THE MEGHA DUTA OR CLOUD MESSENGER: A Poem IN THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE, BY KÁLIDÁSA. TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE, WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, BY H. H. WILSON, M.A. F.R.S. &c. &c. BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: PRINTED BY RICHARD WATTS, PRINTER TO THE EAST-INDIA COLLEGE. M DCCCXLIII. PREFACE. THE advantages that have been found to result from the publication of the First Book of the Hitopadesa, and the Selections from the Mahábhárata, as Class-books for the East-India College, have induced Professor Johnson to prepare an edition of the Megha Dúta, or Cloud Messenger, for the same purpose, on a similar plan. The Text of the Megha Dúta was printed in the year 1813, at Calcutta. It has the faults of most of the early-printed Sanskrit books; the words are altogether unseparated, and the Text is not always accurate. In the present edition, these defects have been remedied; the faulty passages have been corrected; and the words have been detached wherever their separation was consistent with an observance of the laws that regulate euphonic combination. A Glossary, intended to serve at once as a Lexicon and a Grammar to the Text, compiled by Professor Johnson, is added to the publication. As the style of the poem is more difficult than that of the preceding Class-books, Professor Johnson has considered it desirable to reprint the Translation in English Verse, which was the principal object of the original publication in Calcutta; for, as considerable freedom, or, it may sometimes be thought, license, was taken in that Translation, its use will not, it is to be expected, preclude the necessity of mental effort on the part of the Student, in order to develope the sense of the Sanskrit Text, whilst it may not unallowably lighten his labour, by furnishing him with a general notion of its purport. I have acquiesced in the republication, in the hope that it will afford no greater help than it is designed to render; for experience has satisfied me that the aid of Translations, in the study of any language, except for a short time, perhaps, in the earliest stage of it, is exceedingly mischievous and deceptive. It induces carelessness, encourages indolence, exercises no faculty but the memory, and employs that faculty with so little energy of application, that the impressions received are faint and superficial, and fade and are effaced almost as soon as they are made. The progress effected with such assistance is a mere waste of even the scant expenditure of time and trouble with which it has been attained; for it is unreal-a mere mockeryas the learner will soon discover, to his surprise, and, if he feel rightly, to his mortification, when he tries his strength upon passages unprovided with such illusory aid, and finds that he is as little. able to understand them as if his studies were yet to be begun. It has been with some reluctance, therefore, that I have assented to the proposition; and have done so only in the trust that the verse translation will by no means obviate the necessity of independent exertion. The Translation of the Megha Dúta was the first attempt made by me to interest European readers in the results of my Sanskrit studies. It has the imperfections of a juvenile work; and the Translator has no doubt sometimes not only departed from his original further than was necessary, but further than was justifiable; and has occasionally mistaken its meaning. Some of the mistakes I have corrected; and in some instances have altered the arrangement of the lines, so as to adhere more nearly to the order of the original. I have not cared, however, to render the version much closer or more faithful; as even had I been inclined to take the trouble, the circumstance of the book becoming a class-book would have deterred me from the attempt: but it is very possible, that whatever poetical fidelity the version may possess, might have been injured by verbal approximation, and that the attempt to give a more literal likeness of the poem of Kálidása would only have impaired the similitude of its expression. I have gone over the Notes with more attention, and have continued the information they convey to the present time. I have added some, and omitted some, especially those which were designed to place the parallel passages of European poets in contiguity with the language and sentiments of the Indian bard. Such analogies will readily suggest themselves to well-educated minds; and it cannot be necessary to endeavour to prove to them, that Imagination, Feeling, and Taste, are not exclusively the products of the Western Hemisphere. The Megha Dúta, or Cloud Messenger, is recommended to a Student of Sanskrit by its style and by its subject. The style is somewhat difficult, but the difficulty arises from no faults of conception or construction. There must, of course, be some unfamiliar imagery, some figures of purely local associations, in every foreign-in every Oriental composition; but, with a few possible exceptions, the Megha Dúta contains no ideas that may not be readily apprehended by European intellect. It has no miserable conceits, no enigmatical puzzles, which bewilder a poetic reader, and overwhelm a prosaïc one with despair; and which, when the riddle is solved, offer no compensation for the labour of solution. The language, although remarkable for the richness of its compounds, is not disfigured by their extravagance: the order of the sentences is in general the natural one, with no more violent inversion than is indispensable for the convenience of the rhythm. The metre combines melody and dignity in a very extraordinary manner; and will bear an advantageous comparison, in both respects, with the best specimens of uniform verse in the poetry of any language, living or dead. |