1861 .] 
Indian Idylls, No. I. 
Ill 
Indian Idylls, No. I. — By R. T. H. Griffith, Esq., M. A. 
[Mr. Griffith, who has already distinguished himself hy his trans- 
lation of Kalidasa’s Kumara Sambliava, — in some respects the best 
English translation which has yet appeared of any Sanskrit poem, — 
has sent us the following Idyll, as the first of a series which is to 
comprise three or four of the best episodes of the same poet’s other 
epic the Raghuvansa. In former years the Journal used to publish 
similar translations, as that of the first canto of the Kum. Sambh. by 
Dr. Mill in 1833 ; and the Editors are gratified to he able to revive the 
long discontinued practice under such favourable auspices. — Eds.] 
Dilipa.* 
Great authors of the world, almighty Pair, 
Listen, 0 listen to your servant’s prayer ! 
Ye who are knit, by Love’s eternal tie, 
Close as the links that word and sense ally,t 
Hear, mighty S'iva, gracious Um£,J hear ; 
Inspire my words, and let their sense be clear ! 
But ah, the folly ! Can I hope to guide 
My frail hark safely o’er a boundless tide ! 
How men will mock the humble bard who sings 
The ancient glories of the Sun-born Kings, § 
Like a young child with little hands outspread 
For fruit that glows above a giant’s head ! 
* Tlie story, here roughly translated, is taken from the 1st, 2nd, and part of 
the 3rd books of Kalidasa's Raghuvansa, or Children of the Sun. The whole 
poem has been translated into Latin by Steuzler, and into French by M. Hippo- 
lyte Fauehe, and hastily thrown into English verse by the present translator. 
The poem contains some magnificent bits, but very much of it is, to our ideas, 
intensely prosaic and intolerably childish. The service of the cow in this story 
will, as Professor H. II. Wilson has observed, “ raise a smile upon the face of a 
European critic, but it is not unpoetical and is intensely characteristic.” 
t The Miinansa school of philosophy holds that a word and its meaning are 
eternally and inseparably connected. 
{ Urna’s birth, beauty, love, penance, and marriage to Siva, aro charmingly 
described in Kalidasa’s Kumara- Sambhava, or Birth of the War-god. 
§ A race of princes, descended from the sun, whose capital was Ayodhya in 
Oudh. 
