Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 3 Number 2, August 2002

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Johnson, W. J., Kalidasa The Recognition of Sakuntala, Oxford: Oxford World Classics, Oxford University Press, 2001. 147 pages, ISBN 0-19-283911-2. Paperback £5.99/$9.95

Reviewed by 

Margaret Coldiron 

W. J. Johnson has produced a new translation of Kalidasa’s great Sanskrit drama for Oxford World Classics in an affordable and accessible format with excellent notes. Johnson is a religious studies scholar whose other publications include translations of The Bhagvad Gita (Oxford, 1994) and The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahabharata (Oxford 1998). Refreshingly, he has an eye to the text as a piece for performance,  not merely for academic study, and laments its neglect by the English-speaking theatrical establishment. This scholarly yet approachable edition usefully includes Johnson’s own translation of Kalidasa’s probable source, an early episode from the Mahabharata.

The impressive introduction is thorough and informative, pitched at the general reader but never condescending. It begins with a brief outline of what is known of Kalidasa’s life and an assessment of the place of Sakuntala in the canon of world drama. A succinct and illuminating outline of the plot and structure of the play follows. The Recognition of Sakuntala tells the story of the love between King Dusyanta and the beautiful Sakuntala, who lives in the woodland hermitage of her foster father, a devout ascetic called Kanva. Sakuntala and Dusyanta contract a secret “love match” after which the King returns to his court leaving her his ring as a keepsake. Shortly afterward, distracted by thoughts of her lover, Sakuntala neglects her duties of hospitality and becomes the unknowing victim of a curse: her beloved will forget her until she produces some token of recognition. When she subsequently appears at Dusyanta’s court visibly pregnant, she is rejected unrecognised. Even worse, when she tries to produce the ring to prove her story, she discovers that it was lost in her journey. After her public humiliation, Sakuntala vanishes into a heavenly beam of light (provided by her mother, the nymph Menaka). When the missing ring is later found in the belly of a fish, Dusyanta remembers his lost love and is plunged into despair and remorse. He is eventually called into service by Indra, king of the gods, to battle a gang of troublesome demons. On his way home, Dusyanta visits a celestial hermitage where he is fortuitously reunited with Sakuntala and meets his young son—destined to be Bharata, a “world emperor.” Johnson’s summary provides a useful orientation to the world of the play and its style. In a further discussion of the play’s plot and structure, he demonstrates the ways in which six of the seven acts of the play mirror one another with the central fourth act serving as a reverberative transition.

The introduction continues with a discussion of the workings of Sanskrit aesthetic theory (as outlined in the Natyasastra) related to the play and the system of ethics that underpins its action. Here Johnson addresses important issues of language giving an insightful overview of the cultural and political context reflected in the use of Sanskrit (the classical written language) and Prakrit (common spoken dialects) to delineate different characters and incidents in the play. He also alerts the reader to the gestural language of theatrical performance by means of which this ancient play is still comprehensible to modern audiences. Here he includes a helpful discussion of the levels of language employed in the text, explaining which characters speak what—verse, prose, Sanskrit, or Prakrit—and why. In the course of this he also illustrates how the works of Kalidasa came to be the preserve of Sanskrit scholars rather than remaining popular dramas. All of this serves to explain the reasons why an English translation, however skilled, is unable to effectively communicate the “verbal polyphony” of the original text. It is most useful to approach the play with this understanding. He goes on to provide detailed information on the verse and prose structures of the original and how the assignment of verse speaking reflects the aesthetic of the piece in terms of the rasas (aesthetic “flavours” or “sensations”) revealed and communicated by the play. Where the discussion threatens to become too complex for the non-specialist, the reader is helpfully directed to Johnson’s “Selected Bibliography” for sources of further study.

 Again addressing the play as a piece of theatre, a section on “Staging and Stage Conventions” explains the 4 types of representation in conventional Sanskrit drama: spoken word, gesture, costume and emotion. These elements work together to create a uniquely performative dramatic language that transcends the written word. Johnson (drawing on Robert Goodwin’s The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama) describes this as “’spectacle poetry’ as opposed to verbal poetry” (Introduction, p. xxv). For those unfamiliar with the Indian Kuttiyattam theatre tradition, this communicates some idea of the complex meta-text of performance that is a fundamental element of traditional Sanskrit theatre.

Johnson intends this version of the play to be performable and says that he seeks to “liberate” the text through this translation. The question is, does he succeed?

On balance, I would venture to say that he does. The text is very accessible and is helped with excellent notes throughout. The obvious alternation between verse and prose gives some flavour of the complexity of the original without obscuring the drama. The action moves along at a brisk pace and the occasional textual notes are useful without being intrusive. It is a splendid story, beautifully told. The serious scholar might wish for more information, for example to clarify certain elements of ritual, but Johnson’s notes helpfully direct the reader to more specialist materials.

Following the play, Johnson includes the Sakuntala story from the Mahabharata in his own, lucid translation. It has been usefully condensed to provide only essential information, yet retains a sense of poetry and it is rendered, like the original, in unrhymed verse. Shakuntala’s drama is just as compelling in the Mahabharata, but appears to be more focused on teaching ethical lessons than on exciting rasa. In this version Dusayanta does recognise Sakuntala when she appears at his court, but refuses to acknowledge her. This allows Sakuntala to offer some important lessons on the power of conscience, and the ritual, spiritual and daily necessity of wives and children (especially sons) for all men. One can see the source of much of the specific action in Kalidasa’s play in the Mahabharata, but Dusayanta’s abuse of Sakuntala seems brutal and unrelenting—really quite shocking. When a “divine voice” demands Dusayanta’s recognition of his spurned wife, he as able to acknowledge her without engendering popular doubt and suspicion.  It is clear that the epic addresses itself to moral lessons and political realities, most particularly the necessity for a king (and his successors) to be seen as legitimate. The play, on the other hand, is a great love story.

This handy and inexpensive edition will be an invaluable text for students of Asian Studies, World Literature or Drama and would make an excellent addition to one’s personal library. Shakuntala has been performed in India and all over the world.  A recent production from Natanakairali Research and Performing Centre for Traditional Arts in Kerala will be presented at the Folkteatern Gävleborg in Sweden in 2003. Perhaps this translation might inspire an innovative director to bring this Sanskrit classic to the English-speaking stage.