29. Gautami.

The name of the matron or Superior of the female part of the society of hermits.  Every association of religious devotees seems to have included a certain number of women, presided over by an elderly and venerable matron, whose authority resembled that of an abbess in a convent of nuns.

30. Ku[s’]a-grass.

This grass was held sacred by the Hindus, and was abundantly used in all their religions ceremonies.  Its leaves are very long, and taper to a sharp needle-like point, of which the extreme acuteness was proverbial; whence the epithet applied to a clever man, ‘sharp as the point of Ku[s’]a-grass.’  Its botanical name is Poa cynosuroides.

31. Kuruvaka.

A species of Jhinti or Barleria, with purple flowers, and covered with sharp prickles.

32. The Jester.

See an account of this character in the Introduction, p. xxxiv.

33. We have nothing to eat but roast game.

Indian game is often very dry and flavourless.

34. Attended by the Yavana women.

Who these women were has not been accurately ascertained.  Yavana is properly Arabia, but is also a name applied to Greece.  The Yavana women were therefore either natives of Arabia, or Greece, and their business was to attend upon the king, and take charge of his weapons, especially his bow and arrows.  Professor H. H. Wilson, in his translation of the Vikramorva[s’]i, where the same word occurs (Act V. p. 261), remarks that Tartarian or Bactrian women may be intended.

35. In the disc of crystal.

That is, the sun-gem (Surya-kanta, ’beloved by the sun’), a shining stone resembling crystal.  Professor Wilson calls it a fabulous stone with fabulous properties, and mentions another stone, the moon-gem (chandra-kanta).  It may be gathered from this passage that the sun-stone was a kind of glass lens, and that the Hindus were not ignorant of the properties of this instrument at the time when ‘[S’]akoontala’ was written.

36. Some fallen blossoms of the jasmine.

The jasmine here intended was a kind of double jasmine with a very delicious perfume, sometimes called ‘Arabian jasmine’ (Jasminum zambac).  It was a delicate plant, and, as a creeper, would depend on some other tree for support.  The Arka, or sun-tree (Gigantic Asclepias:  Calotropis gigantea), on the other hand, was a large and vigorous shrub.  Hence the former is compared to [S’]akoontala, the latter to the sage Kanwa.

37.

                  The mellowed fruit
  Of virtuous actions in some former birth.

The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another is an essential dogma of the Hindu religion, and connected with it is the belief in the power which every human being possesses of laying up for himself a store of merit by good deeds performed in the present and former births.  Indeed the condition of every person is supposed to derive its character of happiness or misery, elevation or degradation, from the virtues or vices of previous states of being.  The consequences of actions in a former birth are called vipaka; they may be either good or bad, but are rarely unmixed with evil taint.