The wives of people who are away from home are in despair sprinkling, with the drops of water from their lotus-like eyes, their bimba-like lower lips resembling beautiful leaves, and leaving off ornaments and cosmetics. | (Canto II) |
The first few lines of the fourth canto where the disuse of cosmetics and ornaments during the cold season is mentioned reminds us of similar lines in the Neṭunalvaaṭai.10 Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, however, is the work of the fullblown poet. Taking an idea from Vālmīki, Kālidāsa makes the cloud the messenger of a Yakṣa forcefully separated from his wife, to carry to his beloved some words of solace. Kālidāsa himself felt that objection might be taken to the incongruity of making an inanimate object the medium of his message, for with the fifth verse he seems to arm himself against would-be critics. "What possible connection," he says, "can there be between a cloud which consists of smoke, light, water, and wind, and messages which can be carried by creatures endowed with sound organs of sense? Unmindful of this, through eagerness, the Yakṣa requested the cloud; for love-smitten persons are naturally incapable of distinguishing between animate and inanimate things". There are apostrophes to the cloud, the moon, the ocean, the sun, the wind, and the bee in Cankam literature, but they are brief and to the point such as lovers might exclaim in agony. Heroines in their grief cry: Ocean . . . thy wail is heard even at dead of night. Who is the cause of thy grief? (By whom hast thou been abandoned?). | (Kur; 163) | Sun, thou that sharest not thy rays with another . . . if thou wilt search for him and deliver him into my hands, this fire that burns, with my life as wick and my heart as lamp, will be extinguished . . . |
(To the setting Sun) Immaculate Fire! till thou dost rise again over the brim of the ocean, lend me a few rays that with their light I may search for him. | (Kali; 142) |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10Ritusamhara edited by R. S. Pandit, Bombay, 1942; edited by M. A. Male, Bombay, 1916. |