Meghaduta

01A yaksha in exile

The poem begins with a fault. A yaksha in the service of Kubera, lord of wealth, neglected his duty, and his master cursed him to a year’s exile far from Alaka and from his young wife. He made his home in the hermitages of Ramagiri in central India, where the water was holy because Janaka’s daughter Sita had bathed in it during the vanavasa and the trees gave deep shade. Some months pass. He has grown so thin that his golden bracelet has slipped from his wrist. Kalidasa never gives him a name. He is simply kashchit, a certain yaksha, and every reader who has been far from home has been him.

02The first day of Ashadha

The second verse places the moment: on the first day of Ashadha the yaksha sees a cloud clinging to the mountain top like an elephant butting a riverbank in play. That line is why the first day of Ashadha is kept across India as Kalidas Diwas, with recitations at Ujjain and at Ramtek near Nagpur, which many identify with Ramagiri. The whole poem runs in mandakranta, a slow metre of seventeen syllables a line, whose long syllables seem to roll like the cloud itself. Sanskrit teachers use it to teach the metre, and the metre is now hard to hear without thinking of this poem.

03Why a cloud

Kalidasa answers the obvious question in the fifth verse. What is a cloud but a gathering of smoke, light, water and wind? And what is a message, which needs living beings with clever senses to carry it? The yaksha, in his longing, does not stop to count the difference, for those struck by love are by nature unable to tell the living from the lifeless. So he offers the cloud fresh kutaja flowers, welcomes it with loving words, and asks it to carry his message north. The poet has told the reader, in one line, how to read everything that follows.

04A map in verse

Purvamegha is a route. The yaksha tells the cloud where to rest and where to rain: on Amrakuta hill, over the Reva, as the Narmada is called here, breaking on the rocks at the foot of the Vindhya, over the Dasharna country and its capital Vidisha, over the Vetravati and the Nirvindhya. From Ujjayini it goes on past Devagiri, where Skanda dwells, the Charmanvati, which is the Chambal, Dashapura, Brahmavarta and the field of Kurukshetra, then Kanakhala where the Ganga comes down from the hills. It passes the Krauncha pass, which Parashurama’s arrow opened through the mountain, and reaches Kailasa and the lake Manasa. Readers have traced the course on maps for centuries; it is roughly the course the monsoon takes.

05Ujjayini and Mahakala

Ujjayini is out of the cloud’s way, and the yaksha begs it to turn aside anyway; to miss the glances of its women would be to have lived in vain. He describes the city as a piece of heaven brought down to earth by the merit of those who had come to the end of their heavenly reward. Then he asks the cloud, if it should reach the temple of Mahakala at any other hour, to wait until the sun has set, and to serve as the drum at Shiva’s evening offering, so that its deep thunder will earn its full reward. Kalidasa’s love for this city and for Mahakaleshwar is plain, and Ujjain has never forgotten it.

06Alaka and the house

Uttaramegha is the arrival. Alaka, the city of the yakshas on the slopes of Kailasa, is a place where the only tears are tears of joy, the only fever is love’s, and youth is the only age. The yaksha guides the cloud to his own house, north of Kubera’s palace, recognisable from afar by its arched gateway like a rainbow. Beside it stands a young mandara tree his wife raised like a son, its flower-clusters bending low enough to touch with the hand, and a pool with steps of emerald where the swans have no wish to leave for Manasa. He tells the cloud to shrink to the size of a young elephant and look in at the window with a gentle flash of lightning.

07The waiting wife and the message

She will be found, he says, thin with waiting, lying on one side on the floor, counting the days left of the curse with flowers laid on the threshold, or trying to sing a song with his name in it and forgetting the tune. Only near the end does the message come, and it is simple: I am alive, I think of you in every shape the creepers and the deer and the moon take, the year will end when Vishnu wakes from his sleep, and we will be together. He gives the cloud a secret token only she would know. The poem closes with a blessing: may you never be parted, even for a moment, from your lightning.

08Commentaries and the messenger poems

Vallabhadeva’s Kashmiri commentary of the tenth century is the oldest, and Mallinatha’s Sanjivani of the fourteenth or fifteenth century is the standard way in; the number of verses differs between their texts, and M. R. Kale’s edition counts 66 in Purvamegha and 54 in Uttaramegha. The poem began a whole kind of Sanskrit verse, the duta-kavya or sandesha-kavya, the messenger poem. Vedanta Desika sent a swan with a message from Shri Rama to Sita in the Hamsa Sandesha; Dhoyi sent the wind in the Pavanaduta. The Jain acharya Jinasena wove a line of the Meghaduta into every stanza of his Parshvabhyudaya, telling the life of the Tirthankara Parshvanatha.

09Read today

Horace Hayman Wilson’s English verse translation of 1813 took the cloud abroad, and Schiller has Mary Stuart, captive in England, ask the clouds to carry her greetings to France. In India the poem is read in every Sanskrit syllabus, and it has been rendered into Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and many other languages, often by poets of standing. Each year Ujjain holds the Akhil Bharatiya Kalidas Samaroh, a week of Sanskrit drama, music and recitation in the poet’s name, and the Meghaduta is recited there again. Mohan Rakesh’s Hindi play Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1958) takes its title from the poem’s second verse.

What it contains

1. 1
   Purvamegha पूर्वमेघः

   The earlier cloud: the yaksha’s exile at Ramagiri, the first sight of the monsoon cloud on the first day of Ashadha, his welcome to it, and the road north. It runs from Amrakuta and the Narmada through Vidisha, Ujjayini and Mahakala, Kurukshetra and Kanakhala to the Krauncha pass, Kailasa and Manasa. Kale’s edition gives it 66 verses.

2. 2
   Uttaramegha उत्तरमेघः

   The later cloud: Alaka, city of the yakshas, the yaksha’s house with its rainbow gateway, mandara tree and emerald-stepped pool, his wife wasting with longing, and at last the message itself and the blessing on the cloud. Kale’s edition gives it 54 verses.

Famous verses

कश्चित्कान्ताविरहगुरुणा स्वाधिकारात्प्रमत्तः शापेनास्तंगमितमहिमा वर्षभोग्येण भर्तुः । यक्षश्चक्रे जनकतनयास्नानपुण्योदकेषु स्निग्धच्छायातरुषु वसतिं रामगिर्याश्रमेषु ॥

A certain yaksha, careless in his duty, was stripped of his glory by his master’s curse, to be borne for a year in heavy separation from his beloved. He made his dwelling in the hermitages of Ramagiri, whose waters were made holy by the bathing of Janaka’s daughter and whose trees cast deep shade.Meghaduta, Purvamegha 1

तस्मिन्नद्रौ कतिचिदबलाविप्रयुक्तः स कामी नीत्वा मासान्कनकवलयभ्रंशरिक्तप्रकोष्ठः । आषाढस्य प्रथमदिवसे मेघमाश्लिष्टसानुं वप्रक्रीडापरिणतगजप्रेक्षणीयं ददर्श ॥

On that mountain the lover, parted from his wife, passed some months, his forearm bare where the golden bracelet had slipped away. On the first day of Ashadha he saw a cloud clinging to the peak, lovely as an elephant stooping to butt a bank in play.Meghaduta, Purvamegha 2

अप्यन्यस्मिञ्जलधर महाकालमासाद्य काले स्थातव्यं ते नयनविषयं यावदत्येति भानुः । कुर्वन्सन्ध्यावलिपटहतां शूलिनः श्लाघनीयाम् आमन्द्राणां फलमविकलं लप्स्यसे गर्जितानाम् ॥

O cloud, even if you reach Mahakala at some other hour, wait there until the sun has passed from sight. Serving worthily as the drum at the evening offering of the Trident-bearer, you will win the full reward of your deep thunder.Meghaduta, Purvamegha 37