1876.] 



Prannath Pandit— Morals of Kdliddsa. 



353 



piness* and the disciple of the sage VaratanH eloquently exposes to Aia 

 the futility of killing himself through grief for his Queen.f 



Maiming.-Eecognising the justifiableness of maiming a member for 

 the preservation of the whole, Kalidasa has adduced the example of a snake- 

 bitten finger, which though otherwise so dear, must be excised. J 



Sati.-In the case of Sati§ the individual duty of self-preserva- 

 tion is subordinated to the higher duty of conjugal fidelity, and it cannot 

 be urged as a reproach against our poet, that he was one-sided in his con- 

 ceptions. Whatever might be the popular practice, Kalid£sa|| could con- 

 ceive of a husband's immolating himself on the funeral pyre of his beloved 

 wife, or deterred from that by exterior considerations, killing himself deliber- 

 ately in some manner more orthodox. In the case of the disconsolate 

 consort of the God of Love, the final catastrophe is avoided,^ without 

 any detriment to her conjugal fidelity, by the intervention of a voice 

 from the sky which bids her desist, as her husband would at last be 

 restored to life. 



Suicide.— Mallinatha** feels himself bound to justify the apparent 

 immorality of the suicide of the blind parents of the boy whom Dasharatha 

 had unwittingly dealt a death- wound, and he does so on the ground of 

 a text which permits decrepit Vcmaprasthas, when no longer able to per- 

 form sacrificial rites, to put an end to their existence by falling from 

 a precipice, burning in fire, or drowning in water. The suicide of 

 Eama mayff be explained on two theories. Firstly, the obligation that the 

 poet was under, of not falsifying such a cardinal point in the traditional 

 history ; and secondly, the incompatibility of the conception of death by 

 disease or old age, with that of an incarnation of the Supreme. Deity." 



Health. — Early rising is one of the best means of preserving our 

 health, and this Kalidasa predicated of his heroes, though he has said 

 nothing about the general duty of preserving our health. The princes of 

 the solar race are very regular about the hour that they left their beds, % J 



* nw% *tm-*wTWKrm\$miT?im^*Tm^\ i Eaghu., 11. so. 



t Eaghu., VIII. 83—90. 



t <ST% -%W> fs^^TCKlF^TC^WT I Eaghu., I. 28. 

 § Kaglm., XVII. 6. 

 || Kaglm., VIII. 72, 94, 95. 

 f Kumara Samhhava, IV. 39-45. 

 ** Comm. on Eaghu., IX. 81. Sf ^mmWrl^JW' I ^tfJSTTTCHW 3TTW3J 



ft Eaghu., XV. 103. 



Eaghu., I. 6. 



