THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

242 The Harmony of Virtuemetaphor than sense who condemn the dressing up of the Aryanbeauty in English clothes and therefore demand that not onlyshould the exact words be kept but the exact idiom. For instancethey would perpetrate the following: “Covering with lashes water-heavyfrom anguish, her eye gone to meet from former pleasantnessthe nectar-cool lattice-path-entered feet of the moon andthen at once turned away, like a land-lotus-plant on a cloudyday not awake, not sleeping”. Now quite apart from the execrableEnglish and the want of rhythm, the succession of the actionsand the connexions of thought which are made admirablyclear in the Sanskrit by the mere order of the words, is hereentirely obscured and lost; moreover the poetic significance ofthe words prÈtyÀ (pleasantness) and abhre, implying here rainas well as cloud and the beautiful force of salilagurubhiÕ (water-heavy)are not even hinted at, while the meaning and applicationof the simile quite apparent in the original needs bringingout in the English. For the purpose of immediate comparison Igive here my own version: “The moon beams....”This I maintain though not literal is almost as close and meetswithout overstepping all the requirements of good translation. Forthe better illustration of the method, I prefer however to quote amore typical stanza:ÙabdÀyante madhuramanilaiÕ kÈcakÀÕ pÓryamÀÍÀÕsaÌsaktÀbhistripuravijayo gÈyate kinnarÈbhiÕ,nirhÀdÈ te muraja iva cet kandareØu dhvaniÕ syÀtsaÚgÈtÀrtho nanu paÙupatestatra bhÀvÈ samagram.Rendered into literal English this is:The bamboos filling with winds are noising sweetly, theTripour-conquest is being sung by the glued-together Kinnaries,if thy thunder should be in the glens like the sound on a drum— the material of the concert of the Beast-Lord is to be completethere, eh?My own translation runs,Of Tripour slain in lovely dances joinedAnd linked troops the Oreads of the hill