‘Woman holding fruit’ by Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906). Ravi Varma was born at Kilimanoor in the Kingdom of Travancore (now Kerala), and was closely related to the royal family. His art found a patron in Edgar Thurston of the Madras Government Museum, and in 1873 Varma won widespread acclaim following an exhibition in Vienna. He specialised in scenes from the ancient ‘Mahabharata’, the origin of Kalidasa’s tale of Shakuntala and her lost ring.
Part 1 of 2
KING Dushyánta met Shakúntala while out deer-hunting, and would not return home to his palace until he had married her. As her guardian, the hermit Kanva, was away, the King left Shakuntala behind until he had Kanva’s blessing, but promised to send for her soon.
The King was barely gone when the seer Durvásas paid a visit. Shakuntala, dreaming of her husband, was not the perfect hostess and Durvasas felt neglected. ‘May your lover forget you’ he grumbled unkindly; then he relented, prophesying that Dushyanta would remember his bride if she showed him the ring he had given her.
Kanva returned and gave his blessing, so with some misgivings Shakuntala, who was already with child, took the ring and went up to the capital. As she feared, the King could not remember her; and when she stretched out her hand the ring was not on her finger. ‘It must have fallen off in the Ganges!’ she wailed, but the King’s face was as stone.
Traditionally, the capital was Hastinapur in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, about 60 miles northeast of New Delhi, and 20 miles northeast of Meerut.
Part Two
This picture, by an anonymous Indian artist of the 19th century, shows men and women bathing and praying in the holy River Ganges. The river, which runs southeast beneath the Himalayas in northeast India before turning down into the Bay of Bengal, embodies the sacredness of all water in India; and according to legend it was while paying her respects to the river a few miles from Dushyanta’s capital at Hastinapur, near modern-day New Delhi, that Shakuntala lost the ring that was her only hope of bringing back her husband’s memory.
IT was not long after this that his chief of police brought the king an engraved ring, discovered in the Ganges by a poor fisherman. The instant Dushyanta saw it his memory rushed back, but too late. Shakuntala was gone.
Months passed slowly. Then one day the grieving King overheard two women laughing because their baby boy had mistaken the word for a bird, shakunta, for his mother’s name. As Dushyanta hurried over, he picked up an amulet the boy had let fall and the ladies gasped: none but the boy or his parents could touch it, or it would turn into a venomous snake; yet of that there was no sign!
At that moment Shakuntala rejoined them, not recognising in Dushyanta the king who had so coldly rejected her. But he showed her the ring and the amulet, and at last the clouds of Durvasas’s careless curse were driven away. They lived happily ever after, and their little boy became that great Emperor, Bhárata.*
Bharata is also the Sanskrit name for India.
