Abhijnanashakuntalam (Devanagari: अभिज्ञानशाकुन्तलम्,IAST:Abhijñānaśākuntalam), also known asShakuntala,The Recognition of Shakuntala,The Sign of Shakuntala, andmany other variants, is aSanskrit play by the ancientIndianpoetKālidāsa, dramatizing the story ofŚakuntalā told in the epicMahābhārata and regarded as the best of Kālidāsa's works.[1] Its exact date is uncertain, but Kālidāsa is often placed in the 4th century CE.[2]
Plots similar to the play appear in earlier texts. There is a story mentioned in theMahābhārata. A story of similar plot appear in the BuddhistJātaka tales as well. In the Mahābhārata the story appears as a precursor to the Pāṇḍava and Kaūrava lineages. In the story King Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā meet in the forest and get estranged and ultimately reunited. Their sonBharata is said to have laid the foundation of the dynasty that ultimately led toKauravas andPāṇḍavas.[4][5][6][7]
Manuscripts differ on what its exact title is. Usual variants areAbhijñānaśakuntalā,Abhijñānaśākuntala,Abhijñānaśakuntalam andAbhijñānaśākuntalam.[8] The Sanskrit title meanspertaining to the recognition of Śakuntalā, so a literal translation could beOf Śakuntalā who is recognized. The title is sometimes translated asThe token-for-recognition of Śakuntalā orThe Sign of Śakuntalā.[citation needed] Titles of the play in published translations includeSacontalá or The Fatal Ring andŚakoontalá or The Lost Ring.[9][10]
Characters reciting the benediction are:
Characters of the play listed in order of their appearance:[11]
| Character | Description |
|---|---|
| Sūta (Charioteer) | The royal charioteer who also serves as a close companion to the king. |
| KingDuṣyanta | Hero (Nayaka); ruler from the Puru branch of theLunar dynasty. |
| Vaikhānasa | A reclusive forest hermit belonging to the spiritual lineage of sage Kanva. |
| Two Ascetics | Disciples receiving spiritual guidance from sage Kanva. |
| Śakuntalā | Heroine (Nayika); child of the sageViśvāmitra and the celestial nymphMenakā, raised under the guardianship of sage Kanva. |
| Anasūyā | Young woman devoted to an ascetic life; companion of Śakuntalā, her name signifying “free from envy.” |
| Priyamvadā | Young female ascetic and friend of Śakuntalā, her name meaning “pleasant speaker.” |
| Ascetic (off-stage) | A practitioner of ascetic discipline in the service of sage Kanva. |
| Vidūṣaka (Mādhavya) | A corpulentBrahmin who serves as the king’s intimate companion and trusted adviser. |
| Attendants | Female members of the royal guard who also serve as the king’s bow-bearers. |
| Doorkeeper (Raivataka) | Gate attendant in the royal court. |
| General | The chief military commander serving under the king. |
| Two Seers | Young hermits residing in Kanva’s forest retreat. |
| Karabhaka | A royal envoy entrusted with delivering messages. |
| Assistant Sacrificer | A member of Kanva’s ascetic circle who aids in ritual duties. |
| Gautamī | An elder woman devoted to ascetic life in Kanva’s hermitage. |
| Voice in the Air (Act 3) | A disembodied voice delivering divine or unseen guidance. |
| Durvāsas (off-stage) | A formidable and quick-tempered ascetic sage. |
| Pupil (Viṣkambhaka) | A student under Kanva’s spiritual tutelage. |
| Ascetic (off-stage) | An unseen follower of Kanva’s ascetic order. |
| Three Hermit Women | Female recluses living in Kanva’s forest hermitage. |
| First Young Ascetic (Nārada) | A youthful ascetic disciple of Kanva. |
| Second Young Ascetic | Another youthful ascetic disciple of Kanva. |
| Kanva | A venerable Brahmin sage, head of the hermitage, and foster-father of Śakuntalā; also identified with the sage Kāśyapa. |
| Śārṅgarava | An ascetic belonging to Kanva’s order. |
| Voice in the Air (Act 4) | A supernatural voice heard without a visible speaker. |
| Voice (Haṃsapadikā) | A disembodied female voice, meaning “one with the gait of a swan.” |
| Chamberlain (Vātāyana) | Principal officer overseeing the administration of the royal household. |
| Doorkeeper (Vetravatī) | A female gate attendant in the royal residence. |
| One of Duṣyanta’s Consorts | A royal wife of King Duṣyanta. |
| Chief Officer of the Royal Household | Oversees domestic and ceremonial affairs within the palace. |
| Female Attendant | A woman serving in a supporting role within the royal quarters. |
| Two Bards (off-stage) | Court poets or singers whose voices are heard but who remain unseen. |
| Ārāḍvata | An ascetic associated with Kanva’s community. |
| Court Priest (Preceptor Somarāta) | The king’s chief religious adviser and officiant in rituals. |
| Two Policemen | Enforcers of law and order in the royal domain. |
| Chief of Police (Mitrāvasu) | Senior law officer of the realm; the king’s brother-in-law. |
| Man | A fisherman encountered in the course of events. |
| Sānumati | A celestial nymph and confidante of Menakā, mother of Śakuntalā. |
| First Gardener (Parabhṛtikā, “Little Cuckoo”) | A female gardener serving the palace grounds. |
| Second Gardener (Madhukarikā, “Little Bee”) | Another female gardener attending the royal gardens. |
| Caturikā | A female domestic servant. |
| Bowbearer | A woman tasked with carrying and maintaining the king’s bow. |
| Mātali | The divine charioteer ofIndra, sovereign of the gods. |
| Sarvadamana | The young son of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā, later famed as Bharata. |
| Two Female Ascetics | Women dedicated to ascetic practice. |
| Mārīca (Kāśyapa) | A celestial sage, lord of the divine hermitage, and father of the god Indra. |
| Aditi | Wife of Mārīca. |
| Pupil (Galava) | A student under the instruction of Mārīca. |
The protagonist isŚakuntalā, daughter of the sageViśvāmitra and theapsaraMenakā. Abandoned at birth by her parents, Śakuntalā is reared in the secluded hermitage of the sageKaṇva, and grows up a comely but innocent maiden.
While Kaṇva and the other elders of the hermitage are away on a pilgrimage,Duṣyanta, king ofHastināpura, comes hunting in the forest. Just as he was about to slay a deer, Vaikhānasa, a sage obstructs him saying that the deer was from the hermitage and must not be slain. He politely requests the king to take his arrow back, to which the king complies. The sage then informs him that they are going to collect firewood for thesacrificial fire and asks him to join them. They then spot the hermitage of Sage Kaṇva and decide to pay the hermits a visit. However the king decides to go to this penance grove dressed up as a commoner. He also stops the chariot farther away to not disturb the hermits. The moment he enters the hermitage and spots Śakuntalā, he is captivated by her, courts her in royal style, and marries her. Soon, he has to leave to take care of affairs in the capital. The king gives her a ring which, as it turns out, will eventually have to be presented to him when she appears in his court to claim her place as queen.
One day, the anger-prone sageDurvāsa arrives when Śakuntala is lost in her thoughts, and when she fails to attend to him, he curses her by bewitching Duṣyanta into forgetting her existence. The only cure is for Śakuntala to show the king thesignet ring that he gave her.
She later travels to meet him, and has to cross a river. The ring is lost when it slips off her hand as she dips it in the water playfully. On arrival the king is unable to recognize the person he married and therefore refuses to acknowledge her. Śakuntala is abandoned by her companions who declare that she should remain with her husband. They then return to the hermitage.
Fortunately, the ring is discovered by a fisherman in the belly of a fish, and presents it in the king's court. Duṣyanta realizes his mistake - too late. The newly wise Duṣyanta is asked to defeat an army ofAsuras, and is rewarded byIndra with a journey through heaven. After returning to Earth years later, Duṣyanta finds Śakuntala and their son by chance, and recognizes them.
In other versions, especially the one found in the 'Mahābhārata', Śakuntala is not reunited until their son Bharata is born, and found by the king playing with lion cubs. Duṣyanta meets young Bharata and enquires about his parents, and finds out that Bharata is indeed his son. Bharata is an ancestor of the lineages of theKauravas andPāṇḍavas, who fought the epic war of the Mahābhārata. It is after this Bharata that India was given the name "Bhāratavarsha", the 'Land of Bharata'.[12]
By the 18th century, Western poets were beginning to get acquainted with works of Indian literature andphilosophy.[citation needed]Shakuntala was the first Indian drama to be translated into a Western language, bySir William Jones in 1789. In the next 100 years, there were at least 46 translations in twelve European languages.[13]
Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring, Sir William Jones' translation of Kālidāsa's play, was first published in Calcutta, followed by European republications in 1790, 1792 and 1796.[9][14] A German (byGeorg Forster) and a French version of Jones' translation were published in 1791 and 1803 respectively.[14][15][16]Goethe published an epigram about Shakuntala in 1791, and inhisFaust he adopted a theatrical convention from the prologue of Kālidāsa's play.[14]Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel's plan to translate the work into German never materialised, but he did however publish a translation of theMahābhārata version of Śakuntalā's story in 1808.[17]Goethe's epigram goes like this:[18]
Wilt thou the blossoms of spring and the fruits that are later in season,
Wilt thou have charms and delights, wilt thou have strength and support,
Wilt thou with one short word encompass the earth and the heaven,
All is said if I name only, [Shakuntala], thee.
Raja Ravi Varma was widely praised for his ability to merge the Western academic painting style with Indian themes. In the 1870s, as he began creating narrative paintings, he drew inspiration from India’s classical heritage—drawing upon the epics, Puranas, and Kalidasa’s plays. His first major work featuring Shakuntala,Shakuntala Patralekhan (Shakuntala Writing a Love Letter to Dushyanta), was painted for the 1876 Madras exhibition. The painting, which depicted Shakuntala lying on the forest floor in a yellow sari, surrounded by her friends and animal companions, won a gold medal and garnered widespread acclaim. It was immediately purchased by the Duke of Buckingham, then Governor of Madras. Though the location of the original painting remains unknown, it was widely reproduced in books and lithographs, including the 1903 publication Ravi Varma: The Indian Artist. Given the colonial fascination with theAbhijnanasakuntalam narrative at the time, Varma was encouraged to create multiple renditions of Shakuntala. His later works included Shakuntala (1888, Maharaja Fatehsingh Museum, Baroda), Shakuntala (1898, Government Museum, Madras), andShakuntala Looking for Dushyanta (1898, Shri Chitra Art Gallery, Trivandrum). One of his Shakuntala paintings was even selected as the frontispiece forMonier-Williams' 1887 edition of Kalidasa’s play.[19] His most famous painting,Shakuntala Looking for Dushyanta captures the moment when she feigns removing a thorn from her foot while actually glancing back to see if Dushyanta notices her.[20]
Varma’s works were equally admired by Orientalists and Indian nationalists. In 1895, Varma’s first lithographic print, The Birth of Shakuntala, won the "Best Lithograph" prize at the Bombay Art Society’s annual exhibition.[19]
Shakuntala was disapproved of as a text for school and college students in theBritish Raj in the 19th century, as popular Indian literature was deemed, in the words ofCharles Trevelyan, to be "marked with the greatest immorality and impurity", and Indian students were thought by colonial administrators to be insufficiently morally and intellectually advanced to read the Indian texts that were taught and praised in Britain.[21]
When Leopold Schefer became a student ofAntonio Salieri in September 1816, he had been working on an opera about Shakuntala for at least a decade, a project which he did however never complete.[22]Franz Schubert, who had been a student of Salieri until at least December of the same year, started composing hisSakuntala opera,D 701, in October 1820.[22][23]Johann Philipp Neumann based thelibretto for this opera on Kālidāsa's play, which he probably knew through one or more of the three German translations that had been published by that time.[24] Schubert abandoned the work in April 1821 at the latest.[22] A short extract of the unfinished score was published in 1829.[24] AlsoVáclav Tomášek left an incompleteSakuntala opera.[25]
Kālidāsa'sŚakuntalā was the model for the libretto ofKarl von Perfall [de]'s first opera, which premièred in 1853.[26] In 1853Monier Monier-Williams published the Sanskrit text of the play.[27] Two years later he published an English translation of the play, under the title:Śakoontalá or The Lost Ring.[10] A ballet version of Kālidāsa's play,Sacountalâ, on a libretto byThéophile Gautier and with music byErnest Reyer, was first performed in Paris in 1858.[25][28] A plot summary of the play was printed in the score edition ofKarl Goldmark's Overture toSakuntala, Op. 13 (1865).[25]Sigismund Bachrich composed aSakuntala ballet in 1884.[25]Felix Weingartner's operaSakuntala, with a libretto based on Kālidāsa's play, premièred the same year.[29] AlsoPhilipp Scharwenka'sSakuntala, a choral work on a text by Carl Wittkowsky, was published in 1884.[30]
Bengali translations:[relevant?]
Tamil translations include:[relevant?]
Felix Woyrsch's incidental music for Kālidāsa's play, composed around 1886, is lost.[31]Ignacy Jan Paderewski would have composed a Shakuntala opera, on a libretto byCatulle Mendès, in the first decade of the 20th century: the work is however no longer listed as extant in overviews of the composer's or librettist's oeuvre.[32][33][34][35]Arthur W. Ryder published a new English translation ofShakuntala in 1912.[36] Two years later he collaborated to an English performance version of the play.[37] The work was staged at theGreenwich Village Theatre in New York in 1919 withBeatrice Prentice as Śakuntalā,Frank Conroy as Kaṇva (also director for the production),Joseph Macauley as King Duṣyanta,Grace Henderson as Gautami, and Harold Meltzer as Matali.[38]
ItalianFranco Alfano composed anopera, namedLa leggenda di Sakùntala (The legend of Sakùntala) in its first version (1921) and simplySakùntala in its second version (1952).[39]
Chinese translation:[relevant?]
Fritz Racek's completion of Schubert'sSakontala was performed in Vienna in 1971.[24] Another completion of the opera, byKarl Aage Rasmussen, was published in 2005[40] and recorded in 2006.[23] A scenic performance of this version was premièred in 2010.[citation needed]
Norwegian electronic musicianAmethystium wrote a song called "Garden of Sakuntala" which can be found on the CDAphelion.[citation needed][relevant?] According toPhilip Lutgendorf, the narrative of the movieRam Teri Ganga Maili[when?] recapitulates the story of Shakuntala.[41][relevant?]
InKoodiyattam, the only surviving ancient Sanskrit theatre tradition, prominent in the state ofKerala on India, performances of Kālidāsa's plays are rare. However, internationally recognised Kutiyattam artist andNatyashastra scholar Nātyāchārya VidūshakaratnamPadma ShriGuruMāni Mādhava Chākyār has choreographed a Koodiyattam production ofThe Recognition of Sakuntala.[42][failed verification]
A production directed by Tarek Iskander was mounted for a run at London's Union Theatre in January and February 2009.[citation needed] The play is also appearing on a Toronto stage for the first time as part of the Harbourfront World Stage program.[43] An adaptation by the Magis Theatre Company[44] featuring the music of Indian-American composerRudresh Mahanthappa had its premiere at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York February 11–28, 2010.[citation needed]
It is one of the fewclassical Sanskrit plays that have been adapted to the silver screen in India and of them the most adapted (another being theMṛcchakatikā byShudraka). These films mostly under the title of the heroine (Shakuntala) include ones in:1920 by Suchet Singh, 1920 byShree Nath Patankar, 1929 byFatma Begum, 1931 by Mohan Dayaram Bhavnani, 1931 byJ.J. Madan,1932 bySarvottam Badami, 1932 Hindi film,1940 byEllis Dungan,1941 by Jyotish Bannerjee,1943 byShantaram Rajaram Vankudre, 1961 byBhupen Hazarika,1965 byKunchacko,1966 byKamalakara Kameswara Rao, and2023 byGunasekhar.[45][46] Atelevision film, titledShakuntalam, was an adaptation of the play by Indian theatre directorVijaya Mehta.[47]
Bharat Ek Khoj, a 1988 Indian historical drama television series byShyam Benegal based onJawaharlal Nehru'sThe Discovery of India (1946), included a two part adaptation of the play and Kalidasa's life which aired onDD National.[48] A television series adaptation of thesame name was produced bySagar Arts and aired on the Indian television channelStar One in 2009.[49] It was adapted asShaakuntalam in 2023 as a Telugu film.[50]
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