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KalidasaThe Recognition of Sakuntala
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 400A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Act IChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: The guide discusses themes and portrayals common in classical Sanskrit drama that may be offensive to contemporary audiences, such as gendered descriptions and ableist humor.
The actor-manager recites a benediction before the start of the performance, blessing the play, the performers, and the audience. He asks Lord Siva to protect everyone through his “eight palpable embodiments” (5), among them the air, the earth, the ritual fire, and the priest who chants mantras. He calls out to an actress to step onto the stage and sing a melodious song to please the discerning audience. The actress sings a song praising nature.
The actor-manager says they have a wonderful entertainment for the discerning audience, but he has forgotten its name. The actress reminds him it is the romance, The Recognition of Sakuntala, which he had announced earlier. Thanking her for the reminder, the manager says he can see King Dusyanta rush into a forest, seeking deer for his hunt.
Act I Summary
Armed with a bow and arrow, Dusyanta enters the stage on a chariot. Dusyanta tells his charioteer that though the deer seemed so close, the creature has disappeared from his view. The charioteer tells Dusyanta to take heart. The deer spotted, Dusyanta takes aim, but a voice offstage calls out to him to stop.
The charioteer tells Dusyanta that hermitage-dwelling ascetics have planted themselves between the king and the buck. Dusyanta asks the charioteer to rein in the horses. Vaikhasana, an ascetic, enters with two young pupils. The ascetic tells Dusyanta not to shoot the deer, since the creature belongs to the hermitage. He tells Dusyanta a king should take arms to protect, not to kill. Dusyanta replies that his bow is withdrawn for good. Vaikhasana blesses Dusyanta, and gives him the boon that he will have a son “destined to rule the world” (8). Vaikhasana suggests that Dusyanta visit the nearby hermitage (ashram) of the great Rishi (sage) Kanva to rest. Though the sage is not at the hermitage, his daughter Sakuntala will welcome Dusyanta. Dusyanta agrees.
On the way to Kanva’s hermitage, Dusyanta is struck by the beauty around him, where fearless deer move from “dappled shadow / to dappled shadow” (9). Dusyanta dismounts from the chariot a little before the riverside grove in which the hermitage is located. He plans to approach the grove with modesty. The vein in his right arm begins to throb, an omen that an important woman is about to enter his life. Dusyanta spots three young women carrying water in pitchers. He awaits them in the shadows, noting that their unadorned beauty is more powerful than the practiced beauty of courtesans. Sakuntala enters, accompanied by her friends Priyamvada and Anasuya.
Sakuntala waters the trees and tells her friends she loves the plants of the grove as if they were her sisters. Dusyanta notes that Sakuntala’s coarse garments, fashioned from tree bark, enhance her beauty even more than gold could. Priyamvada and Anasuya banter with Sakuntala. Priyamvada says Sakuntala is partial to the jasmine vine because the vine hugs a suitable tree sinuously. Sakuntala too wants to find “a suitable husband” (12) to hug. In an aside, Dusyanta wonders if he could be the lucky one to wed Sakuntala. He wishes Sakuntala’s mother is from the warrior caste, like him, which would make her a part-kshatriya, a suitable match. However, even if Sakuntala is a Brahmin, from the priestly caste, it should not matter to Dusyanta because he has fallen in love with her.
Just then, a bee flies out of a jasmine flower and begins to vex Sakuntala. She cries for help. Dusyanta steps out, threatening the “oaf” bothering the hermitage girls. The women grow agitated at Dusyanta’s presence and explain it is merely a bee. They bid Dusyanta to rest under the shade of a tree. In an aside, Sakuntala remarks that the very sight of Dusyanta has awoken a passion in her “so at odds with the religious life” (14). She sits a little away from Dusyanta, while her friends chat with the king. Anasuya asks Dusyanta if he is a king, since his demeanor suggests royal lineage. Dusyanta hides his true identity and claims he is the Minister for Religious Welfare in the Puru (his own) kingdom. Dusyanta asks Anasuya and Priyamvada about Sakuntala’s origins. Since sage Kanva is known to be a celibate, how could he have fathered Sakuntala?
The friends tell Dusyanta that Sakuntala is Kanva’s adopted daughter. Her biological father was a rishi from the warrior caste. When the royal sage’s spiritual meditation grew so powerful it could grant him powers, the gods sent the nymph Maneka to disturb him. Maneka seduced the royal sage and gave birth to Sakuntala. Sakuntala was abandoned by both her birth parents and found by Rishi Kanva. Dusyanta is pleased with the story, since Sakuntala’s royal lineage means she is a fit match for him. He is even more happy to learn Kanva intends for Sakuntala to get married, rather than lead a hermit’s life. Sakuntala pretends to be annoyed and makes as if to go away. Priyamvada stops Sakuntala, saying Sakuntala owes her the watering of two trees. Dusyanta offers to pay off Sakuntala’s debt with his signet ring. The young women note the ring bears the royal sign, but Dusyanta claims this was a gift from the king. The friends forgive the “debt.” Dusyanta wonders in an aside why the shy Sakuntala refuses to look at him.
A voice calls out off-stage that king Dusyanta’s violent retinue is mowing down their grove. An elephant is on the rampage. The women get alarmed and leave. Dusyanta notes that his people have come to the grove searching for him. He must ask their elephants and chariots to stop. He exits, saying in an aside that he does not want to return to the city because his heart now belongs to Sakuntala.
Prologue-Act I Analysis
The play is preceded by a prastavana, or prologue, a feature of classical Sanskrit theater. In the Prologue, the actor-manager seeks blessings for the performance, introduces the type of play, provides clues about the dominant moods of the plot, and also sets up a context or segue into the play’s action. Accordingly, in the Prologue to The Recognition of Sakuntala, the actor-manager begins by offering a prayer to God Siva and invoking his blessings. He asks an actress to join him onstage, and tells her they are performing The Recognition of Sakuntala, “a romance with a new plot” (5). Thus, he establishes the play as a romance, and then entreats the actress to sing a pastoral melody.
The pastoral song is a clue to the play’s natural forest settings, as well as its theme of Nature’s Purity Versus Urban Corruption. When the manager wonders what further entertainment to provide the audience, the actress reminds him that they have already decided on The Recognition of Sakuntala. The manager thanks the actress for rejogging his memory, with this playful exchange serving to introduce the play’s key theme of Memory and Forgetting. Moreover, the actor-manager and actress banter, setting the stage for a comedic resolution. The Prologue ends with a segue: The actor-manager announces that he can spot Dusyanta racing onto the stage in his chariot.
Act I establishes the key moods of the play: the sringara or the erotic and romantic, and the vira or the heroic. While Dusyanta’s hunt ushers in the heroic mood, his reaction to Sakuntala underscores the romantic. Dusyanta and Sakuntala are presented as archetypes of masculinity and femininity, with the king’s charioteer describing him as an “ageless lord” (7) and “Siva himself” (7), while Dusyanta describes Sakuntala as a “supreme natural beauty” (11).
While the moods of romance and heroism coexist in the play, so do the twin objectives of Duty (Dharma) Versus Love (Kama). Though Dusyanta’s dharma as a king is public, his private kama intervenes. In love with Sakuntala, he briefly forgets the public life and stalls the hunt. Act I ends with Dusyanta saying he is loath to return to the city, which foreshadows that Dusyanta will have to pay the price for his willful forgetfulness of duty. Both Sakuntala and Dusyanta are torn between duty and love, with Dusyanta feeling the pull of love and Sakuntala feeling attracted to Dusyanta, yet shyly aware of her own modesty and reputation.
The language is rich in similes and metaphor, filled with descriptions of nature and beauty. For instance, when Dusyanta sees Sakuntala water the trees as part of her work in the ashram, he notes that making such a beauty labor is like trying “to shape mahogany or metal / with the rim of a dark lotus petal” (11). The poetic language evokes the enchanted landscape against which the plot unfolds. As in the passage just quoted, significant portions of the dialogue are in the form of rhyming songs. During a performance, the actor would sing out these lines.
The juxtaposition of song and dialogue is a key feature of Sanskrit theatre in general and Kalidasa’s work in particular. Along with song, the performance also uses stock gestures and mudras (signs). The mudras help enhance the audience’s immersion in the play. As an example, when Sakuntala meets Dusyanta, the stage direction reads that she “displays all the embarrassment of erotic attraction” (15). These signs, mimed by the actress, would be familiar to the audience and would heighten their grasp of the play’s subtleties and subtext. It should also be noted that though the landscape involves the presence of chariots, trees, rivers, and such, the use of props would be minimal. These settings and actions would be often indicated through dialogue, mudra, and miming, such as the action of Sakuntala miming the watering of trees.
Act I also introduces an exploration of the status and treatment of women, and the intersection between gender and caste. In many aspects, Sakuntala has agency, as she is shown to lead a relatively free life within the borders of the hermitage. She and her friends converse with Dusyanta without a male chaperone, and in Kanva’s absence, Sakuntala serves as a host for guests to the hermitage. At the same time, the play itself presents Sakuntala through the male gaze. The audience first sees her through Dusyanta’s eyes, and she is depicted as shy and reticent, as befitting a modest beauty. Furthermore, she is given far fewer dialogues than Dusyanta in this early section and is set up as the object of love. Even though it is made clear that Sakuntala returns Dusyanta’s ardor, she does not quite enjoy the same agency. Sakuntala’s relative freedom corresponds to her caste-status: As the adopted daughter of a sage of the Brahmin caste, and the biological daughter of a celestial nymph and a king of the Kshatriya (warrior) caste, Sakuntala’s place in society would be much more elevated than of women belonging to the working classes and castes.
Signs and symbols form an important motif in the play, as can be seen through the device of the signet ring (See: Symbols & Motifs). The attention drawn to the ring immediately foreshadows its role as an important plot device. Omens emerge as a key motif as well, such as the throbbing in Dusyanta’s arm when he enters Kanva’s grove. Other symbols include the innocent deer, which refer to Sakuntala, who is identified with nature, and the trees, again symbolic of Sakuntala’s kinship with the natural landscape. Sakuntala even refers to the trees as her “sisters” (11), underlining this kinship.
The voyage or journey as a means for transformation is also an important symbol. Dusyanta’s life changes when he journeys to Kanva’s hermitage, and so will Sakuntala’s when she travels to the capital city of the Purus. A journey in the play often leads to a reversal in fortunes. Another important symbol is the elephant rampaging across the grove at the end of Act I. Since Dusyanta is king of Hastinapura, city of elephants, the tusker could symbolize him. The elephant represents Dusyanta’s untamed passions, soon to disrupt Sakuntala’s peaceful world and turn it on its head.
Act I also shows that the play is replete with references to classical Indian texts and mythology, much as the ancient Greek works referred to gods and legendary heroes. Dusyanta is described as embodying Siva, one of the four principal deities of Hinduism. (The other three are Brahma, the creator, Visnu, the sustainer, and Devi, or the goddess in her many forms.) Sakuntala is compared to Laksmi or Sri, the aspect of the goddess associated with beauty and fortune. The play refers to Indra as the king of gods; however, by the fifth century CE, Vedic gods like Indra had been superseded by the four supreme deities of Hinduism, which is why in the play Indra and the other ancient gods are depicted more as demigods. The principal deities, on the other hand, represent an all-knowing, all-powerful consciousness which exists above all.
