Metrical Translations from the Mrcchakatika,
or, The Clay Cart (A Sanskrit Drama)

Steven Goodwin

Brown University

(1)

The blue neck of the Blue-necked God,
Storm-cloud-indigo, keep you safe!
Whereon slender as streaked lightning
Gleams the Splendid One’s vinelike arm.

(2)

Although the darkness of the evening conceals
your sweet form
(Lithe lightning dormant in the seams of the
purple storm cloud!)
O quailing beauty, you forget how your
fragrant wreath and
Clear-tinkling anklets as you merge with the
night you reveal.

(3)

Clouds globed and clinging to the summits of
rocky grey hills
Groan deep as women in thei heats for their
traveling lovers.
Up fly the peacocks in a passion aroused by
thunder--
Dense air seems suddenly astir with the flap
of jeweled fans.

(4)

Mudfaced, pummeled with jets of rain sluicing the air,
frogs drink from cool turbid pools.
Peacocks liberate cries from passionated throats.
Neep-trees become flaming lamps.
Like men bankrupt in honor imitating saints
clouds mask the pure radiant moon.
Lightning flits through the sky capricious as a girl
whom lowly birth leads astray.

These four poems all occur in a Sanskrit play called Mrcchakatika or The Clay Cart (named after a child’s toy that has a critical role in the plot). Each is in a quantitative meter which I have rendered isosyllabically with “stress” accents replacing long syllables in the original. Quantitative meter has often been tried and abandoned in English. The reasons I have tried using it are: 1) it gives some idea of the lapidary quality of the Sanskrit original; 2) English is, after all, a rich language rhythmically, and so should have some forms in the space between regular-foot meter and free verse; and 3) isosyllabism with fixed rhythmic patters is suitable for short cameo verses such as these. Ten vasantatilaka stanzas in a row would be monotonous, but when each is individually set, they have that memorable quality that modern poetry has all but lost.

(1)

This meter is called anustubh (“praising”) and is the oldest represented here; it goes back to the Vedic period (1500 – 1000 B.C.). It is a thirty-two-syllable form divided into four padas of eight syllables each. The basic form (^o = anceps) is

^{o o o o ˘ ¯ ¯ o | o o o o ˘ ¯ ˘ o}

The Blue-necked god is Siva (blue because he swallowed a deadly poison which appeared at the churning of the cosmic ocean, and thus saved the world from destruction). The Splendid One is Gauri or Parvati or simply Devi (she has many other names as well), the great Goddess of India and Siva’s consort. They are frequently described engaging in love-sport as the prototypical mithuna (sexual couple) of the universe. The verse occurs s an invocation at the opening of the play, both as an act of auspiciousness and as an indication of the erotic or romantic subject of the drama.

(2)

This meter is vasantatilaka (“Forehead-ornament of spring”), four padas of fourteen syllables each in the pattern

^{¯ ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ ¯}

The verse is addressed to a courtesan who is running away from the grotesque villain of the play-addressed by a “parasite” companion of the villain who is sympathetic to the woman. He is trying to advise her to remove the ornaments which allow her to be treated in the darkness. The rainy season imagery in all these verses is in keeping with the storm setting of Act V (there are ten acts in all). The rainy season has special erotic connotations in Sanskrit poetry, since by convention is it the time when men traveling on business return home. In the play it is the occasion of the first union of hero and heroine.

(3)

Also vasantatilaka. I take “traveling” as two syllables and “jeweled” as one. Peacocks begin to dance and cry out at the first sight of a cloud at the start of the rainy season.

(4)

This is sardulavikridita (“sportive gait of the tiger), four padas of nineteen syllables each in the pattern

^{¯ ¯ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ˘ ¯ ¯ ¯ ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ ¯}

Neep-trees (Nauclea Cadamba) flower with bright orange blossoms in the rainy season. The idea in the fifth line (“Like men bankrupt”) is that the clouds are to the moon what certain disreputable men are to the life of sanctity, since they, like true ascetics, take to a life of wandering beggary and therefore give the religious mendicant a bad name.