SRI AUROBINDO

Translations

from Sanskrit and Other Languages

Kalidasa

Kumarasambhava
The Birth of the War-God

Three Renderings 

The Birth of the War-God

Canto Two

But now in spheres above whose motions fixed

Confirm our cyclic steps, a cry arose

Anarchic. Strange disorders threatened Space.

There was a tumult in the calm abodes,

A clash of arms, a thunder of defeat.

Hearing that sound our smaller physical home

Trembled in its pale circuits, fearing soon

The ethereal revolt might touch its stars.

Then were these knots of our toy orbits torn

And like a falling leaf this world might sink

From the high tree mysterious where it hangs

Between that voiceful and this silent flood.

For long a mute indifference had seized

The Lord of all; no more the Mother of forms

By the persuasion of her clinging arms

Bound him to bear the burden of her works.

Therefore with a slow dreadful confidence

Chaos had lifted his gigantic head.

His movement stole, a shadow on the skies,

Out of the dark inconscience where he hides.

Breaking the tread of the eternal dance

Voices were heard life’s music shudders at,

Thoughts were abroad no living mind can bear,

Enormous rhythms had disturbed the gods

Of which they knew not the stupendous law,

And taking new amorphous giant shapes

Desires the primal harmonies repel

Fixed dreadful eyes upon their coveted heavens.

Awhile they found no form could clothe their strength,

No spirit who could brook their feet of fire

Gave them his aspirations for their home.

Only in the invisible heart of things

A dread unease and expectation lived,

Which felt immeasurable energies

In huge revolt against the established world.

But now awake to the fierce nether gods

Tarak the Titan rose; and the gods fled

Before him driven in a luminous rout.

Rumours of an unalterable defeat

Astonished heaven. Like a throng of stars

Drifting through night before the clouds of doom,

Like golden leaves hunted by dark-winged winds

They fled back to their old delightful seats,

Nor there found refuge. Bent to a Titan yoke

They suffered, till their scourged defeated thoughts

Turned suppliants to a greater seat above.

There the Self-born who weaves from his deep heart

Harmonious spaces, sits concealed and watches

The inviolable cycles of his soul.

Thither ascending difficult roads of sleep

Those colonists of heaven, the violent strength

Of thunderous Indra flashing in their front,

Climbed up with labour to their mighty Source.

But as they neared, but as their yearning reached,

Before them from the eternal secrecy

A Form grew manifest from all their forms.

A great brow seemed to face them everywhere,

Eyes which survey the threads of Space looked forth,

The lips whose words are Nature’s ordinances

Were visible. Then as at dawn the sun

Smiles upon listless pools and at each smile

A sleeping lotus wakes, so on them shone

That glory and awoke to bloom and life

The drooping beauty of those tarnished gods.

Thus with high voices echoing his word

They hymned their great Creator where he sits

In the mystic lotus musing out his worlds:

"Pure Spirit who wast before creation woke,

Calm violence, destroyer, gulf of Soul,

One, though divided in thy own conceit,

Brahma we see thee here, who from thy deeps

Of memory rescuest forgotten Time,

We see thee, Yogin, on the solemn snows,

Shiva, withdrawing into thy hush the Word

Which sang the fiat of the speeding stars,

They pass like moths into thy flaming gaze.

We adore thee, Vishnu, whose eternal steps

To thee are casual footprints yet thy small base

For luminous systems measureless to our mind,

Whose difficult touch¹ thy light and happy smile

Sustains, O wide discoverer of Space!

To thee our adoration, triune Form!

Imagining her triple mood thou gavest

To thy illimitable Nature play.

When nothing was except thy lonely soul

In the ocean of thy being, then thou sowedst

Thy seed infallible, O Spirit unborn,

And from that seed a million unlike forms

Thou variously hast made. Thy world that moves

And breathes, thy world inconscient and inert,

What are they but a corner of thy life?

Thou hast made them and preservest; if thou slayst

It is thy greatness, Lord. Mysterious source

Of all, from thee we draw this light of mind,

This mighty stirring and these failings dark.

In thee we live, by thee act thy thoughts,

Thou grewest thyself a Woman and divine.

Thou grewest twain who wert the formless One,

In one sole body thou wert Lord and Spouse

To found the bliss which by division joins,

Then borest thy being, a spirit who is Man.

All are thy creatures: in the meeting vast

Of thy swift Nature with thy brilliant Mind,

Thou madest thy children, man and beast and god.

Thy days and nights are numberless aeons; when

Thou sleepest, all things sleep, O conscient God;

Thy waking is a birth of countless souls.

Thou art the womb from which all life arose.

But who begot thee? thou the ender of things,

But who has known thy end? Beginningless,

All our beginnings are thy infant powers,

Thou governest their middle and their close,

But over thee where is thy ruler, Lord?

None knoweth this; alone thou knowest thyself.

By thy ineffable identity

Knowledge approaches the unknown. We seek

Discoveries of ourselves in distant things

When first desire stirred, the seed of mind,

And to existence from the plenary void

Thy seers built the golden bridge of thought,

Out of thy uncreated Ocean’s rest

By thy own energy thou sprangest forth,

Thou art thy action’s path and thou its law,

Thou art thy own vast ending and its sleep,

The subtle and the dense, the flowing and firm,

The hammered close consistency of things,

The clingings of the atoms, lightness, load,

What are all these things but thy shapes? Things seen

And sensible and things no thought has scanned,

Thou grewest, and all such pole and contrary

Art equally, O self-created God.

Thou hast become all this at thy desire;

And nothing is impossible in thee;

Creation is the grandeur of thy soul.

The chanting Veda and the threefold voice,

The sacrifice of works, the heavenly fruit,

The all-initiating OM, from thee,

From thee they sprang; out of thy ocean-heart

The rhythms of our fathomless Words were born,

They name thee Nature, she the mystic law

Of all things done and seen who drives us, mother

And giver of our spirit’s seeking, won

In her enormous strength though won from her.

They know thee for Spirit, far above thou dwellest,

Pure of achievement, empty of her noise,

Silent spectator of thy infinite stage,

Unmoved in a serene tremendous calm

Thou viewest indifferently the grandiose scene,

O Deity from whom all deities are,

O Father of the sowers of the world,

O Master of the godheads of the law,

Who so supreme but shall find thee above?

Thou art the enjoyer and the sweet enjoyed,

The hunter and the hunted in the worlds,

The food, the eater, O sole Knower, sole Known!

Sole Dreamer, this bright-imaged dream is thou

Which we pursue in our miraculous minds;

No other thinker is or other thought.

O Lord, when we bow, who from thy being came,

To thee in prayer, is it not thou who prayst,

Spirit transcendent and eternal All?"

Shedding a smile in whose benignancy

Some sweet return like pleasant sunlight glowed,

Then to the wise in heaven the original Seer,

Maker and poet of the magic spheres,

Sent chanting from his fourfold mouth a voice

In which were justified the powers of sound,

"Welcome, you excellent mightinesses of heaven,

Who hold your right by self-supported strengths,

The centuries for your arms. How have you risen

Together in one movement of great Time!

Wherefore bring you now your divine faces, robbed

Of their old inborn light and beauty, pale

As stars in winter mists dim-rayed and cold

Swimming through the dumb melancholy of heaven?

Why do I see your power dejected, frail

Which bounded free and lionlike through heaven?

The thunder in the Python-slayer’s hand

Flames not exultant, wan its darings droop,

Quelled is the iridescence of its dance,

Its dreadful beauty like a goddess shamed,

Shrinks back into its violated powers².

Varuna’s unescaped and awful noose

Hangs slack, impuissant and its ruthless coils

Are a charmed serpent’s folds, a child can smite

The whirling lasso snare for Titan strengths.

In Kuver’s face there is defeat and pain.

Low as an opulent tree its broken branch

In an insulted sullen majesty

His golden arm hangs down the knotted mace.

Death’s lord is wan and his tremendous staff

Writes idly on the soil, the infallible stroke

Is an extinguished terror, a charred line

The awful script no tears could ever erase.

O you pale sungods chill and shorn of fire,

How like the vanity of painted suns

You glow, where eyes can set their mortal ray

Daring eternal splendours with their sight.

O fallen rapidities, you lords of speed,

With the resisted torrents’ baffled roar

Back on themselves recoil your stormy strengths,

Why come you now like sad and stumbling souls,

Who bounded free and lionlike through heaven?

And you, O Rudras, how the matted towers

Upon your heads sink their dishevelled pride!

Dim hang your moons along the raking twines,

No longer from your puissant throats your voice

Challenges leonine the peaks of Night.

Who has put down the immortal gods? What foe

Stronger than strength could make eternal puissance vain,

As if beyond imagination amidst

The august immutability of law

Some insolent exception unforeseen

Had set in doubt the order of the stars?

Speak, children, wherefore have you come to me?

What prayer is silent on your lips? Did I

Not make the circling suns and give to you

The grandiose thoughts to keep. Guardians of life,

Keepers of the inviolable round,

Why come you to me with defeated eyes?

Helpers, stand you in need of help?" He ceased,

And like a rippling lotus lake whose flowers

Stirred to a gentle wind, the Thunderer turned

Upon the Seer his thousand eyes of thought,

The Seer who is His greater eye than these,

He is the teacher of the sons of light,

His speech inspired outleaps the labouring mind

And opens truth’s mysterious doors to gods.

"Veiling by question thy all-knowing sense,

Lord, thou hast spoken," Brihaspati began,

"The symbol of our sad defeat and fall.

What soul can hide himself from his own source?

Thy vision looks through every eye and sees

Beyond our seeings, thinks in every mind,

Passing our pale peripheries of light.

Tarak the Titan growing in thy smile

As Ocean swells beneath the silent moon...

Discouraged from the godhead of his rays

In Tarak’s town the Sun dares not to burn

More than can serve to unseal the lotus’ eyes

In rippling waters of his garden pools.

The mystic moon yields him its nectarous heart;

Only the crescent upon Shiva’s head

Is safe from the desire of his soul.

The violent winds forget their mightier song,

Their breezes through his gardens dare not rush,

Afraid to steal the flowers upon its boughs,

And only near him sobbingly can pant

A flattering coolness, dreadful brows to fan.

The seasons are forbidden their cycling round.

They are his garden-keepers and must fill

The branches with chaotic wealth of flowers.

Autumn and Spring and Summer joining hands

...³ him with their multitudinous sweets,

Their married fragrances surprise the air.

Ocean his careful servant brings to light

The reposing jewels for his toys, his mine

Of joy is the inexorable abyss.

The serpent gods with blazing gems at night

Hold up their hoods to be his living lamps,

And even great Indra sends his messengers;

Flowers from the tree of bounty and of bliss

They bear to the one fierce and sovereign mind:

All his desires the boughs of heaven must give.

But how can kindness win that violent heart?

Only by chastisement it is appeased.

A tyrant grandeur is the Titan soul...

(Incomplete)

¹ Doubtful reading.

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² pride.

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³ Blank in MS.

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