Raghuvansh: the dynasty
of the sun.

Kalidasa opens with a bow to Parvati and Shiva, joined to each other as a word is joined to its meaning. Then he admits his nerve: writing of a dynasty born from the sun with his small wit is like trying to cross the ocean on a raft.

The dynasty begins with Manu, and in time the throne of Ayodhya comes to Dilip: tall as a sal tree, learned, restrained, a king who taxed his people only to return the wealth to them, as the sun draws up water to give it back as rain. He has everything except a son.

Dilip and his queen Sudakshina ride in a single chariot to the forest hermitage of their family preceptor, the sage Vasishtha. Vasishtha closes his eyes, sees the cause, and tells it. Years before, as Dilip returned from helping Indra in heaven, he passed Surabhi, the wish-granting cow, resting in the shade of the wish-granting tree. He was hurrying home to his queen and did not stop to honour her. Surabhi spoke a curse he never heard: no child until he served her offspring.

Surabhi herself has gone to the underworld to supply a sacrifice. But her daughter Nandini lives in the hermitage. Serve Nandini, says Vasishtha, and she will grant what her mother withheld.

At dawn the emperor lays aside his royal manner. He follows Nandini into the Himalayan foothills like a herdsman, scratching her neck, keeping flies away, stopping when she stops and drinking only when she has drunk. Sudakshina worships her morning and evening. This goes on for twenty-one days.

On the last day Nandini wanders into a cave and a lion leaps on her. Dilip reaches for an arrow and his hand sticks to it. The lion speaks: he is Kumbhodara, a servant of Shiva, posted to guard a deodar tree that Parvati raised like a son, and any creature that comes near is his food.

Dilip cannot bear to return to his teacher having lost the teacher's cow. He offers his own body instead and bows his head to wait for the spring. Instead, flowers rain from the sky. Nandini tells him the lion was an illusion she made to test him.

Pleased, she grants him a son. Back at the hermitage, with Vasishtha's leave, Dilip drinks her milk, and soon Sudakshina is with child.

The son is born under fortunate stars and named Raghu, from a root that means to go: he will go to the far shore of learning and of battle. He studies, marries, and is made crown prince.

Dilip has completed ninety-nine horse sacrifices. During the hundredth, the sacrificial horse vanishes. Raghu washes his eyes with water from Nandini and sees the thief: Indra, king of the gods, who guards the title of the hundred sacrifices for himself.

Raghu challenges him. Indra's arrows and finally his thunderbolt strike the prince down, yet Raghu rises and fights on. Impressed, Indra offers any boon except the horse. Raghu asks that his father receive the full merit of the sacrifice anyway. Indra agrees.

Dilip crowns Raghu and retires with Sudakshina to the forest, as kings of this line do in old age.

When autumn dries the roads, Raghu marches. Kalidasa turns the campaign into a tour of the whole known world, region by region, in the order the sun travels.

East he goes to the Suhmas and the Vangas of the river delta, planting pillars of victory on the islands of the Ganga, then on to Utkala and Kalinga. South he follows the Kaveri, and the Pandya kings bring him pearls. West he turns to the Kerala coast and the far western lands, and overland against the Parasikas. North, by the poem's account, he meets the Hunas, the Kambojas and the mountain peoples of the Himalaya. Then he crosses the Lauhitya river to Pragjyotisha and Kamarupa, whose king lays jewelled offerings at his feet.

He comes home and performs the Vishvajit, the conquest of everything, a sacrifice whose fee is the sacrificer's entire wealth. Raghu gives it all.

Now Raghu owns a clay bowl. A young scholar, Kautsa, arrives at the palace. He has finished his studies with the sage Varatantu and must pay his teacher's fee. Varatantu wanted nothing, but Kautsa insisted, and in irritation the teacher named fourteen crore of gold, one for each branch of learning.

Seeing the clay bowl, Kautsa turns to leave. Raghu stops him: no student will go away from his door empty-handed. He resolves to ride against Kubera, lord of wealth, in the morning. Before dawn his treasurers report that gold has rained into the treasury.

Raghu tries to give Kautsa the whole heap. Kautsa will take only what his teacher asked. The people of Ayodhya watch two men argue over who should have less. Kautsa leaves with a blessing: a son as worthy as the father.

The son is Aja. Grown, he sets out for the swayamvara of Princess Indumati of Vidarbha. On the Narmada a wild elephant charges his camp. One arrow strikes it, and it turns into Priyamvada, a Gandharva cursed to that shape, who thanks him with the Sammohana, a weapon that puts armies to sleep.

In the hall of Vidarbha the suitor kings sit on raised thrones. Indumati enters in a palanquin, and her companion Sunanda leads her from king to king, describing each: the lord of Magadha, the king of Anga, the rulers of Avanti and Anupa, of the Shurasenas, of Kalinga, of the Pandyas.

Kalidasa's most famous image belongs here. As she moves on, each king she passes grows dark, like a mansion on a royal road when the lamp carried at night has gone by.

She stops before Aja and does not move on. Sunanda reads her face, speaks his lineage, and places the garland on his neck.

The women of the city crowd the windows to see the bridegroom, abandoning half-finished braids and half-tied girdles. The marriage is performed with the sacred fire.

On the road home the rejected kings ambush the wedding party. Aja fights them, then uses the Sammohana and the whole army falls asleep. With an arrow he writes on their banners that Raghu's son has taken their glory but, out of mercy, not their lives.

At Ayodhya Raghu sees that his son is ready. He hands over the kingdom and gives himself to the life of contemplation.

Raghu reaches the end of his long discipline and leaves the world. Aja rules well and Indumati bears a son, Dasharatha.

One day in the palace garden the sage Narada passes overhead. The wind lifts a celestial garland from the tip of his veena and it falls on Indumati's breast. She dies at once.

Aja's lament is one of the great elegies of Sanskrit. If a flower can kill, he asks, what can death not use as a weapon? Vasishtha sends word: Indumati was the apsara Harini, cursed by the sage Trinabindu to be born as a woman until she saw a flower of heaven. The curse has ended. Grief is useless.

Aja lives on for the sake of his young son. When Dasharatha is old enough to rule, Aja fasts until death where the Sarayu meets the Ganga, and is reunited with his wife in the gardens of heaven.

Dasharatha is a powerful king who marries three queens: Kausalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra. Spring arrives in a long, lush description, and the king goes hunting.

At dusk by a lake he hears a gurgling sound and shoots at it, thinking it an elephant drinking. It is a young hermit filling a water pot. Dasharatha carries the dying youth to his blind parents. The father curses him: he too will die grieving for a son.

Dasharatha, still without children, hears the curse almost as a promise.

The gods, oppressed by Ravana, go to Vishnu as he rests on the cosmic serpent and praise him. He agrees to be born as Dasharatha's son.

The sage Rishyashringa performs the sacrifice for sons, and a divine figure rises from the fire with a bowl of sweet offering. The queens share it. Kausalya bears Rama, Kaikeyi bears Bharata, and Sumitra bears the twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna.

The sage Vishvamitra asks for the boys to protect his sacrifice. Rama kills the demoness Tataka and drives off Maricha and Subahu, and Vishvamitra teaches him divine weapons.

On the way to Mithila, the touch of Rama's foot frees Ahalya from her curse. In King Janaka's court Rama lifts and breaks the great bow of Shiva and wins Sita. All four brothers marry.

Returning home they meet Parashurama, the warrior sage, enraged at the broken bow. Rama strings Parashurama's own bow, and the older avatar gives way to the younger.

Kaikeyi claims two old boons: Rama's exile and Bharata's crowning. Rama goes to the forest with Sita and Lakshmana, and Dasharatha dies of grief, fulfilling the hermit's curse. Bharata refuses the throne and rules only as Rama's regent, keeping his sandals on the seat.

In the forest the demoness Shurpanakha is rebuffed and mutilated, her brothers are destroyed, and Ravana sends Maricha disguised as a golden deer. Ravana carries Sita off to Lanka, wounding the vulture Jatayu.

Rama allies with Sugriva and the monkey host, Hanuman finds Sita, a bridge crosses the sea, and in the great battle Rama, riding Indra's chariot, kills Ravana.

Rama, Sita and their allies fly home in the aerial chariot Pushpaka. As they cross the ocean and the forests, Rama points out the places of their story to Sita: where the bridge stood, where he searched for her, the lakes and hermitages that held his grief.

It is a travelogue of memory, one of the loveliest cantos in the poem. Bharata comes out to meet them carrying the sandals he has guarded for fourteen years.

Rama is crowned, and for a time all is well. Sita is pregnant. Then Rama learns that his subjects are whispering about a queen who lived in another man's house.

Putting the throne above himself, he has Lakshmana leave Sita in the forest near the hermitage of Valmiki. Sita's message back to Rama is dignified rather than bitter: she asks to be remembered as a subject entitled to his protection, and resolves to live for the child she carries.

Sita bears twins, Lava and Kusha, who are raised by Valmiki and learn his Ramayana. Shatrughna defeats the demon Lavana. Rama performs a horse sacrifice with a golden image of Sita beside him.

The twins sing the Ramayana at the sacrifice and are recognised as Rama's sons. Sita, called to prove her purity once more, asks the Earth her mother to take her, and the ground opens.

Rama divides the kingdom among the sons of the four brothers. Kusha receives Kushavati and Lava receives Shravasti. Then Rama leaves the world, and the people of Ayodhya follow him.

One night in Kushavati a woman appears in Kusha's locked chamber. She is the presiding goddess of Ayodhya. Since Rama left, she says, the city lies empty: jackals howl where women once sang, peacocks no longer dance, the river steps are broken and wild elephants tear at the lotus pools.

Kusha leads his army and court back to Ayodhya and rebuilds it. Markets reopen, temples are restored, the city lives again.

In summer, bathing in the Sarayu, Kusha loses a victory armlet that had come down from Rama. Divers find nothing. Kusha aims a weapon at the river, and Kumuda, king of the Nagas, rises from the water to return it, bringing his sister Kumudvati as Kusha's bride.

Kusha and Kumudvati have a son, Atithi. Kusha dies fighting beside Indra against the demon Durjaya, and Atithi is crowned.

This canto is Kalidasa's portrait of good kingship. Atithi is accessible to his subjects, quick to decide, steady in counsel, a king whose strength is in being trusted rather than feared.

The narrative quickens into a royal list: Nishadha, Nala, Nabhas, Pundarika, Kshemadhanvan, Devanika, Ahinagu, Pariyatra, Shila, Unnabha, Vajranabha, Shankhana, Vyushitashva, Vishvasaha, Hiranyanabha, Kaushalya, Brahmishtha, Putra, Pushya, Dhruvasandhi and Sudarshana. Each gets a verse or two, often a pun on his name.

Dhruvasandhi dies hunting, killed by a lion. His son Sudarshana is only six. The ministers crown him anyway, and the old courtiers bow to the feet of a boy that dangle above the floor of the throne.

Sudarshana's son Agnivarna inherits a kingdom made safe by his ancestors and leaves it to his ministers. He lives in the inner palace among music, wine and lovers. When his subjects ask to see their king, he lets them glimpse only a foot hanging from a window.

The wasting illness comes. He ignores his physicians. His ministers hide his decline, and when he dies they cremate him quietly in the palace garden.

There is no son, but the chief queen is pregnant. The ministers place her on the throne, and the people wait on the child in her womb. That is where Kalidasa stops.