnificence of the poetry while remaining faithful
to the prose sense. The few occasions where my intrepretations differ
from those of previous translators, or I have been unable to fully
encompass the meaning in a particular stanza, are noted in the
Appendix, which also contains a short treatment of metrical issues, an
introduction to Sanskrit poetry, and a glossary of unfamiliar words and
allusions.
It may help to know that syllables are long in Sanskrit words when
the vowel is naturally long (shown with an accent), or the vowel is
1
followed by more than one consonant. Aspirated dh, bh, gh, th and ph
count as single consonants, however, and ph and th are pronounced
as breathy p and t, not as f or the th of ‘thin’.
2
Meghaduta: Part One
A year from amorousness: it passes slowly.
So thought a Yaksha by his master sent,
for scanting duty, to the Rāmagiry:
to mope in penance groves as banishment
by rivers Sītā's bathing there made holy.
3
Such clouds the ending of the world presage.
You minister to form at will. Though kin
I plead for are by power detained, better
to be by majesty refused than win
an approbation of base parentage.
4
Time to quit the lofty mountain station,
where years of festivals do not efface
the steps of Rāma, that most honoured man.
But take your leave, as old friends do: embrace
in tears long following on separation.
5
So on that summit, and in drifts unrolled
of glistening hair, around so thickly pressed,
the slopes, with fruiting mangoes, it will seem
to heavenly couples passing earth's own breast,
the dark surrounded by the palest gold.
6
You'll come to Vidishā, the capital
well known across the compass of these quarters,
when, like a lover, at the Vetravati,
hang on her face to have the frowning waters
turn to murmuring, and drink your fill.
7
30. Hear in Avanti, whose villagers are found
with Udayana stories, that renown
again of Ujjain, enriched by worthy
ones whose last of merit has brought down
a part of brilliant heaven to the ground.
8
After Shiva's dance, when twilight fills
the forest long-encircled by his arms,
then red as Japā flowers, remove his need
for blooded ganja skin. His consort calms,
her eyes to see you as devotion wills.
9
Afterwards when cooled the earth and wholly
saturated with your rain, and rich
with smells to please the sniffing elephants,
are wild figs ripening in the wind by which
to Devagiri you are carried slowly.
10
Against the land of Brahmātavarta loom,
above the graves of Kshatriyas slain
in hundreds by Arjuna when on Kurus’
field his sharpened arrows fell as rain,
the which you'll sprinkle on each lotus bloom.
11
Scatter the Sharabhas should they attempt
on hearing thunder to attack your person:
laugh with hailstones as they break their bodies.
Those, who with extended self-exertion
labour fruitlessly, deserve contempt.
12
60. As Shiva gave a helping arm to greet
her, leaving off his serpent-fashioned ring,
So for Gaurī out of frozen water
your help upon that pleasure hill will bring
a wave-like stairway for her climbing feet.
13
All times see lotuses, and women where
the cheeks are beautiful with Lodhra dust;
aramanth in topnot, ears acacia.
At your approach, Kadamba flowers combust
along the path-like partings of the hair.
14
Respect for Shiva stops the love god use
his bow too openly, here strung with bees.
Not so the women who with knitted brows
draw back the love-looks and with practised ease
transfix successively each man they choose.
15
You'll know, with wisdom stored, O noble one,
my house from conch and lotus painted on
both sides of doorway and from gloom therein.
A house that's lustreless when I am gone
as is the lotus when deprived of sun.
16
Perhaps she sings there words that make my name,
a lute upon the lap, on which there fall
her tears, and on her clothes. She plucks, adjusts
the strings, forgets the melody for all
that songsmith and its singer are the same.
17
Her eyes not wet with pleasure, yet disposed
to let the moon in with its nectared ray
through creviced eyelashes, she turns away
now as the lotus on a cloudy day
will show an aspect neither full or closed.
18
With cool, moist wind you'll have her stirred
as Mālatī revive when rains appear.
But mark her status and keep lightning in:
intent, she'll watch you fill her window, hear
the wisdom in each pondered thunder-word.
19
The peacock's hue within the ringlet's fall,
the dark-eyed glances of the startled fawn,
the suppleness of vines in limbs, the moon's
full roundness in the face—your playful scorn
in eyebrows tells me you combine them all.
20
When Vishnu rises from his serpent bed
the curse has ending, which is four months hence.
My soul's desire, now close your eyes, and think
how love's long parting brings its recompense
in moonlight falling through that night instead.
21
Appendix
Anyone translating classical Sanskrit poetry for a contemporary
audience faces three obstacles: the long and quantitative nature of
the verse, the elevated diction and impersonal style, and the
intermingling of Indian religion, mythology and the natural world.
22
where l indicates a short syllable and g a long one: the v can be long or
short. Each line is unrhymed, and follows the same pattern of 10 long
syllables and 7 short ones, which allows a great deal to be said with
unhurried beauty.
23
In English there is only one line with the beauty, emotional power,
flexibility and wealth of precedent to be serviceable, and that is the
iambic pentameter. I have therefore—option three—developed a slow-
moving iambic pentameter in stanzas of five lines, holding together a
free use of tense and sometimes word order by an introduced abxba
rhyme scheme.
For poetry, that brings benefits and difficulties. The 'precise mean-
ing'—in the way expected of European prose—is not always clear, and
interpretations naturally differ. Compounds can also be involved—
monstrously so in later poetry—but do produce evocative similes. One
celebrated example is vIcikSobhastanitavihagazreNikA JcIguNA, the
first line of Stanza 28, which is a compound (samasa) in two parts.
The second is simple: kAJcI-guNA, a girdle-string. The first is an ad-
jectival descriptive samasa in which vihaga-zreNi, row of birds, is
qualified by vIcikSobhastanita, loquacious through wave agitation. The
latter is itself another samasa, in which stanita is qualified by the
compound vIci-kSobha, agitation of the waves. Involved, yes, but
through its use Kalidasa can draw a parallel between the river and a
woman making her overtures of love. Compound similes operate
throughout Meghaduta, where the cloud's life-giving passage across
the parched Indian landscape is an extended metaphor for the sexual
congress of nature.
24
Kings are rather stereotyped, praised for their virtue, prowess on the
battlefield and skill in the harem. Wives are dutiful, courtiers faithful
and other women modest. It is a world of great beauty and sensitivity
to nature, but the players are not characters in any Shakespearean
sense, and vexing social issues do not intrude. The sentiment of kama
or love which underlies these compositions is not the dangerous,
fracturing passion of Greek or Jacobean drama, but something
accepted, expanded in all its forms and contained by strict rules. Of
the fourteen conditions of the Kamasutra, eleven appear in
Meghaduta. A sympathetic and moving exposition of these conditions
is what the audience looked for.
Even more unlike poetry today, Sanskrit poetry was chanted, and
the poet was expected to draw on a very large number of synonyms to
develop, ever more richly and evocatively, a palpable, emotion-laden
atmosphere where the audience could realize again the cultural
implications of their world. The Mandakrata is a long metre, slow
moving and complicated, but one allowing Kalidasa to exploit the
sonorous effects of Sanskrit in self-contained stanzas of great beauty.
It is these aspects I have sought to render in this translation, playing
the phrasing in various ways against the stanza form, and extracting
what music I can from the words operating in a predominantly iambic
setting.
25
bathed in moonlight emanating from the head of Shiva, who dwells in
an outer garden of the city’. Space considerations obliged me to
choose between ‘outer’ and explaining where the moonbeams came
from. Originally I wrote the enigmatic:
But that was too compressed, and it seemed better to leave the
parallels implied: that as the earth is under the sun’s fierce heat in
summer, and the Yaksha is under Kubēra’s wrath, so are the mansions
where the Yakshas live under the blaze of moonlight from Shiva’s fore-
head. There may be some significance in the word ‘outer’, but I
suspect Kalidasa is again filling the Mandakrata metre with beautiful
phrases. So:
The second is Stanza 73, where the Yaksha compares the cloud to
Alakā by its palatial appearance in the sky, its watery form to gem-
inlaid floors, its rainbows to pictures, its lightning flashes to dazzling
women and its thunder to drumming music . We can deal with this list
of fanciful comparisons by writing:
26
for women, lightning; drumming, thunder sound;
and for her pictures you show rainbow flame.
27
Notes on Individual Stanzas
Although we read Kalidasa for the beauty of his poetry, any
decent translation will contain many unfamiliar words and concepts,
plus references to India’s customs, religion, geography and animal
life that illustrate and extend the narrative. Hence these notes, where
it should be remembered that Kalidasa is India’s Shakespeare, with a
critical literature to match. Much is disputed: authenticity of texts,
interpretation of lines, even the identity of some plants, places and
animals. The reader will catch hints of such controversies on Internet
sites, though most are the concern of scholarly journals. More in
evidence on the Internet, and well worth following up, are
photographs and details of places mentioned in the text, and proper
treatments of Indian customs, religion, and mythology.
Stanza 1
Stanza 2
Āshādha is the lunar month of June-July. I have omitted emaciated
from ‘wrist’. The translated last line is rather condensed or unclear in
the original, and I have added ‘in heat’ to draw out the meaning: the
28
elephant-shaped cloud, in seeming to butt the mountain, reminds the
Yaksha of past love-making.
Stanza 3
The general meaning is that a cloud, which brings thoughts of rain and
so disquiet or happiness to the ordinary viewer, here causes the Yak-
sha to remember his consort who loved to cling to his neck. I have
read meghāloke as ‘not-of-this-world-cloud’, rather than the more
usual ‘cloud-seeing’, to link the cloud’s form with the insubstantial
nature of memory. The King of Kings is Kubēra, the god of wealth or
treasures.
Stanza 4
The text says Nabhas, July to August, which opens the rainy season in
India. The Yaksha makes an offering of Kutaja flowers (Holarrhena
antidysentrica), which are white and appear at this time.
Stanza 6
An expanded prose rendering will run something like: You, who act
as shelter from the summer heat, and as one separated and suffering
from Kubēra’s anger, I beg to bear a message to a loved one in Alakā,
where the mansions of wealthy Yakshas are bathed in the moonlight
emanating from Shiva who is resident in the city’s outer garden. Con-
densing, I made more explicit the comparison between the Yaksha
and the earth suffering from summer heat, and omitted the ‘outer’.
Stanza 8
Wives with husbands absent traditionally left their hair unkempt.
29
Stanza 9
The brother’s wife is the Yaksha’s consort, the Yaksha calling the
cloud brother. The Sanskrit of the last line simply says ‘faithful’.
Stanza 10
Kalidasa supposes the left side to be propitious, and continues the
popular view that clouds make the cranes conceive, probably because
the rainy season coincides with their gestation period.
Stanza 11
Mānasa is the holy lake near Mount Kailāsa, to which geese make an
annual migration. ‘Assurances of harvest’ may be white mushrooms or
flowers of the plantain tree: authorities disagree, and I have opted for
significance rather than the botany.
Stanza 12
Rāma was a king of ancient India who features in the Ramayana,
one of the two great Hindu epics. For his father's honour, Rāma
gave up his claim to Kosala's throne for exile in the forest, and then
fought Rāvana and his demonic powers to retrieve his kidnapped
wife Sītā.
Stanza 14
Siddhas are a class of semi-divine beings thought to inhabit the
space between the sun and earth, and noted for extreme purity
and holiness. Nichula is a type of cane growing in watery loca-
tions.
Stanza 15
The ‘serpent’ is only implicit in the Sanskrit text, in the mention of
ant-hill, and the popular view of rainbows as gems in the hoods of
great serpents. ‘Diademed’ is my addition. Krishna, the dark-bodied
30
cowherd incarnation of Vishnu often wears a headdress of peacock
feathers: the text says ‘with peacock tailfeathers flashing’.
Stanza 16
Māla in the Sanskrit may refer to a specific but unknown location, or,
more probably, and as accepted here, simply an elevated, hilly spot.
Stanza 17
Āmrakūta is generally taken to be present-day Amarakantaka, the
eastern part of the Vindhya mountains where the Narmadā and other
rivers rise. The Vindhya is one of seven mountain ranges that separate
Hindustan from the Deccan, forming the southern boundary of Mad-
hyadesha in central India.
Stanza 19
Revā is another name for the Narmandā, one of the sacred rivers of
India, which rises on Mount Āmrakūta in Gondvana and runs some
800 miles westwards to empty into the Gulf of Cambay.
Stanza 20
31
Stanza 22
The Kakubha is also known as the Arjuna tree (Terminalia arjuna)
and has clusters of flowers towards the end of the hot season resem-
bling those of the mango: they have a sweet smell.
Stanza 23
The Ketaka (Pandanas odoratissimus) is a shrub with very fragrant
flowers in the shape of long, pointed leaves. The crows nesting in sa-
cred trees may be a reference to contemporary closures of Buddhist
monasteries.
Stanza 24
Vidishā was the capital of the second century BC Sunga dynasty, and
of the Dashārna region, modern Dhasan. The city was probably Bes-
nagar, near Bhilsa in Madhya Pradesh. The River Vetravati is the
modern Betwa, which flows north-eastwards from the Pāriyātra
mountain to join the Yamunā above its confluence with the Ganges.
Stanza 25
Nichais is probably the ancient name of the Udaigiri hill near Vidishā,
which has caves, some with inscriptions and sculptures dating from
the Gupta period.
Stanza 27
Ujjain was the splendid capital of the Kushan empire (AD 25–320), a
seat of learning and great trade centre. The city declined under the
succeeding Guptas, but still draws tourists to its many temples and
monuments. The text includes ‘travel northward’, which I’ve omitted
for reasons of space and euphony.
Stanza 28
32
Stanza 29
A River Sindhu exists in Kashmir, but this Sindhu is probably an uni-
dentified river in Malwa.
Stanza 30
Avanti is Malwa, or western Madhya Pradesh now. Udayana was a
prince of the lunar race, and his anecdotes passed into popular folk-
lore.
Stanza31
The Shiprā is a tributary of the Chambal, and the river on which Ujjain
stands.
Stanza 33
Shiva is the god of three worlds, and Ganas are his attendants. Shiva’s
neck turned black when he drank the poison produced by the churn-
ing of the milky ocean. The Gandhavatī is a small river that formed the
boundary of the temple garden at Mahākāla.
Stanza 34
Stanza 35
Chowries are fly-whisks, and the dancers referred to are courtesans or
sacred prostitutes at Mahākāla.
Stanza 36
Ganja is elephant, and the Japā is a plant with red flowers (Hisbiscis
rosasinensis). Shiva wore an elephant’s skin dripping with blood when
he killed Gajāsura, an evil deity. Shiva’s consort Pārvati is calmed by
finding the red glow in the forest is not blood but only the cloud irra-
diated by the evening’s colours.
33
Stanza 40
The Gambhīra is a tributary of the Yamunā and flows east from Gan-
gapur through eastern Rajastan. Shaphara is a white fish.
Stanza 42
Devagiri, literally Mountain of the Gods, may have been located near
the Gambhīra at today’s village of Devagudaria.
Stanza 43
Bhavānī is the ferocious aspect of the Hindu goddess Shakti or Devi,
though she also shows mercy. Skanda is the god of war, son of Shiva
and Gaurī.
Stanza 44
Stanza 45
King Rantideva was enormously rich and pious, sacrificing two thou-
sand head of cattle a day. The torrent of blood reputedly formed the
River Chambal. Surabhi is the divine cow of Indra.
Stanza 47
Dasapura is the kingdom of Rantideva. Kalidasa is making a play on
the coquettish dark eyes of women.
Stanza 48
Brahmātavarta is the region northwest of Hastinapura, itself the capi-
tal of the Kurus and now located some 22 miles northeast of Meerut,
between the Sarasvatī and Drishadvatī rivers. Arjuna is the leader of
the Pāndavas in the great epic of the Mahābhārata, and Kshatriyas are
warriors, or those of the warrior class.
34
Stanza 49
Balarama is the fair-skinned brother of Krishna, who commonly wore
a dark cloak. Though a warrior and drunkard, he gave up wine and
practised penance during the great Mahābhārata war, refusing to take
sides. Balarama was immensely strong, and once diverted the Jumnā
river by dragging a plough across its course, a feat by which he is iden-
tified in the Sanskrit here. The beautiful Revatī was his wife.
Stanza 50
Jahnu’s daughter is the Ganges. Gaurī represents austerity and purity,
reflecting the penances she underwent to marry Shiva.
Stanza 52
The cow is venerated as the mother of mankind, and Shiva’s bull oc-
cupies a particularly honoured place.
Stanza 53
Stanza 54
35
Kshatriyas. Bali was a demon slain by Vishnu, who tricked him by
approaching as a dwarf and then growing to enormous size.
Stanza 58
Stanza 60
Kalidasa refers to the Ganges as a flight of steps because these tradi-
tionally allowed the sons of King Sagara to climb to heaven. Gaurī is
Shiva’s consort.
Stanza 61
I have followed most translators in preferring Kale’s text for the
‘bracelet’s sharpened point’: Hultzsch’s text says only ‘in entrance’.
Stanza 62
Indra is chief of the gods, though inferior to Shiva, Vishnu and the
other great beings of the Hindu pantheon.
Stanza 63
Though Indian women wore a net or gauze of seed pearls to keep their
hair in place, the pearls referred to here are probably the scanty un-
dergarments worn in private chambers. The Sanskrit includes ‘seeing
again Alakā’, which I have left implied to better develop the rainy air
and pearl-sewn hair comparison: the rainy season traditionally
brought men home and renewed sexual relations.
Stanza 65
36
Stanza 66
Ratiphala is a wine-like aphrodisiac.
Stanza 70
Stanza 75
Ashoka, a tree with blazing red flowers (Saraca indica), has attracted
many legends. The Kesara is a fairly large tree (Mimyusops elengi)
with small, round flowers whose sweet and pungent smell lasts when
the flowers are picked and dried in the sun. The Mādhavī is a creeper
(Gaertnera racemosa), and aramanth is Kurabaka (Barleria prio-
nites), which has a lip-like flower of five petals.
Stanza 79
Stanza 82
The small mainā bird is a good mimic and has a sweet voice.
Stanza 80
Chakravākas are fat, well-shaped birds the size of water fowl, which
pine for each other when separated.
Stanza 95
Mālatī is a creeper with white flowers, either Jasmin grandiflorum or
Aganosma caryophyllata.
Stanza 97
37
Stanza 101
Conventional comparisons of a beautiful woman.
Stanza 104
38
References
1. Hultzsch, E. Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers, Delhi, 1911/1998).
2. Kalidasa: Poems: Meghaduta.
http://titus.unifrankfurt.de/texte/etcs/ind/aind/klskt/
kalidasa/meghadut/megha.htm.
3. Monier-Williams, Monier. English-Sanskrit Dictionary (Mun-
shiram Manoharlal Publishers, Delhi, 2003).
4. Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon.
http://www.uni koeln.de/philfak/indologie/
tamil/mwd_search.html
5. MacDonell, Arthur, A. A Sanskrit Grammar for Students
(O.U.P., 1927)
6. Devadhar, C.R. Works of Kalidasa: vol 2 (Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers, Delhi, 1966/2004).
7. Kale, M.R. The Meghaduta of Kalidasa (Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers, Delhi, 1916/2002).
8. Taylor, McComas (trans). Kalidasa's Meghaduta or The Cloud
Messenger http://members.ozemail.com.au/%7Emooncharts/
kalidasa/meghaduta.html.
9. Nathan, Leonard (trans). The Transport of Love: Kalidasa's
Megadhuta (Berkeley, 1976).
10. Keith, A. Berriedale. A History of Sanskrit Literature (Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, 1966/2004).
11. Sabnis, S.A. Kalidasa: His Style and Times (N.M. Tripathi,
Bombay, 1966).
12. Jain, K.C. Kalidasa and his Times (Agam Kala Prakashan,
Delhi, 1990).
39