NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME EDITED IN ENGLAND, WITH LITERAL ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF ALL THE METRICAL PASSAGES, SCHEMES OF THE METRES, AND

NOTES, CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY,

BY

MONIER WILLIAMS, M.A.,

PROFESSOR AT THE EAST-INDIA college, HAILEYBURY; MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY; FORMERLY BODEN SANSKRIT SCHOLAR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

ΤΟ

HORACE HAYMAN WILSON, Esq., M.A., F.R.S.,

BODEN PROFESSOR OF BANSKRIT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

ETC., ETC., ETC.,

WHOSE GENIUS, LEARNING, AND EXAMPLE, HAVE GUIDED AND PROMOTED

PREFACE.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to furnish the Oriental Student with a correct edition of the most celebrated drama of India's greatest dramatist. Strange to say, no edition of the text of the "Sakuntalá" has ever before been published in England. Yet no composition of Kálidása displays more the richness of his poetical genius, the exuberance of his imagination, the warmth and play of his fancy, his profound knowledge of the human heart, his delicate appreciation of its most refined and tender emotions, his familiarity with the workings and counterworkings of its conflicting feelings,-in short, more entitles him to rank as "the Shakespeare of India." Nor, in comparing him with our own great Dramatist, should we fail to remark the command of language exhibited by the present play. In this respect the singular flexibility and copiousness of Sanskrit may have even given him the advantage. On the Continent, the "Sakuntalá" has been studied and admired, not only by oriental scholars who possess a correct edition of the text, but by the general public, who enjoy the advantage of good translations; insomuch that Goethe, Schlegel, and Humboldt have all expressed their admiration of this masterpiece of the Hindú Poet. Goethe's four beautiful lines, which appeared in 1792, are

"Willst du die Blüthe des frühen, die Früchte des späteren Jahres,
Willst du was reizt und entzückt, willst du was sättigt und nährt,
Willst du den Himmel, die Erde, mit einem Namen begreifen:
Nenn' ich Sakontalá, Dich, und so ist Alles gesagt."*

Thus translated for me by Professor Eastwick:

"Wouldst thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits of its decline,
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed,
Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine?
I name thee, O Sakuntalá! and all at once is said."

Augustus William von Schlegel, in his first Lecture on Dramatic Literature