A god concealed in mountain majesty,Sri Aurobindo
Translations
CWSA.- Volume 5
Part One. Translations from Sanskrit
Section Three. Kalidasa
Blank Verse Rendering of Canto I
A god concealed in mountain majesty,
Embodied to our cloudy physical sight
In snowy summits and green-gloried slopes,
To northward of the many-rivered land
Measuring the earth in an enormous ease,
Immense Himaloy dwells and in the moan
Of eastern ocean and in western floods
Plunges his giant sides. Him once the hills
Imagined as the mighty calf of earth
When the Wideness milked her udders; gems brilliant-rayed
Were born and herbs on every mountain marge.
So in his infinite riches is he dressed,
Not all his snows can slay his opulence,
And though they chill the feet of heaven, her sons
Forget that fault mid all his crowding gifts,
As faints in luminous floods the gloomy mark
On the moon’s argent disk; they choose his vales
For playground, his hill-peaks for divine homes.
Brightness of minerals on his rocks is spread
Which to the Apsaras give adorning hues
In their love-sports and in their dances; flung
On the split clouds their brilliant colours ranged,
Like an untimely sunset’s glories live.
Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist;
Then by the low-hung plateaus’ coolness drawn
The Siddhas in soft shade repose, but flee
Soon upward by wild driving rain distressed
To summits splendid in the veilless sun.
The hunter seeks for traces on his sides,
And though their reddened footprints are expunged
By the new-falling snows, yet can he find
The path his prey the mighty lions go;
For, it is told, pearls from slain elephants
Are clotted, fallen from their hollow claws,
And tell their dangerous passage. When he rests
Tired with the chase and bares to winds his brow,
They come, fay-breezes dancing on the slopes,
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy’s breast,
Scattering the peacock’s gorgeous-plumed attire,
With spray of Ganges’ cascades on their wings
Sprinkling his hair. He makes the grottoed glens
His chambers of desire and in the night
When the strong forest-wanderer is lain
Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs,
The luminous herbs from the dim banks around,
Faint oilless lamps, give light to see her joy.
Nor only earthly footsteps tread the grass,
Or mortal love finds there its happy scenes.
The birch-leaves of the hills love-pages are;
Like spots of age upon the tusky kings,
In ink of liquid metals letters strange
Make crimson signs, pages where passion burns
And divine Circes pen heart-moving things.
The Kinnars wander singing in his glades.
He fills the hollows of his bamboo flutes
With the wind rising from his deep ravines,
And with a moaning and melodious sound
Breathes from his rocky mouths as if he meant
To pipe, tune-giver to their minstrelsies.
The delicate heels of the maned Kinnari
Are by his frosted slabs of snow distressed,
Yet for her burden of breasts and heavy hips
Can change not their slow motion’s swaying grace
To escape the biting pathway’s chill unease.
She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced.
When from her limbs is plucked the raiment fine
Of the Kinnar’s shamefast love, then hanging come
The convex clouds across the grotto doors
And make chance curtains against mortal eyes,
Shielding the naked goddess from our sight.
The elephant herds there wander: resinous trees
Shaken and rubbed by their afflicting brows
Loose down their odorous tears in creamy drops;
The winds upon the plateaus burdened pant
And make of all the air a scented dream.
The yaks are there; they lift their bushy tails
And in their lashings scatter gleamings white
As moonbeams shed upon the sleeping hills:
Brightly they seem to fan the mountain king.
He hides in his deep caves the hunted night
Fearful of the day’s brilliant eyes. His peaks
Seem to outpeer the lower-circling sun,
Which sends its upward beams as if to wake
Immortal lilies in his tarns unplucked
By the seven sages in their starry march.
Such is Himaloy’s greatness, such his strength
That seems to uplift to heaven the earth. He bears
The honey Soma plant upon his heights,
Of godward symbols the exalted source.
He by the Master of sacrifice was crowned
The ancient monarch of a million hills.
In equal rites he to his giant bed
The mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.
The earthly comrade and the help-fellow
Of Meru, their sublime celestial home,
Stable of soul, to make a stable race
Mena he wed whose wisdom seers adored.
Their joy of love was like themselves immense
And in the wide felicitous lapse of time
Its long and puissant ecstasy bore fruit.
Bearing the banner of her unchanged youth
And beauty to charmed motherhood she crossed.
Mainac she bore, the guest of the deep seas,
Upon whose peaks the serpent-women play,
Their jewelled tresses glittering through the gloom,
Race of a cavernous and monstrous world;
There fled when Indra tore the mountains’ wings,
His divine essence bore no cruel sign,
Nor felt the anguish of the lightning’s bite.
Next to a nobler load her womb gave place;
For Daksha’s daughter, Shiva’s wife, the Lord
Of Being, in her angry will who left
Her body soulless in her father’s hall,
Sought in their mountain home a happier birth,
And by her in a trance profound of joy
Conceived was born of great Himaloy’s seed.
Out of the soul unseen the splendid child
Came like success with daring for its sire
And for its mother clear-eyed thought sublime.
Then were the regions subtle with delight,
Soft, pure from cloud and stain; then heaven’s shells
Blew sweetly, flowery rain came drifting down,
Earth answered to the rapture of the skies
And all her moving and unmoving life
Felt happiness because the Bride was born.
So this fair mother by this daughter shone,
So that new beauty radiated its beams
As if a land of lapis lazuli
Torn by the thunder’s voice shot suddenly forth
A jewelled sprouting from the mother bed.
Parvati was she called, the mountain’s child,
When love to love cried answer in her house
And to that sound she turned her lovely face,
But after-days the great maternal name
Of Uma gave. On her as fair she grew
Her father banqueted his sateless look;
He felt himself a lamp fulfilled in light,
Heaven’s silent path by Ganges voiceful made,
Or thought made glorious by a perfect word.
Like bees that winging come upon the wind
Among the infinite sweets of honeyed spring
Drawn to the mango-flower’s delicious breast,
All eyes sought her. Her little childlike form
Increasing to new curves of loveliness,
She grew like the moon’s arc from day to day.
Among her fair companions of delight
She built frail walls of heavenly Ganges’ sands
Or ran to seize the tossing ball or pleased
With puppet children her maternal mind,
Absorbed in play, the mother of the worlds.
And easily too to her as if in play
All sciences and wisdoms crowding came
Out of her former life, like swans that haste
In autumn to a sacred river’s shores;
They started from her mind as grow at night
Born from some luminous herb its glimmering rays.
To her child-body youth, a charm, arrived
Adorning every limb, a wine of joy
To intoxicate the heart, the eyes that gazed,
Shooting the arrows of love’s curving bow.
Even as a painting grows beneath the hand
Of a great master, as the lotus opens
Its petals to the flatteries of the sun,
So into perfect roundness grew her limbs
And opened up sweet colour, form and light.
Her feet limned a red rose at every step
On the enamoured earth; like magic flowers
They moved from spot to spot their petalled bloom;
Her motion studied from the queenly swans
With wanton swaying musically timed
The sweet-voiced anklets’ murmurous refrain.
From moulded knee to ankle the supreme
Divinely lessening curve so lovely was
It looked as if on this alone were spent
All her Creator’s cunning. Well the rest
Might tax his labour to build half such grace,
Yet was that miracle accomplished. Soft
In roundness, warm in their smooth sweep her thighs
Were without parallel in Nature’s work.
The greatness of her hips on which life’s girdle
Had found its ample rest deserved already
The lap of divine love where she alone
Might hope one day embosomed by God to lie.
Deep was her navel’s hollow where wound in
Above her raiment’s knot that tender line
Of down as slight as the dark ray shot up
From the blue jewel central in her zone.
Her waist was like an altar’s middle small
And there the triple stair of love was built.
Twin breasts large, lovely, pale with darkened paps
Could not allow the slender lotus thread
A passage, on whose either side there waited
Softer than delicatest flowers the arms
Which Love victorious in defeat would find
His chains to bow down the Eternal’s neck.
Her throat adorned the necklace which it wore;
Its sweep and undulation to the breast
Outmatched the gleaming roundness of its gems.
Above all this her marvellous face where met
The golden mother of beauty and delight
At once the graces of her lotus throne
And the soft lustres of the moon. Her smile
Parted the rosy sweetness of her lips
Like a white flower across a ruddy leaf
Or pearls that sever lines of coral. Noble
Her speech dropped nectar from a liquid voice
To which the coïl’s call seemed rude and harsh
And sob of smitten lyres a tuneless sound.
She had exchanged with the wild woodland deer
The startled glance of her long lovely eyes
Fluttering like a blue lotus in the wind.
The pencilled long line of her arching brows
Made vain the beauty of Love’s bow. Her hair’s
Tossed masses put voluptuously to shame
The mane of lions and the drift of clouds.
To clasp all beauty in a little space
He who created all this wondrous world
Had fashioned only her. Throned in her limbs
All possibilities of loveliness
Here crowded to their fair attractive seat
And now the artist eyes that scan all things
Saw every symbol and sweet parallel
Of beauty only realised in her.
Then was he satisfied and loved his work.
The sages ranging at their will the stars
Saw her and knew that this indeed was she
Who must become by love the beautiful half
Of the fair body of the Lord and all
His heart. This from the seers of future things
Her father heard and his high hope renounced
All other but the greatest for her spouse.
She waited like an offering for the fire.
For to compel himself the divine mind
He dared not, but remained like a great soul
Which watches for the destined hour’s approach
Curbing the impatience of its godlike hopes.
But he the spirit of the world, forsaken
By that first body of the mother of all
Nor to her second birth yet come, abode
Unwed, ascetic, stern, mid crowded worlds
Alone and passionless and unespoused,
The Master of the animal life absorbed
In dreamings, wandering with his demon hordes
Desireless in the blind desire of things.
At length he ceased; like sculptured marble still
To meditation turned he yoked his spirit;
Clothed in the skins of beasts, with ashes smeared
He sat a silent shape upon the hills.
Below him curved Himadri’s slope; a soil
With fragrance of the musk-deer odorous
Was round him, where the awful Splendour mused
Mid cedars sprinkled with the sacred dew
Of Ganges. Softly murmuring their chants
In strains subdued the Kinnar minstrels sang,
On oil-filled slabs among the resinous herbs
His grisly hosts sat down, their bodies stained
With mineral unguents, bark upon their limbs;
Ill-shaped they were and their tremendous hands
Around their ears had wreathed the hillside’s flowers.
On the white rocks compact of frozen snow,
His great bull voicing low immortal pride
Pawed with his hoof the argent soil to dust,
Alarmed the bisons fled his gaze; he bellowed
Impatient of the mountain lion’s roar.
Concentrating his world-vast energies
Built daily his eternal shape of flame
He who gives all austerities their fruit,
In what impenetrable and deep desire?
And though to him the worship even of gods
Is negligible, worship the mountain gave
And gave his daughter the Great Soul to serve.
Nor though to remote trance near beauty brings
Its lovely danger, was that gift refused.
Surrounded by all sweetness in the world
He can be passionless who is creation’s king.
She brought him daily offering of flowers
And holy water morn and noon and eve
And swept the altar of the divine fire
And heaped his altar-seat of sacred grass,
Then bending over his feet her falling locks
Drowned all her soft fatigue of gentle toil
In the cool moonbeams from the Eternal’s head.
So had they met on summits of the world
Like the still Spirit and its unwakened force,
Near were they now, yet to each other unknown,
He meditating, she in service bowed.
Closing awhile her vast and shining lids
Fate over them paused suspended on the hills.