No. 473:  “For the sake of the dark-eyed girls whose hips and thighs are visible through their wet dresses when they bathe in the afternoon, does Kama [the god of love] wield his bow.”

Again and again the poets express their raptures over exaggerated busts and hips, often in disgustingly coarse comparisons—­lines which cannot be quoted here.[275]

LYRICS AND DRAMAS

In his History of Indian Literature (209), Weber says that

“the erotic lyric commences for us with certain of the poems attributed to Kalidasa.”  “The later Kavyas are to be ranked with the erotic poems rather than with the epic.  In general this love-poetry is of the most unbridled and extravagantly sensual description; yet examples of deep and truly romantic tenderness are not wanting.”

Inasmuch as he attributes the same qualities to some of the Hala poems in which we have been unable to find them, it is obvious that his conception of “deep and truly romantic tenderness” is different from ours, and it is useless to quarrel about words.  Hala’s collection, being an anthology of the best love-songs of many poets, is much more representative and valuable than if the verses were all by the same poet.  If Hindoo bards and bayaderes had a capacity for true altruistic love-sentiment, these seven hundred songs could hardly have failed to reveal it.  But to make doubly sure that we are not misrepresenting a phase of the history of civilization, let us examine the Hindoo dramas most noted as love-stories, especially those of Kalidasa, whose Sakuntala in particular was triumphantly held up by some of my critics as a refutation of my theory that none of the ancient civilized nations knew romantic love.  I shall first briefly summarize the love-stories told in these dramas, and then point out what they reveal in regard to the Hindoo conception of love as based, presumably, on their experiences.

I. THE STORY OF SAKUNTALA

Once upon a time there lived on the banks of the Gautami River a hermit named Kaucika.  He was of royal blood and had made so much progress with his saintly exercises of penitence that he was on the point of being able to defy the laws of Nature, and the gods themselves began to fear his power.  To deprive him of it they sent down a beautiful apsara (celestial bayaderes) to tempt him.  He could not resist her charms, and broke his vows.  A daughter was born who received the name of Sakuntala, and was given in charge of another saint, named Kanva, who brought her up lovingly as if she had been his own daughter.  She has grown up to be a maiden of more than human beauty, when one day she is seen by the king, who, while hunting, has strayed within the sacred precincts while the saint is away on a holy errand.  He is at once fascinated by her beauty—­a beauty, as he says to himself, such as is seldom found in royal chambers—­a wild vine more lovely than any garden-plant—­and she, too, confesses to her companions that since she has seen him she is overcome by a feeling which seems out of place in this abode of penitence.