Unlike in the epic, Duṣyanta in the play, does not seek to marry Śakuntalā in a hurry. Kālidāsa introduces Śakuntalā to Duṣyanta little by little; the poet has displayed great amount of finesse, decorum, and dignity in introducing his characters;[1] he has created an occasion for their acquaintance to gradually blossom into romantic love; having said this, we are not trying to say that the story slows down; in a short span of a few acts, Kālidāsa brings together a lot of information; many incidents take place in rapid succession. Just as all the events gently coil around Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā, our eyes too are enraptured by the couple.
At the end of the play, we see the reunion of the hero and the heroine; just as their first meeting in the first act is unexpected, their reunion also moves everyone by surprise; their coming together is also quite gradual. Though Duṣyanta is extremely eager to find his beloved, because of the pain he has faced in the past, he hesitates to take a bold step further; when he gathers courage, the right occasion does not arise; though he longs for her whereabouts, he has no one to tell him the right information; even those who share information, only kindle his curiosity but do not contribute towards easing his mind. The events that occur without the effort or intervention of Duṣyanta are of this kind as well. Just as his curiosity reaches its peak, he starts discovering the reality of things and everything becomes clear as daylight. Thus, Duṣyanta, who has procured a boon from Indra and is on his way back on the vimāna, arrives at Kaśyapa’s āśrama and the place turns out to be an elixir of life for him; as he sits below an aśoka tree, he feels his right shoulder twitching; he spots the young lad, who displays courage beyond his physical age; Duṣyanta spontaneously develops affection for the child as though he were his own offspring. He notices that the boy has all the attributes of being a cakravartī – an emperor. He learns that the boy is not really a ṛṣi-kumāra, i.e., the son of a sage, and also notices the similarities he shares with him. He understands that the boy is born to the kuru dynasty and his mother is the daughter of an apsarā; his father had, apparently, abandoned his wife. When the boy is asked to notice the śakunta-lāvaṇya, i.e., the beauty of the bird, he asks, “Where is mom[2]?” When Duṣyanta picks up the protective bracelet worn by the child it does not turn into a snake to sting him. The king tries to take the child from there, and the little one exclaims, “Duṣyanta is my father! Who are you?” Following this, Śakuntalā, who is now an eka-veṇī-dharā appears there! When we read these segments we are quite astonished about what the world and life reveal to us – it is like a person who sets out to travel in the darkness of the night, walks a long distance, and as daylight dawns, trees, plants, creepers, and hills, which were hazy in the beginning, start taking clearer shapes; as the sun rises, the wayfarer gains the right perception of things; Duṣyanta who even shuddered to think of anything positive, is now happily reunited; he is reunited not just with his wife, but also with his child. When we think of his emotional landscape, we can appreciate the skill of the playwright in designing the plot. The beauty of the story lies in its details; the story, can, in fact, be narrated in just four sentences. Just as Duṣyanta spots Śakuntalā in the first act, the poet could have concluded the play by revealing the heroine in the āśrama; however, if he had done so, it wouldn’t have been a play and the plot would be bereft of all rasa; it would have been a short and dry story, which would have gotten over in a couple of lines.
The marriage of Mālavikā and Agnimitra takes place due to the Divine Providence; the learned had even foretold such an occurrence. Urvaśī and Vikrama unite due to the Divine Will as well. In neither of the stories has the play of fate been as nuanced and detrimental as we see in the story of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā. Right at the beginning, fate, like a squall, sweeps Duṣyanta towards the āśrama of Sage Kaṇva; it hovers over Śakuntalā like a dark cloud. Kaṇva was away at Somatīrtha to perform a ritual to ensure the well-being of his foster daughter and to avoid any dark consequences; Durvāsa’s curse lands upon Śakuntalā like a lightning bolt and the ring, which was to act as a token of recognition, slips away from her fingers; this leads to immense and unforeseen agony. Nevertheless, the reunion of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā was pre-ordained by the Divine and it was in accordance with the bigger working of fate; therefore, the hero and the heroine are driven back to each other at the appropriate time – this is quite clear from the story; in this sense, one can say that Kālidāsa emphasises the play of fate more than Bhāsa and others do; however, one must not jump to the conclusion that Kālidāsa pays no importance to active human effort at all; even to this day, nobody has been able to decode the workings of fate; it is quite possible that everything on earth is a predetermined play of the divine.
To be continued ...
The current series of articles is an enlarged adaption of Prof. A. R. Krishnasastri's Kannada treatise Saṃskṛta-nāṭaka. They are presented along with additional information by Arjun Bharadwaj
[1] Just like the Vikramorvaśīyam, the Śākuntalam also has a northern recension. There, the third and the sixth acts have additional text and they elaborate upon the romantic love between Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā; these appear to be later-day interpolations.
[2] He thinks that it is a reference to his mother’s name, because of the pun in the original Prakrit; see the seventh act of the play.
