Kalidasa is India’s greatest classical poet and dramatist, and his rendition of the story of Shakuntala is his most famous play. As part of their highly acclaimed ongoing series that seeks to bring the great poet’s oeuvre to a new generation of readers, Penguin Classics offers a new translation of Kalidasa’s work; Abhijnanashakuntalam, The Recognition of Shakuntala.
Penguin presents the majestic Abhijnanashakuntalam, The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kalidasa, translated by Vinay Dharwadker.
Kalidasa’s most famous play refashions an episode from the Mahabharata, magnificently dramatizing the love story of Shakuntala, a girl of semi-divine origin, and Dushyanta, a noble human king. After their brief and passionate, but secret, union at her father’s forest ashram, Dushyanta must return to his capital. He gives Shakuntala his signet ring, promising to make her his queen when she joins him later. But, placed unawares under a curse, he forgets her—and she loses the ring that would have enabled him to recognize her. Will the lovers be reunited? The world’s first full-length play centred on a comprehensive love story, The Recognition of Shakuntala is an undisputed classic of the ancient period. Vinay Dharwadker’s sparkling new translation is the definitive poetic rendering of this romantic-heroic comedy for the twenty-first-century stage. His absorbing commentary and notes give contemporary readers an unparalleled opportunity to savour the riches of a timeless text.
The Author:
Kalidasa, perhaps the most extraordinary of India’s classical poets, composed seven major works: three plays, two epic poems and two lyric poems. According to legend, he lived at the end of the fourth century, and was one of the ‘nine jewels’ in the court of the Gupta king Chandragupta II. Although very little is known about his life, Kalidasa’s popularity has endured for centuries.
The Translator:
Vinay Dharwadker is professor of comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of Kabir: The Weaver’s Songs (2003), and an editor of The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1994) and The Norton Anthology of World Literature (2012). Most recently, he co-translated Mohan Rakesh’s One Day in the Season of Rain with his wife, Aparna Dharwadker.