{"id":99,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=99"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:54","slug":"36-apsaras-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/36-apsaras-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-36_ Apsaras.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"4\"><b>IV. APSARAS<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"4\"><b>T<\/b><\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">here is nothing more charming, more attractive in Kalidasa<br \/>\nthan his instinct for sweet and human beauty; everything he<br \/>\ntouches becomes the inhabitant of a moonlit world of romance and yet \u2014 there is<br \/>\nthe unique gift, the consummate poetry \u2014 remains perfectly natural, perfectly near to us, perfectly human.<br \/>\nShelley&#8217;s <i>Witch of Atlas<\/i> and Keats&#8217; <i>Cynthia<\/i> are certainly lovely<br \/>\ncreations, but they do not live; misty, shimmering, uncertain, seen in some<br \/>\nhalf-dream where the moon is full and strange indefinable shapes begin to come out from the skirts of the forest;<\/font>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">they charm our imagination, but our hearts take no interest in<br \/>\nthem. They are the creations of the mystic Celtic imagination<br \/>\nwith its singular intangibility, its fascinating other-worldliness.<br \/>\nThe Hindu has been always decried as a dreamer and mystic.<br \/>\nThere is truth in the charge but also a singular inaccuracy. The<br \/>\nHindu mind, in one sense, is the most concrete in the world. It seeks after<br \/>\nabstraction, yet is it never satisfied so long as it remains abstraction. To make the objects and concepts of this<br \/>\nworld concrete, that is comparatively easy; sun and rain or air<br \/>\nare, at their most ethereal, the sublimated secrets of matter. The<br \/>\nHindu is not contented till he has seized things behind the sunlight also as concrete realities. He is passionate for the infinite,<br \/>\nthe unseen, the spiritual, but he will not rest satisfied with conceiving them, he insists on mapping the infinite, on seeing the<br \/>\nunseen, on visualising the spiritual. The Celt throws his imagination into the infinite and is rewarded with beautiful phantoms,<br \/>\nout of which he evolves a pale, mystic and intangible poetry.<br \/>\nThe Hindu sends his heart and his intellect and eventually his<br \/>\nwhole being after his imagination and for his reward he has seen<br \/>\nGod and interpreted existence. It is this double aspect of Hindu<br \/>\ntemperament which is the secret of our civilisation, our religion, our life and<br \/>\nliterature; extreme spirituality successfully attempting to work in harmony with extreme materialism. On the one<br \/>\nside we spiritualise the material out of all but a phenomenal and<br \/>\nillusory existence, on the other we materialise the spiritual in the<br \/>\nmost definite and realistic forms; this is the secret of the high<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 291<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">philosophic idealism which to the less capable European seems so<br \/>\nimpossible an atmosphere and of the prolific idolatry which to<br \/>\nthe dogmatic and formalising Christian seems so gross. In any<br \/>\nother race-temperament this mental division would have split<br \/>\ninto two broadly disparate or opposing types and attempts at<br \/>\ncompromise comprising action and reaction would have built<br \/>\nup the history of thought. In the myriad-minded and undogmatic Hindu it worked not as mental division, but as the first<br \/>\ndiscord which prepares for a consistent harmony; the best and<br \/>\nmost characteristic Hindu thought regards either tendency as<br \/>\nessential to the perfect and subtle comprehension of existence;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">they are considered the positive and negative sides of one truth,<br \/>\nand must both be grasped if we are not to rest in a half light.<br \/>\nHence the entire tolerance of the Hindu religion to all intellectual attitudes except sheer libertinism; hence also the marvellous<br \/>\nperfection of grades in thought-attitudes which the Hindu mind<br \/>\ntravels between the sheer negative and the sheer positive and<br \/>\nyet sees in them only a ladder of progressive and closely related<br \/>\nsteps rising through relative conceptions to one final and absolute knowledge.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">The intellectual temperament of a people determines the<br \/>\nmain character-stamp of its poetry. There is therefore no considerable poet in Sanskrit who has not the twofold impression<br \/>\n(spiritual and romantic in aim, our poetry is realistic in method),<br \/>\nwho does not keep his feet on the ground even while his eyes are<br \/>\nwith the clouds. The soaring lark who loses himself in light,<br \/>\nthe ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings in the void are<br \/>\nnot denizens of the Hindu plane of temperament. Hence the<br \/>\nexpectant critic will search ancient Hindu literature in vain for<br \/>\nthe poetry of mysticism; that is only to be found in recent<br \/>\nBengali poetry which has felt the influence of English models.<br \/>\nThe old Sanskrit poetry was never satisfied unless it could show<br \/>\ncolour, energy and definiteness, and these are things incompatible<br \/>\nwith true mysticism. Even the Upanishads which declare the phenomenal world to be unreal, yet have a rigidly practical aim and<br \/>\nlabour in every line to make the indefinite definite and the abstract concrete. But of all our great poets Kalidasa best exemplifies this twynatured Hindu temperament under the conditions of<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 292<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">supreme artistic beauty and harmony. Being the most variously<br \/>\nlearned of Hindu poets he draws into his net all our traditions,<br \/>\nideas, myths, imaginations, allegories, the grotesque and the<br \/>\ntrivial as well as the sublime and the lovely, but touching them<br \/>\nwith the magic wand teaches them to live together in the harmonising atmosphere of his poetic temperament. Under his slight<br \/>\ntouch the grotesque becomes strange, wild and romantic, the<br \/>\ntrivial refines into a dainty and gracious slightness, the sublime<br \/>\nyields to the law of romance, acquires a mighty grace, a strong<br \/>\nsweetness; and what was merely lovely attains power, energy<br \/>\nand brilliant colour. His creations in fact live in a peculiar light,<br \/>\nwhich is not the light that never was on sea or land but rather our<br \/>\nordinary sunshine recognisable though strangely and beautifully<br \/>\naltered. The alteration is not real; rather our vision is affected<br \/>\nby the recognition of something the sunbeams concealed and<br \/>\nyet the cause of the sunbeams; but it is human sunlight we see<br \/>\nalways. May we not say it is that luminousness behind the veil<br \/>\nof this sunlight which is the heaven of Hindu imagination and<br \/>\nin all Hindu work shines through it without overpowering it?<br \/>\nHindu poetry is the only Paradise in which the lion can lie<br \/>\ndown with the lamb.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">The personages of Kalidasa&#8217;s poetry are with but few exceptions gods and demigods or skiey spirits, but while they preserve<br \/>\na charm of wonder, sublimity or weirdness, they are brought on<br \/>\nto our own plane of experience, their speech and thought and<br \/>\npassion is human. This was the reason alleged by the late Bankim<br \/>\nChandra Chatterji, himself a poet and a critic of fine and strong<br \/>\ninsight, for preferring the <i>Birth of the War-God<\/i> to <i>Paradise Lost<\/i>;<\/font>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">he thought that both epics were indeed literary epics of the same<br \/>\ntype, largely planned and sublime in subject, diction and thought,<br \/>\nbut that the Hindu poem, if less grandiose in its pitch, had in a<br \/>\nhigh degree the humanism and sweetness of simple and usual<br \/>\nfeeling in which the <i>Paradise Lost<\/i> is more often than not deficient. But the humanism of which I speak is not the Homeric<br \/>\nnaturalism; there is little of the sublime or romantic in the<br \/>\nessence of the Homeric gods though there is much of both in<br \/>\na good many of their accidents and surroundings. But Kalidasa&#8217;s<br \/>\ndivine and semi-divine personages lose none of their godhead by<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 293<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">living on the plane of humanity. Perhaps the most exquisite<br \/>\nmasterpiece in this kind is the <i>Cloud-Messenger<\/i>. The actors in<br \/>\nthat beautiful love-elegy might have been chosen by Shelley<br \/>\nhimself; they are two lovers of Faeryland \u2014 a cloud, rivers,<br \/>\nmountains, the gods and demigods of air, hill and sky. The goal<br \/>\nof the cloud&#8217;s journey is the ethereal city of Alaka crowned by the clouds upon<br \/>\nthe golden hill and bathed at night in the unearthly moonlight that streams from the brow of Shiva, the mystic&#8217;s God. The earth is seen mainly as a wonderful panorama by<br \/>\none travelling on the wings of a cloud. Here are all the materials<br \/>\nfor one of those intangible harmonies of Woven and luminous<br \/>\nmist with which Shelley allures and baffles us. The personages<br \/>\nand scenery are those of <i>Queen Mab<\/i>, of <i>Prometheus Unbound<br \/>\n<\/i>and the <i>Witch of Atlas<\/i>. But Kalidasa&#8217;s city in the mists is no evanescent city of sunlit clouds; it is his own beautiful and luxurious Ujjayini idealised and exempted from mortal afflictions;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">like a true Hindu he insists on translating the ideal into the terms<br \/>\nof the familiar, sensuous and earthy.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For death and birth keep not their mystic round<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In Ullaca,<\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u00b9<\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\"> there from the deathless trees<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The blossom lapses never to the ground<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But lives for ever garrulous with bees<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All honey-drunk \u2014 nor yet its sweets resign.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For ever in their girdling companies&#8230;<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">And when he comes to describe the sole mourner in that town<br \/>\nof delight and eternal passion unsated, this is how he describes<br \/>\nher, how human, how touching, how common it all is! While<br \/>\nwe read, we feel ourselves kin to and one with a more beautiful<br \/>\nworld than our own. These creatures of fancy hardly seem to be an imaginary race<br \/>\nbut rather ourselves removed from the sordidness and the coarse pains of our world, into a more gracious<br \/>\nexistence. This, I think, is the essential attraction which makes<br \/>\nhis countrymen to this day feel such a passionate delight in<br \/>\nKalidasa; after reading a poem of his the world and life and<br \/>\nour fellow creatures human, animal or inanimate have become<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u00b9<\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"2\">Alaka,<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 294<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">suddenly more beautiful and dear to us than they were before;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">the heart flows out towards birds and beasts and the very trees<br \/>\nseem to be drawing us towards them with their branches as if<br \/>\nwith arms; the vain cloud and the senseless mountain are no<br \/>\nlonger senseless or empty, but friendly intelligences that have a<br \/>\nvoice to our souls. Our own common thoughts, feelings, and<br \/>\npassions have also become suddenly fair to us, they have received<br \/>\nthe sanction of beauty. And then through the passion of delight<br \/>\nand the sense of life and of love in all beautiful objects we reach<br \/>\nto the Mighty Spirit behind them whom our soul recognizes no<br \/>\nlonger as an object of knowledge or of worship but as her lover<br \/>\nto whom she must fly, leaving her husband, the material life and<br \/>\nbraving the jeers and reprobation of the world for His sake. Thus<br \/>\nby a singular paradox, one of those beautiful oxymorons of which<br \/>\nthe Hindu temperament is full, we reach God through the senses,<br \/>\njust as our ancestors did through the intellect and through the<br \/>\nemotions; for in the Hindu mind all roads lead eventually to<br \/>\nthe Rome of its longing, the dwelling of the Most High God.<br \/>\nOne can see how powerfully Kalidasa&#8217;s poetry must have prepared the national mind for the religion of the Puranas, for the<br \/>\nworship of Kali, our Mother and of Sri Krishna of Vrindavan,<br \/>\nour soul&#8217;s Paramour. Here indeed lies his chief claim to rank<br \/>\nwith Valmiki and Vyasa as one of our three national poets, in<br \/>\nthat he gathered the mind-life of the nation into his poetry at a<br \/>\ngreat and critical moment and helped it forward into the groove<br \/>\ndown which it must henceforth run.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">This method is applied with conspicuous beauty and success<br \/>\nin the <i>Urvasie<\/i>. The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic<br \/>\nconception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the<br \/>\nmoment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal<br \/>\nraiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty<br \/>\nand light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and<br \/>\ngleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they<br \/>\nare the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the<br \/>\nsoul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines,<br \/>\nby the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 295<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the<br \/>\nhero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage,<br \/>\nmusing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from<br \/>\nhis white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the<br \/>\nattraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining<br \/>\nbackground, but most in the older allegories, especially the<br \/>\nstrange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in<br \/>\nthe Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">But then came in the materialistic side of the Hindu mind<br \/>\nand desired some familiar term, the earthlier the better, in which<br \/>\nto phrase its romantic conception: this was found in the Hetaira.<br \/>\nThe class of Hetairae was as recognised an element in the Hindu<br \/>\nsociety as in the Greek, but it does not appear to have exercised quite so large an influence in social life. As in the Greek<br \/>\ncounterpart they were a specially learned and accomplished class<br \/>\nof women, but their superiority over ladies of good families was<br \/>\nnot so pronounced; for in ancient India previous to the Mahomedan episode respectable women were not mere ignorant housewives like the Athenian ladies, but often they were educated<br \/>\nthough not in a formal manner; that is to say, they went through<br \/>\nno systematic training such as men had, but parents were always<br \/>\nexpected to impart general culture and accomplishments to them<br \/>\nby private tuition at home; singing, music, dancing and to some<br \/>\nextent painting were the ordinary accomplishments. General<br \/>\nknowledge of morality and Scripture-tradition was imperative<br \/>\nand sometimes the girls of high-born, wealthy or learned families<br \/>\nreceived special instruction in philosophy or mathematics. Some<br \/>\nindeed seem to have pursued a life of philosophic learning either<br \/>\nas virgins or widows; but such instances were in pre-Buddhistic<br \/>\ntimes very rare. The normal Hindu feeling has always been that<br \/>\nthe sphere of woman is in the home and her life incomplete unless merged in her husband&#8217;s. In any case, the majority of the<br \/>\n<i>kulavadhus<\/i>, women of respectable families, could hardly be<br \/>\nmore than amateurs in the arts and sciences, whereas with the<br \/>\nHetairae (Ganikas) such accomplishments were pursued and mastered as a profession. Hence beside their ordinary occupation of<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 296<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">singing and dancing in the temples and on great public occasions such as coronations and holy days, they often commanded<br \/>\nthe irregular affections of high-born or wealthy men who led<br \/>\nopenly a double life at home with the wife, outside with the<br \/>\nHetaira. As a class, they held no mean place in society; for they<br \/>\nmust not be confused with the strolling actor or mountebank caste<br \/>\nwho were a proverb for their vileness of morals. Many of them,<br \/>\nno doubt, as will inevitably happen when the restraints of society<br \/>\nare not recognized, led loose, immoral and sensual lives; in such<br \/>\na class Lais and Phryne must be as common as Aspasia. Nevertheless the higher<br \/>\nand intellectual element seems to have prevailed; those who arrogated freedom in their sexual relations<br \/>\nbut were not prostitutes are admirably portrayed in Vasantasena<br \/>\nof the <i>Toy Cart<\/i>, a beautiful melodrama drawn straight from the<br \/>\nlife; like her they often exchanged, with the consent of their<br \/>\nlover&#8217;s family, the unveiled face of the Hetaira for the seclusion<br \/>\nof the wife. This class both in its higher and lower type lasted<br \/>\nlate into the present century, both are now under the auspices<br \/>\nof western civilisation almost entirely replaced by a growing<br \/>\nclass of professional prostitutes, an inevitable consummation<br \/>\nwhich it seems hardly worth while to dub social reform and accelerate by an active crusade.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous<br \/>\nand world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend<br \/>\ntowards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to<br \/>\nits original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and<br \/>\nhermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into<br \/>\nthe One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean,<br \/>\nsays Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but<br \/>\nneither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they<br \/>\nsaid to be common or universal.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">We shall now understand why the Apsara is represented as<br \/>\nthe Hetaira of heaven. They represent all that is sensuous,<br \/>\nattractive or voluptuous in the Universe, the element of desire<br \/>\nwhich, being unspiritual and non-moral, finds its sphere in the<br \/>\nsatisfaction of the senses of beauty and for that satisfaction<br \/>\nneeds freedom.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 297<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">We see then the appropriateness of the Hetaira as a material<br \/>\nform into which the vague idea of sensuous beauty in the world<br \/>\nmight run. For the charm of the Apsara even when working<br \/>\non the plane of the mind, is still vital and sensational; it does not<br \/>\nbelong to the more rarefied regions of the spirit. Now vital and<br \/>\nsensational charm in seeking its fulfilment demands that the<br \/>\npursuit of sensuous beauty shall be its sole object, that it shall<br \/>\nbe without check as without any side-glance or after-thought;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">it does not seek to be immoral, but simply rejects all moral tests;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">it recognizes no law but the fulfilment of its own being. This is<br \/>\nthe very spirit of the Hetaira. The beauty of nakedness sculptured, painted or shaped into words, is not immoral. For the<br \/>\nmoment we apply the test of morality, it becomes clear that we<br \/>\nmust either rule it out as not belonging to the world of morality<br \/>\nor rule out morality itself for the moment as not belonging to<br \/>\nthe world of beauty, which is essentially a world of nakedness,<br \/>\nin the sense that dress there is an occasional ornament, not a necessary covering; not because there is any essential opposition<br \/>\nbetween them, but because there is no essential connection or<br \/>\nnecessary point of contact. Ideals of all the plastic and sensuous<br \/>\narts fall within the scope of the Apsara; she is actress, songstress,<br \/>\nmusician, painter. When they arose from the waves neither the<br \/>\ngods nor the demons accepted them as wives; accepted by none<br \/>\nthey became common to all; for neither the great active faculties<br \/>\nof man nor the great destructive recognize sensuous delight and<br \/>\ncharm as their constant and sufficient mistress, but rather as the<br \/>\njoy and refreshment of an hour, an accompaniment or diversion<br \/>\nin their constant pursuit of the recognized ideal to which they are<br \/>\nwedded. Moreover sensuous beauty has a certain attraction and<br \/>\nsplendour which seem to some minds finally, and occasionally<br \/>\nto most, fairer and brighter than that other ideal which by daily<br \/>\noccupation with it, by permissibility and by sameness, grows stale<br \/>\nfor some, fades into homeliness and routine for others and preserves its real, undying, unageing and unforsakeable freshness and<br \/>\ndelight only to the few constant and unswerving souls, who are<br \/>\nthe elect of our human evolution. In all this the idea of the<br \/>\nApsara coincides with the actuality of the Hetaira. In choosing<br \/>\nthe Hetaira therefore for the Apsara&#8217;s earthly similitude, the<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 298<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">Hindu mind showed once more that wonderful mythopoeic penetrativeness which is as unerring and admirable in its way as the<br \/>\nGreek mythopoeic felicity and tact.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">When Narayana, the primeval and dateless sage of old,<br \/>\nentered upon austerities in the most secret and desolate recesses<br \/>\nof the Snowy Mountains, Indra, prince of the air, always hostile<br \/>\nto asceticism, always distrustful of the philosophic and contemplative spirit, was alarmed for the balance of the world and the<br \/>\nsecurity of his own rule. He therefore sent the Apsaras to disturb the meditations of Narayana. Then upon the desolate<br \/>\nHimalaya Spring set the beauty of his feet; the warm south wind<br \/>\nbreathed upon those inclement heights, blossoming trees grew<br \/>\nin the eternal snow and the voice of the cuckoo was heard upon<br \/>\nthe mountain tops. It was amidst these vernal sweetnesses that<br \/>\nthe Apsaras came to Narayana; they were the loveliest of all the<br \/>\nsisterhood, and subtlest and most alluring of feminine arts and<br \/>\nenchantments was the way of their wooing; but Narayana who<br \/>\nis Vishnu the World-Saviour when he comes in the guise of the<br \/>\nascetic, moved neither by the passion of love nor by the passion<br \/>\nof anger, smiled in the large and indulgent mood of his world-<br \/>\nembracing nature and opening his thigh took from it a radiant<br \/>\nand marvellous creature, of whose beauty the loveliest Apsaras<br \/>\nseemed but pale and broken reflections. Ashamed they veiled<br \/>\ntheir faces and stole silently away from the snowy hermitage.<br \/>\nBut Narayana called this daughter of his creation Urvasie (she<br \/>\nwho lies in the thigh of the Supreme, the thigh being the seat of<br \/>\nsensuousness) and gave her to Indra to be his most potent defence<br \/>\nagainst the austerities of spiritual longing.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 24pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">And yet the work of the philosophic mind incidentally serves<br \/>\nsensuous and material life by increasing its resources and the<br \/>\ndepth of its charm. For the power of the philosophic ideals<br \/>\nwhich have profoundly affected humanity is not limited to the<br \/>\ndomain of the intellect but also affects, enlarges and strengthens<br \/>\nman&#8217;s aesthetic outlook upon the world. The sensuous world<br \/>\nbecomes fuller of beauty, richer in colours, shades and suggestions, more profound and attractive in each widening of the<br \/>\nhuman ideal. It is Urvasie who sprang from the thigh of the<br \/>\nwithered hermit cold and not any of those original daughters of<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 299<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">the inconstant waves who is the loveliest and most dangerous of<br \/>\nthe Apsaras.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t*<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In dramatic tone and build therefore this is an admirable<br \/>\ncreation, but there is so far no hint of the world-wide divineness<br \/>\nof Urvasie, of the goddess within the woman. In direct allegory<br \/>\nKalidasa was too skilful an artist to deal, but we expect the<br \/>\nlarger conception of this beautiful and significant figure to enter<br \/>\ninto or at least colour the dramatic conception of the woman;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">some pomp of words, some greatness of gesture, some large divinity whether of speech or look to raise her above a mere nymph,<br \/>\nhowever charming, into the goddess we know. Yet in rigidly<br \/>\nexcluding the grandiose or the coloured Kalidasa has shown, I<br \/>\nthink, his usual unerring dramatic and psychological tact. Dramatically, to have made both Pururavas and Urvasie equally<br \/>\ndramatic in spirit and diction, to have clothed both in the external purple of poetry would have been to offend the eye with unrelieved gorgeousness and converted the play from an interesting<br \/>\nand skilfully woven drama into a confused splendour of lyrical<br \/>\ndialogue. Psychologically, the divinity and universal charm of<br \/>\nUrvasie would have been defaced rather than brought out by<br \/>\ninvesting her with grandeur of feeling or a pomp of poetic ornament. Perfect beauty has in it a double aspect, its intrinsic self<br \/>\nand the impression it makes on the vivid and receptive mind. In<br \/>\nitself it is simple, unconscious and unadorned, most effective<br \/>\nwhen it is most naked; ceasing to be these, it loses its perfection<br \/>\nand a great part of its universal charm. The nude human figure<br \/>\nin painting and sculpture, unadorned magic or strength of style<br \/>\nand conception in poetry, clear, luminous and comprehensive<br \/>\nthought in philosophy, these are what the pursuing human spirit<br \/>\nfeels to be ideal, highest, most worthy of itself. Drapery blurs the<br \/>\neffulgence of the goddess, ornament distracts the spirit and disappoints it of its engrossed and undisturbed sense of possession.<br \/>\nOn the other hand, the mind while most moved by what is simple<br \/>\nand natural in its appeal, is romantic in its method of receiving<br \/>\nthe impression; becoming engrossed and steeped in the idea<br \/>\nof it, it directs to it and surrounds it with all the fresh impres-<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 300<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">sions that continually flow in on the consciousness, gathers from<br \/>\nit colour, fire and passion, creates around it a host of splendid<br \/>\nassociations and clothes it in the pomp of its own passionate<br \/>\nimagery. The first period of a literary race when its mind is yet<br \/>\nvirgin and has to create beauty, is invariably simple and classical,<br \/>\nthe last period when its mind is saturated and full of past beauty<br \/>\nis always romantic and aesthetic. The relations of Urvasie and<br \/>\nPururavas are true to this psychological principle. She herself<br \/>\nis mere beauty and charm sufficient to itself and commanding<br \/>\ndelight and worship because she is herself, not because of any<br \/>\ngraces of expression, imagination, intellectual profundity. But the<br \/>\nmind of Pururavas receiving her pure and perfect image steeps<br \/>\nher in its own fire and colour, surrounding her with a halo of<br \/>\npomp and glory which reveals himself while seeking to interpret<br \/>\nher.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 301<\/font><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IV. APSARAS &nbsp; There is nothing more charming, more attractive in Kalidasa than his instinct for sweet and human beauty; everything he touches becomes the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}