Kumarasambhavam: The Origin of the Young God (Penguin Classics)
Kālidāsa
Language: English
Pages: 111
ISBN: 0143424076
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Kumarasambhavam celebrates the love story of Siva and Parvati, whose passionate union results in the birth of their son, the young god Kumara. Beginning with a luminous description of the birth of Parvati, the poem proceeds in perfectly pitched sensuous detail through her courtship with Siva until the night of their wedding. It plays out their tale on the immense scale of supreme divinity, wherein the gods are viewed both as lovers and as cosmic principles. Composed in eight scintillating cantos, Kumarasambhavam continues to enchant readers centuries after it was first written. Hank Heifetz's sparkling translation brings to life the heady eroticism and sumptuous imagery of the original.
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me know. With desire as my agent, I will overwhelm his advance towards riches and the just life, as a river floods over its shores. 7 ‘Is there a full-bodied woman whose beauty has entered your restless mind, and her loyalty to her husband is trouble for you, whom you wish to have willing without any shame to fold her arms around your neck? 8 ‘If you, as lover, have been rejected by some woman, angry at your unfaithfulness, though you fell at her feet, I will make her feel great regret as she
love for him. Someone who knows her own will can ignore insults. 83 ‘My friend, keep this boy from saying whatever else he seems to intend since his lower lip is quivering. Not only speaking against the great but even listening to words that oppose them makes one share in an evil act. 84 ‘Or better, I will go away myself,’ she was saying, her garment of bark slipping down her breasts as she turned to move, when taking on his own form, the God Whose Banner Carries a Bull, smiling, swept her up
that etymologically contains the sense of ‘she who has to be’. 1:23 These are common signs of the birth of a great being, divine or human. 1:24 Vidūra is said to be in Sri Lanka, a country still famous for gems. 1:26 Umā—’Ah, do not!’ The words ‘chose the hardships’ are added (as indicated in the introductory note on the word tapas) to make the concept clearer. 1:27 ‘Though he had many children’—putravato ‘pi. This could also mean ‘even though he had a son’, referring to the assumed
mourning. The use of a shorter and then a longer line in regular alternation occurs in a number of poems of mourning in various languages; like the short cry followed by a longer wailing of traditional Middle-Eastern keening and, according to some, the Irish banshee’s wail. It may very well be rooted in the natural human rhythm of grief. In English poetry, Shelley’s Adonais is an outstanding example of this type of wavelike rhythm used for mourning. The most famous lament in Spanish, Jorge
sun’s warmth is gone and only the bare sight of it remains. 8:30 The ‘Lord of the Day’ is aharpatiḥ. ‘The Lord of Beings’ is prajeśvaraḥ. Both pati and īśvara can mean ‘lord’, though I have elsewhere translated pati as ‘master’. In this compound word for the sun, it seems best to translate pati as ‘lord’. 8:31 I have translated according to N, who takes avanate with vivasvati, ‘while the sun curves down low’, rather than as a vocative directed at Pārvatī—which is what Mallinātha says. 8:32
