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_ The Hindoo's inability to rise above sensuality also manifests itself in his admiration of personal beauty, which is purely carnal. No. 217 of Hala's anthology declares:
"Her face resembles the moon, the juice of her
mouth nectar; but wherewith shall I compare
(my delight) when I seize her, amid violent
struggles, by the head and kiss her?"
Apart from such grotesque comparisons of the face to the moon, or of the teeth to the lotos, there is nothing in the amorous hyperbole of Hindoo poets that rises above the voluptuous into the neighborhood of esthetic admiration. Hindoo statues embodying the poets' ideal of women's waists so narrow that they can be spanned by the hand, show how infinitely inferior the Hindoos were to the Greeks in their appreciation of human beauty. The Hindoo poet's ideal of feminine beauty is a wasp-waist and grossly exaggerated bust and hips. Bhavabhuti allows his heroine Malati to be thus addressed (by a girl!):
"The wind, sandal-cool, refreshes your moon-face, in which nectar-like drops of perspiration appear from your walking, during which you lifted your feet but slowly, as they wavered under the weight of your thighs, which are strong as those of an elephant."
Usually, of course, these grotesquely coarse compliments are paid by the enamored men. Kalidasa makes King Pururavas, crazed by the loss of Urvasi, exclaim:
"Have you seen the divine beauty, who is compelled by the weight of her hips to walk slowly, and who never sees the flight of youth, whose bosom is high and swelling, whose gait is as the swan's?"
In another place he refers to her footsteps "pressed in deeper behind by the weight of the beloved's hips," Satyavant has no other epithet for Savitri than "beautiful-hipped." It is the same with Sakuntala's lover (who has been held up as an ancient embodiment of modern ethereal sentiment). What does he admire in Sakuntala? "Here," he says, "in the yellow sand are a number of fresh footsteps; they are higher in front, but depressed behind by the weight of her hips." "How slow was her gait--and naturally so, considering the weight of her hips." Compare also the poet's remarks on her bodily charms when the king first sees her.[284] Among all of the king's hyperbolic compliments and remarks there is not one that shows him to be fascinated by anything but the purely bodily charms of the young girl, charms of a coarse, voluptuous kind, calculated to increase _his_ pleasure should he succeed in winning her, while there is not a trace of a desire on his part to make _her_ happy. Nor is there anything in Sakuntala's symptoms rising above selfish distress at her uncertainty, or selfish longing to possess her lover. In a word, there is no romantic love, in our sense of the word, in the dramas of the most romantic poet of the most romantic nation of antiquity.[285]
[FOOTNOTE 284: Preferably in Boehtlingk's literal version, which I have followed whenever Kellner idealizes. In this case Kellner speaks of covering "den Umfang des Bruestepaars," while Boethlingk has "das starke Bruestepaar," which especially arouse the king's "love."]
[FOOTNOTE 285: It would hardly be surprising if Kalidasa had had some conception of true love sentiment, for not only did he possess a delicate poetic fancy, but he lived at a time when tidings of the chivalrous treatment and adoration of women might have come to him from Arabia or from Europe. The tradition that he flourished as early as the first century of our era was demolished by Professor Weber (_Ind. Lit. Ges._, 217). Professor Max Mueller found no reason to place him earlier than our sixth century; and more recent evidence indicates that he lived as late as the eleventh. Yet he had no conception of supersensual love; marriage was to him, as to all Hindoos, a union of bodies, not of souls. He had not learned from the Arabs (like the Persian poet Saadi, of the thirteenth century, whom I referred to on p. 199) that the only test of true love is self-sacrifice. It is true that Bhavabhuti, the Hindoo poet, who is believed to have lived at the end of our seventh century, makes one of the lovers in _Malati and Madhava_ slay a tiger and save his beloved's life; but that is also a case of self-defence. The other lover--the "hero" of the drama--faints when he sees his friend in danger! Generally speaking, there is a peculiar effeminacy, a lack of true manliness, about Hindoo lovers They are always moping, whining, fainting; the kings--the typical lovers--habitually neglect the affairs of state to lead a life of voluptuous indulgence. Hindoo sculpture emphasizes the same trait: "Even in the conception of male figures," says Luebke, "there is a touch of this womanly softness;" there is "a lack of an energetic life, of a firm contexture of bone and muscle." It is not of such enervated stuff that true lovers are made.] _
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