Shakuntala is a 4th c. Sanskrit play about the love of king Dushyanta and Shakuntala, a hermitage girl, their separation by a curse, and eventual reunion. The play is a dramatization of the story of Shakuntala as told in the epic Mahabharata. A story with a similar plot appears in the Buddhist Jataka tales as well.
["Shakuntala looking back to glimpse Dushyanta",
painting by Raja Ravi Varma (1898)]
Shakuntala was at birth abandoned by her parents, and she has grown up as a foster-daughter in the secluded hermitage (ashram) of the sage Kaṇva. When Kaṇva and the other elders are away on a pilgrimage, King Dushyanta comes hunting in the forest. Just as he is about to slay a deer, Vaikhanasa, a sage, stops him with the words that the deer is from the hermitage and must not be slayed. He politely requests the king to take his arrow back, to which the king complies. The sage then informs him that they are going to collect firewood for the sacrificial fire and asks him to join them. The king spots the hermitage of Sage Kaṇva and decides to pay a visit. He on purpose dresses modestly as a commoner and leaves his carriage back.
The moment king Dushyanta meets Shakuntala, it is love at first sight. Her beauty strongly appeals to him. He introduces himself to her and her friends as a scholar at the royal court. The girl, too, feels drawn to the stranger, but neither of them dares to show the love for the other. Shakuntala only betrays her feelings by looking back
at the king, pretending she has to remove a thorn from her foot, when he
is leaving.
The king breaks off the hunt so as not to disturb the peace and quiet of the pious hermitage. The hermits ask him to take over the protection of the hermitage against evil demons for a few days. The king happily agrees, as he can so unobtrusively approach his beloved again.
Shakuntala is feverish because the glow of love has been awakened in her. When, at the advice of her friends, she sits writing a love letter, the king overhears her. The king discovers himself and has intimate relations with her in the form of a "secret marriage." But then his duties call him back to court. When he parts from her, he gives Shakuntala a ring (with his name engraved on it) which will eventually have to be presented to him when she appears in his court to claim her place as queen.
Shakuntala is so filled with thinking about her beloved that she inadvertently neglects to pay due honor to a visiting ascetic. Without her knowledge, the latter pronounces a curse against her, which becomes a terrible reality for her: the king will forget her as soon as she loses her wedding ring. In the meantime, she discovers she is pregnant with the king's child - but she hears nothing from the king anymore, not even by letter.
Kanva sends the pregnant foster daughter with an entourage to the king's palace. Shakuntala says goodbye to everything that is familiar and dear to her. When she appears before the king, he does not recognize her and treats her like a deceiver. Dismayed, she wants to show him the ring, but discovers she has lost it while bathing in the river. As a mercy, she is allowed to stay in the royal court until her child is born, but then she is kidnapped by an elf into the forest wilderness.
Soon after, a fisherman who is trying to sell the king's ring is arrested. He claims to have found it in the belly of a fish. When the king sees the ring, he immediately remembers his beloved. Repentance and pain seize him. From memory he himself paints a picture of his beloved, at the sight of which he gives himself up to despair.
Then the god Indra calls on him through a messenger to help in the fight against evil giants (ashuras). The king, who wants to atone for the guilt towards his beloved wife, defeats the demons. As a reward he is allowed to visit Kashyapa, the father of the gods, a grace that only few mortals receive, in a sort of "ashram in the sky." There he meets the son whom Shakuntala has given birth to, a handsome, brave and clever boy who bears the mark of the future ruler of the world.
The two spouses meet again as mature and purified people. With the blessing of Kasyapa they return to the kingdom of the king.
[Dushyanta and Shakuntala, print from the 1940s]
Kalidasa is the greatest poet and playwright of the classical Sanskrit tradition. His surviving works consist of three long poems and three plays, of which The Recognition of Shakuntala is the most famous. Kalidasa probably lived in northern India, perhaps in the late 4th to mid-5th century CE, and possibly at the time of the brilliant Gupta dynasty. He probably belonged to the brahmin (priestly) class, but nothing further is known about his life and career beyond what can be inferred from his poetry and plays. He worked in an established tradition of court poetry and drama, which perhaps was already a thousand years old. However, almost nothing of that tradition before his time has been preserved, except for a few 2nd c. fragments and a few plays from the 4th c.
Kalidasa’s position in Sanskrit literature can be compared to that of
William Shakespeare in English. His poems and plays were mainly based on
Hindu mythology and philosophy. Kalidasa has exerted a great influence
on all Indian literature, including Rabindranath Tagore.
Shakuntala is a work of poetic brilliance and complex structure, of which already in 1789 the first English translation appeared, by Sir William Jones. This translation inspired many European poets and composers. In 1791 Goethe wrote his "Ode to Sakontala" after
reading "The Recognition of Shakuntala," and he borrowed the idea to have his Faust opened by the prologue of a theater director also from the Sanskrit play. Franz Schubert in 1820 based an opera on this play, which however remained unfinished (it was completed in 2008). In 1888 Camille Claudel made a marmor sculpture based on Shakuntala.
Since then, Shakuntala has been translated in all major languages of the world.
I have read Shakuntala in the translation by W.J. Johnson in Oxford World's Classics.
An older translation by Arthur W. Ryder can be found on Gutenberg.org. The translation by Sir William Jones can be found at Wikisource.
Illustrations from Wikimedia Commons.
Greatest Plays of All Time