III. Minor Characters
[1]Sri Aurobindo
The Harmony of Virtue
Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910
Kalidasa
Kalidasa's Characters
III. Minor Characters
[1]
Nothing more certainly distinguishes the dramatic artist from the poet who has trespassed into drama than the careful pains1 he devotes to his minor characters.
To the artist nothing is small; he bestows as much of his art within the narrow limit of his small characters as within the wide compass of his greatest.
Shakespeare lavishes life upon his minor characters; but in Shakespeare it is the result of an abounding creative energy; he makes living men as God made the world, because he could not help it, because it was in his nature and must out.
But Kalidasa's dramatic gift, always suave and keen, had not this godlike abundance; it is therefore well to note the persistence of this feature of high art in all his dramas.
In the Urvasie the noble figure of Queen Aushinarie is the most excellent2 evidence of his fine artistry; but even slight sketches like the Apsaras3 are seen upon close attention to be portrayed with a subtle and discriminating design; thought has been bestowed on each word they speak, an observable delicacy of various touch shows itself in each tone and gesture they employ.
A number of shining figures crowded into a corner of the canvas, like in meaning, like in situation, like in nature, they seem to offer the very narrowest scope for differentiation; yet every face varies from4 its sister, the diction of each tongue has its revealing individuality.
The timid, warm-hearted Rumbha easily despondent, full of quick outbursts of eagerness and tenderness is other than the statelier Menaca with her royal gift of speech and her high confidence.
Sahajanya5 is of an intenser, more silent, less imaginative, more practical type than either of these.
It is she who gives Pururavas6 the information of the road which the ravisher has taken, and from that point onward amid all the anxious and tender chatter of the7 sisters she is silent until she has the practical fact of Pururavas’8 disappearance9 to seize upon.
This she is again the first to descry and announce.
Her utterance is brief and of10 great point and substance; from the few words she has uttered we unconsciously receive a deep impression of helpfulness, earnestness and strength.
We know her voice, are11 ready and12 recognize13 it again in the Fourth Act.
Her 
attitude there is characteristic; she will not14 waste time over vain lamentation, since she cannot help15.
Fate has divided the lovers, Fate will unite them again; so with a cheerful and noble word of consolation she turns to the immediate work in hand.
Chitraleqha, more fortunate than the other Apsaras16, obtaining17 through three Acts a large canvas as the favourite and comrade of Urvasie, suffers dramatically from her good fortune, for she must necessarily appear a little indistinct, so near to the superior light of her companion.
Indeed, dramatic necessity demands subdued tones in her portraiture lest she should deflect attention from Urvasie; richness of colour18 and prominence of line therefore are19 not permissible.
Yet in spite of these hampering conditions the poet has made her a sufficiently definite personality.
Indeed, her indulgent affection, her playful kindliness, her little outbreaks of loving impatience or sage advice, — the neglect of which she takes in excellent part, — her continual half-smiling20 surrender to Urvasie's petulance and wilfulness and her whole half matron-like air of elder-sisterly protection, give her a very sensible charm and attractiveness; there is a true nymphlike and divine grace, tact and felicity in all that she says and does.
Outside the group of Apsaras21 the Hermitess Satyavatie is a slighter but equally attractive figure, venerable, kind, a little impersonal owing to the self-restraint which is her vocation, but with glimpses through it of a fine motherliness and friendliness.
The perpetual grace of humanness, which is so eminently Kalidasian, forming the atmosphere of all his plays, seems to deepen with a peculiar beauty around his ascetics, Kanwa22, Satyavatie, the learned and unfortunate lady of the Malavica.
The “little rogue of a tiring woman” Nipounica, sly and smooth-tongued, though with no real harm in her beyond a delight in her own slyness and a fine sense of exhilaration in the midst of a family row, pleasantly brings up the slighter23 of these feminine24 personalities.
The masculine sketches are drawn in even more25 unobtrusive outlines and, after Kalidasa's manner, less individualized than his women.
The Charioteer and the Huntsmen are indeed hardly distinct figures; they have but a few lines to utter between them and are only remarkable for the shadow of the purple which continual association with Pururavas26 has cast over their manner of 
speech.
Manavaca27 and Ayus need a larger mention, yet they are less interesting in themselves than for their place, one in the history of Kalidasa's artistic development, the other among the finest evidences of his delicacy in portraiture and the scrupulous economy, almost miserliness, with which he extracts its utmost artistic utility, possibility, value from each detail of his drama.
The Chamberlain again, fine as he is in his staid melancholy, his aged fidelity, his worn-out and decrepit venerableness and that continual suggestion of the sorrowfulness of grey hairs, is still mainly the fine Kalidasian version of a conventional dramatic figure.
The one touch that gives him a personal humanity is the sad resignation of his, “It is your will, Sire”, when Pururavas28, about to depart to asceticism in the forests, commands the investiture of his son.
For it is the last and crowning misfortune that the weary old man must bear; the master over whose youth and greatness he has watched, for whose sake he serves in his old age, with the events of whose reign all the memories of his life are bound up, is about to depart and a youthful stranger will sit in his place.
With that change all meaning must go out of the old man's existence; but with a pathetic fidelity of resignation he goes out to do his last bidding29 uttering his daily formula, — now30 changed in its newly acquired pathos from the old pompous formality, “It is your will, Sire.”
Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 1.- Early Cultural Writings (1890 — 1910).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003.- 784 p.
1 2003 ed.: pain
2 2003 ed.: striking
3 2003 ed.: Opsaras
4 2003 ed.: varies just a little from
5 2003 ed.: Sahajunya
6 2003 ed.: Pururavus
7 2003 ed.: her
8 2003 ed.: Pururavus’
9 2003 ed.: reappearance
10 2003 ed.: brief, of
11 2003 ed.: voice and are
12 2003 ed.: [to]
13 2003 ed.: recognise
14 2003 ed.: characteristic; since help she cannot, she will not
15 2003 ed.: lamentation; Fate
16 2003 ed.: Opsaras
17 2003 ed.: in obtaining
18 2003 ed.: from Urvasie where it is her task to attract it to her; she must be always the cloud’s dim legion that prepares us to watch for the lightning. Richness of colour
19 2003 ed.: are therefore
20 2003 ed.: smiling
21 2003 ed.: Opsaras
22 2003 ed.: Kunwa
23 2003 ed.: rear
24 2003 ed.: these slighter feminine
25 2003 ed.: in more
26 2003 ed.: Pururavus
27 In the edition of 2003 year this sentence is placed after words ...formality “It is your will, Sire.”
28 2003 ed.: Pururavus
29 2003 ed.: his master’s last bidding
30 2003 ed.: how