Abstract
The Meghadūta stands at the beginning of a highly productive genre of so-called messenger poems (sandeśakāvyas), in both Sanskrit and the vernaculars. The main variation between the poems lies in the nature of the messenger: beside Kālidāsa’s cloud, we have the wind (in Dhoyī’s Pavanadūta), a bee (in the anonymous Bhrṅgasandeśa) and a whole range of birds (for instance a goose in Vedāntadeśika’s Haṃsasandeśa). In the anonymous Tamil Tamiḻviṭutūtu a woman directs the Tamil language itself to the god residing in the temple in Madurai to beg him not to neglect her. The popularity of the genre in particular in the vernacular literary traditions was no doubt due to the opportunity it offered for descriptions of sites or features of the specific (imagined) linguistic regions. The present paper argues that there is no need to assume a genre of full-fledged messenger poem genre prior to Kālidāsa's work. Instead, it argues for a rich relationship between the aerial journey of Rāma and Sītā in the Rāmāyaṇa and the Meghadūta, in which Kālidāsa plays, contrastively, with the epic tradition.
Highlights
One of Kālidāsa’s better known compositions, the Meghadūta, consists of between 110 and 122 stanzas, all in the mandākrāntā metre (e.g. Hultzsch 1998: xii-xxvii)
The Meghadūta stands at the beginning of a highly productive genre of socalled messenger poems, in both Sanskrit and the vernaculars
Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta is the oldest known example of a messenger poem, it is apparently hard to believe that this poet was the very first to produce
Summary
One of Kālidāsa’s better known compositions, the Meghadūta, consists of between 110 and 122 stanzas, all in the mandākrāntā metre (e.g. Hultzsch 1998: xii-xxvii). As I will try to show, this part of the Meghadūta does lead us to a specific source, in which it is, found combined with the use of an animal as a messenger, in this case a monkey, As to possible sources for the journey motif Dubyanskiy has pointed to, among other Tamil Caṅkam texts, the five āṟṟuppaṭai poems in the Pattuppāṭṭu collection.
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