Kalidas
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Kalidas
By Intizar Hussain
The play Malavikagnimitram commonly known as Malavika.
Malavika is, as claimed by the researchers, his earliest play. The other two plays, written in later years, are Vikram Urvashi and Abhijanana Shakuntala commonly known as Shakuntala. In fact, the researchers after much research have been able to dig out only three plays and four poems. Of the four poems more popular are Ritu Singhar and Maighdoot.
We don’t know much about Kalidas. Of course in the history of Sanskrit literature he stands as a great poet and a great playwright. But the researchers have neither been able to trace all his writings nor been able to trace his biographical details. Legends about him are many, but facts and events of his life are missing. He is said to have lived in the times of the great king Raja Vikramaditya and that he was associated with his court. But Vikramaditya himself is more a legend than a historical figure. Tales and legends associated with him are plentiful.
He is also supposed to be the founder of Summat era. So the current Indian calendar owes its existence to him. And yet researchers are not very sure if a king with this name ever existed. Of a number of theories, one is that the Gupta king Chandragupta II had assumed the title of Vikramaditya.
But what tickled me more were the researches made by an Ujjaini Urdu writer. An elderly man with white beard clad in sherwani and pajama could easily be marked too as one different from the writers and intellectuals around us. He was kind enough to give me his work on Kalidas titled as Kali Das, Aai Mutalia. His name was Mahmood Zaki.
I wanted to know if he is a genuine Ujjaini or an outsider who under the pressure of circumstances found himself compelled to settle here. He asserted that Ujjain is his ancestral home. Born and brought up in this land he developed a love for Kalidas. And he says that a Sanskrit scholar Pandit Suriya Narain Vyas, seeing his involvement in Kalidas, exhorted him to translate his works in Urdu. Encouraged by him, he first translated Vikram Urvashi in Urdu. Later on he planned to write a book on Kalidas with particular reference to the translations of his plays and poems in Urdu.
In this book Mahmood Zaki’s research tells us that the history of Sanskrit literature bears the evidence of eight writers writing under the name of Kalidas. The plays and poems written by them are 51 in number. The scholars after much research and scrutiny marked out three plays and four poems as the works of the genuine Kalidas known to us a Maha Kavi Kalidas. What he wrote first was the poem Ritu Singhar.
Mahmood Zaki tells us that of all the works of Kalidas Shakuntala has been very popular with the Europeans. It has been translated and re-translated at different times in the different languages of Europe. The earliest was the English translation done in 1789 by Sir William Jones.
Mahmood Zaki has established through his research that long before this translation in English, the play had been translated in Urdu. Nawaz Kabsher, a Muslim, had translated it in Urdu in 1680. He quotes Prof Shirani saying that Nawaz had translated it at the behest of Auranzaib’s son, Alam Shah.
Zaki Sahib enumerated a number of translations during the nineteenth century to be followed by those done in the twentieth century. Their total number, according to him, is more than 30. He has also provided information about different translations of Vikram Urvashi including the one by him. But he avoids discussing the quality of these translations.
I feel that those who have relied on their heavily Persianised expression have miserably failed in conveying the flavour of the original in Urdu. Aziz Lucknavi’s translation of Vikram Urvashi is an example of this kind of translation.
Akhtar Husain Raipuri’s translation of Shakuntala is perhaps more authentic as because of his acquaintance with Sanskrit he had an access to the original text. Secondly, he seems to have an understanding that Sanskrit classics, when being translated in Urdu, cannot reconcile with Persianized expression.
However, Mahmood Zaki’s survey tells us that Kalidas is in no way a stranger to Urdu. We have the whole of Kalidas translated and retranslated in our language.
