A god mid hills northern Himaloy rearsSri Aurobindo
Translations
CWSA.- Volume 5
Part One. Translations from Sanskrit
Section Three. Kalidasa
The Birth of the War-God1
Stanzaic Rendering of the Opening of Canto I
1
A god mid hills northern Himaloy rears
His snow-piled summits’ dizzy majesties,
And in the eastern and the western seas
He bathes his giant sides; lain down appears
Measuring the dreaming earth in an enormous ease.
2
Him, it is told, the living mountains made
A mighty calf of earth, the mother large,
When Meru of that milking had the charge
By Prithu bid; and jewels brilliant-rayed
Were brightly born and herbs on every mountain marge.
3
So is he in his infinite riches dressed
Not all his snows can slay that opulence.
As drowned in luminous floods the mark though dense
On the moon’s argent disc, so faints oppressed
One fault mid crowding virtues fading from our sense.
4
Brightness of minerals on his peaks outspread
In their love-sports and in their dances gives
To heavenly nymphs adornment, which when drive
Split clouds across, those broken hues displayed
Like an untimely sunset’s magic glories live.
5
Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist;
And to his low-hung plateaus’ coolness won
The Siddhas in soft shade repose, but run
Soon glittering upwards by wild rain distressed
To unstained summits splendid with the veilless sun.
6
Although unseen the reddened footprints blotted
By the new-fallen snows, the hunters know
The path their prey the mighty lions go;
For pearls from the slain elephants there clotted
Fallen from the hollow claws the dangerous passing show.
7
The birch-leaves on his slopes love-pages turn;
Like spots of age upon the tusky kings
Of liquid metal ink their letterings
Make crimson pages that with passion burn
Where heaven’s divine Circes pen heart-moving things.
8
He fills the hollows of his bamboo trees
With the breeze rising from his deep ravines,
Flutes from his rocky mouths as if he means
To be tune giver to the minstrelsies
Of high-voiced Kinnars chanting in his woodland glens.
9
His poplars by the brows of elephants
Shaken and rubbed loose forth their odorous cream;
And the sweet resin pours its trickling stream,
And wind on his high levels burdened pants
With fragrance making all the air a scented dream.
10
His grottoes are love-chambers in the night
For the strong forest-wanderer when he lies
Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs
And from the dim banks luminous herbs give light,
Strange oilless lamps to their locked passion’s ecstasies.
11
Himaloy’s snows in frosted slabs distress
The delicate heels of his maned Kinnaris,
And yet for all that chilly path’s unease
They change not their slow motion’s swaying grace
[ ]
12
He guards from the pursuing sun far-hid
In his deep caves of gloom the fallen night
Afraid of the day’s eyes of brilliant light:
Even on base things and low for refuge fled
High-crested souls shed guardian love and kindly might.
13
The mountain yaks lift up their bushy tails
And with their lashing scatter gleamings round
White as the moonbeams on the rocky ground:
They seem to fan their king, his parallels
Of symbolled monarchy more perfectly to found.
14
There in his glens upon his grottoed floors
When from her limbs is plucked the raiment fine
Of the Kinnar’s shamefast love, hanging come in
His concave clouds across the cavern doors;
Chance curtains shielding her bared loveliness divine.
15
Weary with tracking the wild deer for rest
The hunter bares his forehead to the fay
Breezes which sprinkle Ganges’ cascade spray
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy’s breast,
Gambolling with the proud peacock’s gorgeous-plumed array.
16
Circling his mountains in its path below
The sun awakes with upward-glittering wands
What still unplucked by the seven sages’ hands
Remains of the bright lotuses that glow
In tarns upon his tops with heaven-kissing strands.
17
Because the Soma plant for sacrifice
He rears and for his mass upbearing earth
The Lord of creatures gave to this great birth
His sacrificial share and ministries
And empire over all the mountains to his worth.
18
Companion of Meru, their high floor,
In equal wedlock he to his mighty bed
The mindborn child of the world-fathers wed,
Mena whose wisdom the deep seers adore,
Stable and wise himself his stable race to spread.
19
Their joys of love were like themselves immense
And its long puissant ecstasies at last
Bore fruit for in her womb a seed was cast;
Bearing the banner of her youth intense
In moving beauty and charm to motherhood she passed.
20
Mainac she bore, the ocean’s guest and friend
Upon whose peaks the serpent-women roam,
Dwellers in their unsunned and cavernous home;
Mainac, whose sides though angry Indra rend
Feels not the anguish of the thunder’s shock of doom.
1 In the first and third versions of this translation, Sri Aurobindo left some lines or parts of lines blank, apparently with the intention of returning to them later. Such incomplete portions are indicated by square brackets enclosing a blank of appropriate size. – Editors’ Note