SRI AUROBINDO
Translations
from Sanskrit and Other Languages
Kalidasa
Kumarasambhava
The Birth of the War-God
Three Renderings
First Rendering
A God mid hills northern Himaloy rears
His snow-piled summits’ dizzy majesties,
And in the eastern and the western seas
He bathes his giant sides; lain down appears
Measures the dreaming earth in an enormous ease.
Him, it is told, the living mountains made
A mighty calf of earth, the mother large,
When Meru of that milking had the charge
By Prithu bid, and jewels brilliant-rayed
Were brightly born and herbs on every mountain marge.
So is he in his infinite riches dressed
Not all his snows can slay that opulence.
As drowned in luminous floods the mark though dense
On the moon’s argent disc; so faints oppressed
One fault mid crowding virtues fading from our sense.
Brightness of minerals on his peaks outspread
In their love-sports and in their dances gives
To heavenly nymphs adornment, which when drive
The split clouds across, those broken hues displayed
Like an untimely sunset’s magic glories live.
Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist;
And to this low-hung plateaus’ coolness won
The siddhas in soft shade repose, but run
Soon gleaming upwards by wild rains distressed
To unstained summits splendid with the veilless sun. 
Although unseen the reddened footprints blotted
By the new-fallen snows, the hunters know
The path their prey the mighty lions go;
For pearls from the slain elephants there clotted
Fallen from the hollow claws their dangerous passage show.
The birch-leaves on his slopes love-pages turn:
Like spots of age upon the tusky kings
Of liquid metal ink their letterings
Make crimsoned pages that with passion burn
Where heaven’s divine Circes pen heart-moving things.
He fills the hollows of his bamboo trees
With the breeze rising from his deep ravines,
Breathes1 from his rocky mouths as if he means
To be tune-giver to the minstrelsies
Of high-voiced Kinnars chanting in his woodland glens.
His poplars by the brows of elephants
Shaken and rubbed loose forth their odorous cream;
And the sweet resin pours its trickling stream,
And wind on his high levels burdened pants
With fragrance making all the air a scented dream.
His grottoes are love-chambers in the night
For the stray forest-wanderer when he lies
Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs
And from the dim banks luminous herbs give light
Strange2 oilless lamps to their locked passion’s ecstasies.
Himaloy’s snows in frosted slabs distress
The delicate heels of his maned Kinnaris,
And yet for all their chilly path’s unease
They change not their slow motion’s swaying grace
For their burden of breasts and heavy hips.
He guards from the pursuing sun far hid
In his deep caves of gloom the fallen night
Afraid of the day’s eyes of brilliant light:
Even on base things and low for refuge fled
High-crested souls shed love and kindly might.
The mountain yaks lift up their bushy tails
And with their lashing scatter gleamings round
White as the moonbeams on the rocky ground
They seem to fan their king, his parallels
Of symbolled monarchy more perfectly to found.
There in his glens upon his grottoed floors
When from her limbs is plucked the raiment fine
Of the Kinnar’s shame-fast love, hanging come in
The concave clouds across the cavern doors;
Chance curtains shielding her bared3 loveliness divine.
Weary with tracking the wild deer for rest
The hunter bares his forehead to the fay
Breezes which sprinkle Ganges’ cascade spray
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy’s breast,
Gambolling with the proud peacock’s gorgeous-plumed array.
Circling his mountains in its path below
The sun awakes with upward glittering wands
What still unplucked by the seven sages’ hands
Remains of the bright lotuses that glow
In tarns upon his tops with heaven-kissing strands.
Because the Soma plant for sacrifice
He rears and for his strength5 upbearing Earth
The Lord of creatures gave to this great birth
His sacrificial share and ministries
And empire over all the mountains to his worth.
Companion of Meru, their high floor
In equal wedlock to his mighty7 bed
The mind-born child of the world-fathers wed,
Mena whose wisdom the deep seers adore,
Stable and wise himself his stable race to spread.
Their joys of love were like themselves immense
And its long puissant ecstasies at last
Bore fruit, for in her womb a seed was cast
Bearing the banner of her youth intense
In moving beauty and charm to motherhood she passed.
Mainac she bore, the ocean’s guest and friend,
Upon whose peaks the serpent-women roam,
Dwellers in their unsunned and cavernous home;
Mainac, whose sides though angry Indra rend
Feels not the anguish of the thunder’s shock of doom.
(Incomplete)
1 Flutes
2 Like
3 shield her unveiled
4 15. There rests the hunter weary of the chase
And bares his forehead to the breeze which comes
With spray of Ganges’ cascades on its wings,
Scattering the peacock’s gorgeous plumes abroad
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy’s breast.
16. In tarns upon its heaven-kissing tops
Immortal lilies bloom the shining hands
Of the Seven Sages pluck, a few still left
Awake with morn to the sun’s upward beams
Circling those mountains on his lower path.
17. Because he rears for sacrifice the plant
Of honeyed wine, his sacred share fulfilled
And for his many strengths upbearing Earth
The Father of the peoples’ very hands
Crowned him the monarch of a million hills.
5 mass
6 18. In equal rites he to his mighty bed
The mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.
Companion fit of Meru their high home
Stable of thought to stabilise his raceMena the wise he wed by seers adored.
19. Their joys of love were like themselves immense
And in long puissant ecstasy at last
Bore fruit; for in her womb his seed was thrown
And bearing like a banner with her youth’s
Heart-moving beauty motherhood she crossed.
20. Mainac she bore, the guest of the great sea
Upon whose peaks the serpent women sport
Who through the Titan slayer’s wrath has shorn
His budding wings, felt not the fiery blow
Shook not with anguish of the thunder’s scars.
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