01A raft on the ocean
Kalidasa opens with a bow to Parvati and Parameshvara, joined as word and meaning are joined, and then at once confesses his smallness. Where is the race born of the Sun, he asks, and where my little mind? He is a fool trying to cross the ocean on a raft, a dwarf stretching up for fruit only a tall man can reach. Then he lists what made the Raghus great: they studied in childhood, enjoyed the world in youth, lived as munis in old age and left the body by yoga. The whole poem tests the line against that standard, king by king.
02Dilipa and Nandini
Dilipa has no son. At Vasishtha’s ashram he learns why: years before, hurrying home from Indra’s court, he passed Kamadhenu without honouring her, and her curse stands between him and an heir. The cure is service. For twenty-one days the king follows Kamadhenu’s daughter Nandini through the forest like her shadow, standing when she stands, resting when she rests, while Queen Sudakshina worships her at dusk. On the last day a lion springs on the cow. Dilipa’s arm freezes as he reaches for an arrow, and he offers his own body instead. The lion was Nandini’s test. She grants the boon, and Raghu is born.
03Raghu, who gave everything away
Guarding the horse of his father’s hundredth ashvamedha, the young Raghu fights Indra himself to a standstill and wins the merit of the yajna for Dilipa. As king he rides out on a digvijaya that crosses the whole land, from the Vangas in their boats to the Pandyas and Kerala, then west to the Parasikas and north to the Hunas on the banks of the Vankshu. He returns, performs the Vishvajit yajna and gives away all he owns. So when the young scholar Kautsa comes to ask fourteen crores of gold for his guru, the emperor receives him with clay vessels. Raghu will not send a brahmachari away empty. He prepares to march on Kubera, and in the night Kubera fills the treasury with a rain of gold.
04Indumati and the moving lamp
Raghu’s son Aja rides south to the svayamvara of Indumati, sister of the king of Vidarbha. On the way he frees a gandharva cursed to live as a wild elephant and receives from him the sammohana astra, the weapon that puts an army to sleep. In the sixth sarga the princess is carried past the seated kings while her attendant Sunanda describes each one: the lord of Magadha, the king of Anga, the ruler of Avanti near Mahakala’s shrine, the Pandya, the king of Kalinga. Kalidasa compares her to a lamp-flame moving through a dark street at night. Each king she passes falls into shadow like a mansion the lamp has left behind. Readers loved the image so much that they called the poet Dipashikha Kalidasa.
05Aja’s lament
Indumati chooses Aja. On the road home the rejected kings attack him, and he puts them to sleep with the gandharva’s weapon and leaves a message on their banners that he has taken their glory and spared their lives. Raghu crowns his son and withdraws to the forest, and dies there in yoga. Years later, in a palace garden, a garland falls from the vina of Narada passing overhead, and Indumati dies at its touch. The eighth sarga is Aja’s lament over her body, and Sanskrit readers have wept over it for fifteen hundred years. Vasishtha sends word that she was an apsara under a curse, now released. Aja lives on only until Dasharatha is grown, then gives up his body where the Sarayu meets the Ganga.
06Dasharatha and Shri Rama
The ninth sarga opens in spring with Dasharatha out hunting, and closes with the arrow he looses at a sound in the dusk, which kills the only son of a blind ascetic couple filling a pot at the river. The father’s curse, that Dasharatha too will die grieving for a son, hangs over the rest of the reign. In the tenth sarga the devas go to Bhagwan Vishnu on the ocean of milk, and he promises to be born as Dasharatha’s son. Then Kalidasa tells the Ramayana in five sargas: Vishvamitra’s yajna, the bow at Mithila, the exile, Sita taken, the bridge and Ravana’s fall. He moves quickly. Valmiki had told it once, and Kalidasa says so.
07The view from the Pushpaka
The thirteenth sarga is the flight home. Rama sits beside Sita in the Pushpaka viman and points out the country below as they cross it: the ocean and the setu, the shore where he waited, Panchavati, the Godavari, the ashram of Agastya, the place where her anklet was found, the hills where the rains made his separation unbearable. Kalidasa turns a geography into a love poem. The fourteenth and fifteenth sargas bring the coronation, Sita’s sorrowful parting to Valmiki’s ashram, the birth of Lava and Kusha, their singing of the Ramayana, Sita’s return to the earth, and Rama’s ascent to his own dham with the people of Ayodhya following him.
08Kusha, Atithi and the last king
Kusha rules from Kushavati until, one night, a woman appears in his chamber: the presiding goddess of Ayodhya, describing a city left empty, its palaces overgrown and jackals in its streets. He brings the court back, and the sixteenth sarga ends with a naga prince returning Kusha’s lost bracelet from the Sarayu along with his sister Kumudvati as bride. Their son Atithi is Kalidasa’s picture of the perfect king. Then the line runs quickly through some twenty kings to Agnivarna, who hands government to his ministers and spends his days with women and wine. He dies of a wasting sickness, and the poem ends with his pregnant queen on the throne as regent.
09Taught for fifteen centuries
For a student of Sanskrit the first sargas of the Raghuvamsha have long been the first real poetry read after grammar, usually with Mallinatha’s Sanjivani, which explains every word. Vallabhadeva’s Kashmiri commentary is older and keeps readings of its own. The opening verse is recited at the start of countless Sanskrit classes and functions. Counted first of the five mahakavyas, the poem gave later kavya its model: the city, the seasons, the svayamvara, the battle, the lament. Indian critics praise Kalidasa above all for upama, the simile, and no work shows it better than this one.
What it contains
- 1Sarga 1
The invocation, the poet’s humility and the virtues of the Raghus. Dilipa and Sudakshina go to Vasishtha’s ashram to ask for a son, and learn of the curse of Kamadhenu.
- 2Sarga 2
Twenty-one days of service to Nandini in the forest. Dilipa offers his body to the lion, the test is passed and the boon of a son is granted.
- 3Sarga 3
Raghu’s birth and education. Guarding the sacrificial horse, he fights Indra and wins for his father the fruit of the hundredth ashvamedha; Dilipa crowns him and retires.
- 4Sarga 4
Raghu’s digvijaya through the east, south, west and north, ending with the Vishvajit yajna. It is the longest geographical survey in Kalidasa, and historians mine it for the peoples of his India.
- 5Sarga 5
Kautsa asks for his guru-dakshina and Kubera’s gold fills the treasury. Aja is born, sets out for Vidarbha, and frees the cursed gandharva Priyamvada, who gives him the sammohana astra.
- 6Sarga 6
Indumati’s svayamvara. Sunanda describes the suitors one by one, and Indumati passes each like a moving lamp until she garlands Aja.
- 7Sarga 7
The wedding procession and the women of the city at their windows. The rejected kings attack, and Aja defeats them with the gandharva weapon.
- 8Sarga 8
Raghu’s end in yoga, Indumati’s death from Narada’s garland and Aja’s lament. Vasishtha’s consolation, and Aja’s own death at the meeting of the Sarayu and the Ganga.
- 9Sarga 9
Dasharatha’s just reign and the spring hunt. The arrow shot at a sound kills the son of a blind ascetic, and the father’s curse follows the king.
- 10Sarga 10
The devas’ hymn to Bhagwan Vishnu on the ocean of milk. The putreshti, the payasa shared among the queens and the birth of Rama and his brothers.
- 11Sarga 11
Rama and Lakshmana with Vishvamitra: Tataka slain, Ahalya freed, the bow broken at Mithila, the four weddings, and Parashurama met on the road home.
- 12Sarga 12
The exile told swiftly: Shurpanakha, Marica, Sita’s abduction, the alliance with Sugriva, the bridge and the war ending in Ravana’s death.
- 13Sarga 13
The flight home in the Pushpaka viman, Rama naming the places of the exile to Sita. Bharata comes out to meet them.
- 14Sarga 14
The coronation and the rule of Ram Rajya. Sita is left at Valmiki’s ashram and sends Rama a message of grief without reproach.
- 15Sarga 15
Shatrughna slays Lavana and founds Mathura. Lava and Kusha sing the Ramayana at the ashvamedha, Sita returns to the earth and Rama ascends to his dham.
- 16Sarga 16
The goddess of deserted Ayodhya appears to Kusha, who brings the court back from Kushavati. The summer festival on the Sarayu, the lost bracelet and the marriage to the naga princess Kumudvati.
- 17Sarga 17
Kusha falls fighting a demon, and Kumudvati follows him. Atithi is crowned, and his reign is drawn as the model of rajadharma.
- 18Sarga 18
A rapid roll of the kings after Atithi, about twenty of them, each in a verse or two. The pace itself tells of a line losing its greatness.
- 19Sarga 19
Agnivarna leaves rule to his ministers and lives for pleasure. He dies of a wasting disease, and his pregnant queen is placed on the throne; the poem ends there.
Famous verses
वागर्थाविव संपृक्तौ वागर्थप्रतिपत्तये । जगतः पितरौ वन्दे पार्वतीपरमेश्वरौ ॥
For the right grasp of word and meaning, I bow to Parvati and Parameshvara, the parents of the world, joined as word and meaning are joined.Raghuvamsha 1.1
मन्दः कवियशःप्रार्थी गमिष्याम्युपहास्यताम् । प्रांशुलभ्ये फले लोभादुद्बाहुरिव वामनः ॥
Dull as I am, yet longing for a poet’s fame, I shall be laughed at, like a dwarf who greedily stretches up his arms for fruit that only a tall man can reach.Raghuvamsha 1.3
शैशवेऽभ्यस्तविद्यानां यौवने विषयैषिणाम् । वार्धके मुनिवृत्तीनां योगेनान्ते तनुत्यजाम् ॥
Of those who mastered learning in childhood, sought the world’s joys in youth, lived as munis in old age, and at the end left the body through yoga.Raghuvamsha 1.8
संचारिणी दीपशिखेव रात्रौ यं यं व्यतीयाय पतिंवरा सा । नरेन्द्रमार्गाट्ट इव प्रपेदे विवर्णभावं स स भूमिपालः ॥
Like a lamp-flame moving through the night, the princess choosing her husband passed king after king; and each king she passed went dark, like a mansion on the royal road when the lamp has gone by.Raghuvamsha 6.67
Counted first among the five Sanskrit mahakavyas; it has drawn many commentaries, Mallinatha’s the most used.