THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

238 The Harmony of Virtuea huge dark cloud striding northwards from Crouncharundhra to“the dark foot of Vishnou lifted in impetuous act to quell Bali”,ÙyÀmaÕ pÀdo baliniyamanÀbhyudyatasyeva viØÍoÕ. This I havetranslated,“Dark like the cloudy foot of highest GodWhen starting from the dwarf-shape world-immenseWith Titan-quelling step through heaven he strode.”It will be at once objected that this is not translation, but themost licentious paraphrase. This is not so if my original contentionbe granted that the business of poetical translation is to reproducenot the exact words but the exact image, associationsand poetical beauty and flavour of the original. There is not asingle word in the translation I have instanced which does notrepresent something at once suggested to the Indian reader bythe words of the text. Vishnou is nothing to the English readerbut some monstrous and bizarre Hindu idol; to the Hindu He isGod Himself, the word is therefore more correctly representedin English by “highest God” than by Vishnou; ÙyÀmaÕ pÀdaÕ isclosely represented by “dark like the cloudy foot”, so the wordcloudy being necessary both to point the simile which is not apparentand natural to the English reader as to the Indian and todefine the precise sort of darkness indicated by the term ÙyÀmaÕ;Bali has no meaning or association in English, but in theSanskrit it represents the same idea as “Titan”; only the particularname recalls a certain theosophic legend which is a householdword to the Hindu, that of the dwarf-Vishnou who obtainedfrom the Titan Bali as much land as he could cover with threesteps, then filling the whole world with himself with one stridemeasured the earth, with another the heavens and with the thirdplacing his foot on the head of Bali thrust him down into bottomlessHell. All this immediately arises before the mental eye of theHindu as he reads Kalidasa's finely chosen words. The impetuousand vigorous term abhyudyatasya both in sound and sense suggestsimages, the sudden starting up of the world-pervading deityfrom the dwarf shape he had assumed while the comparison tothe cloud reminds him that the second step of the three referred