| |
|
|
|
|
Literature is only a reflection of the national mind of a people.
Indians have always worshipped "sacred utterances" (Brih) as divinities
incarnates. Story telling has, moreover, been a fine Indian art since
the creation of epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, more than 3,000 years
old. Thanks to the prodigious powers of memory Brahmins have captivated
countless attentive ears with tales of gods and demons, heroes and
villains enrapturing village audiences of every age and stage of life to
this day. Valmiki, author of the Ramayana, was a wandering bard inspired
to recite his great Epic when he saw a hunter shoot down a dove, and
watched its heartbroken mate fly in anguished circles over that corpse.
Valmiki was so moved by what he saw that he sat pondering the cruelty
and poignant beauty of life until his body was covered with an anthill.
``Indian literature alone has been able to blend successfully the best
features of tradition with modern concepts. Although deeply bound to
tradition, it offers answers to contemporary issues and problems' says
Dr. Martin Kampchen, the German writer.
Kalidasa, who lived in the reign of Chandragupta II, who named his
greatest work for its heroine, Shakuntala. The best Sanskrit work of
dramatic art, has been translated into every major language and is
almost as as well known outside India as the Mahabharata is. As the
great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Poet, Dramatist, Novelist
himself put it after first reading Shakuntala
"Wills du den Himmel, die Erfe, mit einem Namen begreifen; Nenn'ich,
Shakuntala, Dich, und so is Alles gesagt." ("Would you capture heaven
and earth with a single name? I say to you then, Shakuntala, and all is
said!") The idea of giving a prologue to Faust is said to have
originated from Kalidasa's prologue, which was in accordance with the
usual tradition of the Sanskrit drama.
In Russia part of Kalidasa's play Shakuntala was translated by Nikolai
Karamzin in 1792-1793. In the preface of this publication Karamzin wrote
that the play contained poetry of outstanding beauty and was an example
of the highest art.
(source: A History of India - By K. Antonova, G. Bongard-Levin, and G.
Kotovsky Moscow, Volume I and II 1973 p. 169).
The Sakuntala furor has lasted till almost today. One of the noblest
"overtures" in European music is the Sakuntala overture of the Hungarian
composer Carl Goldmark (1830-1915).
(source: Creative India - By Benoy Kumar Shenoy p. 110).
H. H. Wilson who used to be professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University,
has said:
"It is impossible to conceive language so beautifully musical or so
magnificently grand, as that of the verses of Kalidasa.'"
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University
Press ISBN: 0195623592 p 160 ).
Soviet historians, K. Antonova, G. Bongard-Levin, and G. Kotovsky,
authors of A History of India, Moscow, Volume I and II 1973, refer to
work of Kalidasa:
"one of the pearls of ancient Indian literature." and as "an illustrious
page of history of world's culture."
(source: A History of India - By K. Antonova, G. Bongard-Levin, and G.
Kotovsky Moscow, Volume I and II 1973 p. 169).
Of all these Muslim scholars, Alberuni (AD 973 - 1048), a Muslim
scholar, mathematician and master of Greek and Hindu system astrology,
wrote twenty books. He left the most detailed accounts of India's
civilization. In the introduction to his translation of Alberuni's
famous book, Indica, the Arabic scholar Edward Sachau summarizes how
India was the source of considerable Arabic culture:
“The foundations of Arabic literature was laid between AD 750 and 850.
It is only the tradition relating to their religion and prophet and
poetry that is peculiar to the Arabs; everything else is of foreign
descent… Greece, Persia, and India were taxed to help the sterility of
the Arab mind… What India has contributed reached Baghdad by two
different roads. Part has come directly in translations from the
Sanskrit, part has traveled through Eran, having originally been
translated from Sanskrit (Pali? Prakrit?) into Persian, and farther from
Persian into Arabic. In this way, e.g. the fables of Kalila and Dimna
have been communicated to the Arabs, and book on medicine, probably the
famous Caraka.”
(source: Alberuni (AD 973 - 1048), a Muslim scholar, mathematician and
master of Greek and Hindu system astrology, wrote twenty books. In his
seminal work, "Indica" (c. 1030 AD). he wrote Alberuni's India - by
Edward Sachau. Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1993. (Reprint). First
published 1910 -- translated in 1880s.)
Long before Kalidasa, another famous play was produced - Shudraka's
"Mrichhkatika" or Clay Cart, a tender rather artificial play, and yet
with a reality which moves us and gives us a glimpse into the mind and
civilization of the day. The Little Clay Cart offers interesting insight
into Guptan society and ancient Indian legal procedures, and its poor
hero, Charudatta, is human enough to fall hopelessly in love with a
courtesan.
An English translation of Shudraka’s “Mrichhkatika” was staged in New
York in 1924.
Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, (1893-1970) the dramatic critic for The Nation,
and author of The Measure of Man on Freedom Human Values, Survival and
the Modern Temper. He wrote of the play as follows:
“Here, if anywhere, the spectator will be able to see a genuine example
of that pure art theatre of which theorists talk, and here, too, he will
be led to meditate upon that real wisdom of the East which lied not in
esoteric doctrine but in a tenderness far deeper and truer than that of
the traditional Christianity which has been so thoroughly corrupted by
the hard righteousness of Hebraism …..A play wholly artificial yet
profoundly moving because it is not realistic but real….Whoever the
author may have been, and whether he lived in the fourth century or the
eighth, he was a good man and wise with the goodness and wisdom which
comes not from the lips or the smoothly flowing pen of the moralist but
from the heart. An exquisite sympathy with the fresh beauty of youth and
love tempered his serenity, and he was old enough to understand that a
light-hearted story of ingenious complication could be made the vehicle
of tender humanity and confident goodness….Such a play can be produced
only by a civilization which has reached stability; when a civilization
has thought its way through all the problems it faces, it must come to
rest upon something calm and na?ve like this. Macbeth and Othello,
however great and stirring they might be, are barbarous heroes because
the passionate tumult of Shakespeare is the tumult produced by the
conflict between a newly awakened sensibility and a series of ethical
concepts inherited from the savage age. The realistic drama of our own
time is a product of a like confusion; but when problems are settled,
and when passions are reconciled with the decisions of an intellect,
then form alone remains….Nowhere in our European past do we find, this
side the classics, a work more completely civilized.”
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University
Press ISBN: 0195623592 p. 164).
For more information on Indian literature, please refer to the chapter
on Sanskrit. |
|
|
|
|
