Meghadūta


Meghadūta is a lyric poem written by Kālidāsa, considered to be one of the greatest classical Sanskrit poets. It describes how a yakṣa, who had been banished by his master to a remote region for a year, asked a cloud to take a message of love to his wife. The poem became well-known in Bengali literature and inspired other poets to write similar poems on similar themes. Korada Ramachandra Sastri wrote Ghanavrttam, a sequel to Meghaduta.

About the poem

A poem of 120 stanzas, it is one of Kālidāsa's most famous works. The work is divided into two parts, Purva-megha and Uttara-megha. It recounts how a yakṣa, a subject of King Kubera, after being exiled for a year to Central India for neglecting his duties, convinces a passing cloud to take a message to his wife at Alaka on Mount Kailāsa in the Himālaya mountains. The accomplishes this by describing the many beautiful sights the cloud will see on its northward course to the city of Alakā, where his wife awaits his return.
In Sanskrit literature, the poetic conceit used in the Meghaduta spawned the genre of Sandesa Kavya or messenger poems, most of which are modeled on the Meghaduta. Examples include the Hamsa-sandesha, in which Rama asks a Hansa Bird to carry a message to Sita, describing sights along the journey.
In 1813, the poem was first translated into English by Horace Hayman Wilson. Since then, it has been translated several times into various languages. As with the other major works of Sanskrit literature, the most famous traditional commentary on the poem is by Mallinātha.
The great scholar of Sanskrit literature, Arthur Berriedale Keith, wrote of this poem: "It is difficult to praise too highly either the brilliance of the description of the cloud’s progress or the pathos of the picture of the wife sorrowful and alone. Indian criticism has ranked it highest among Kalidasa’s poems for brevity of expression, richness of content, and power to elicit sentiment, and the praise is not undeserved."
It is believed the picturesque Ramtek near Nagpur inspired Kalidasa to write the poem.

Visualisation of Meghadūta

Meghadūta describes several scenes and has inspired many artists, including the drawings by Nana Joshi. An excerpt is quoted in Canadian director Deepa Mehta's film, Water. Simon Armitage appears to reference Meghaduta in his poem "Lockdown".
The composer Fred Momotenko wrote the composition 'Cloud-Messenger', music for a multimedia performance with recorder, dance, projected animation and electronics in surround audio. The world premiere was at Festival November Music, with Hans Tuerlings, Jasper Kuipers, Jorge Isaac and dancers Gilles Viandier and Daniela Lehmann.
The English composer Gustav Holst set the Meghadūta to music in his 1910 choral work, The Cloud Messenger, Opus 30.
The Indian filmmaker Debaki Bose adapted the play into a 1945 film titled Meghdoot.
In 2019, Priti Pandguangan re-created Meghadūtam as an electronic literature piece for the Electronic Literature Organization Collection 4.

Editions

  • Introduction, text with English verse translation, and assorted footnotes.
  • Sanskrit text, with introduction and some critical notes in Latin.
  • With Sanskrit text, English translation and more extensive notes separately.
  • . A prose translation.
  • German translation.
  • Hayman's translation, with notes and translation accompanying the Sanskrit text.
  • . Text with Mallinātha's commentary Sanjīvanī. Separate sections for English translation, explanation of Sanskrit phrases, and other notes.

  • Translations

The Meghadūta has been translated many times in many Indian languages.
  • The Bengali poet Buddhadeva Bose translated Meghadūta into Bengali in 1957.
  • Dr. Jogindranath Majumdar translated Meghaduta in Bengali keeping its original 'Mandakranta Metre' for the first time published in 1969.
  • Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, a notable literary critic, translated Meghadūtam to Hindi prose in 1924.
  • Three different translations into rhyming Hindi poetry were done by Shyamala Kant Varma, Bijendra Kumar Sharma, and Navin Kumar 'Nischal'.
  • Acharya Dharmanand Jamloki Translated Meghduta in Garhwali and was well known for his work.
  • Moti BA translated Meghduta in Bhojpuri Language.
  • Many Nepali poets such as Jiwanath Updhyaya Adhikari, Shiva Kumar Pradhan, Biswa Raj Adhikari have translated Meghduta in Nepali language
  • Mukhathala G.Arjunan translated Meghaduta in Malayalam keeping its original 'Mandakranta Metre'
  • Uthaya Sankar SB retold Meghaduta in Bahasa Malaysia prose form in ''Thirukkural dan Megha Duta''