The Megha Duta Or Cloud Messenger - A Poem In The Sanskrit Language

The author reveals that he has taken the liberty of giving to the following little work the sanction of your Lordship's name, not with the idea, that so humble a tribute can add anything to its lustre; but with the hope, that it may reflect some credit upon the pages to which it is prefixed. Meghadūta is a lyric poem written by Kālidāsa (c. 4th-5th century CE), considered to be one of the greatest Sanskrit poets. It describes how a yakṣa (or nature spirit), who had been banished by his master to a remote region for a year, asked a cloud to take a message of love to his wife. The poem become well-known in Sanskrit literature and inspired other poets to write similar poems (known as "messenger-poems", or Sandesha Kavya) on similar themes. The antiquity and excellence of the sacred language of the Hindus, have naturally attracted attention, and excited curiosity: possessing considerable claims to be regarded as the most ancient form of speech with which mankind is acquainted, it appeals strongly to the interest that invests the early ages of the world; and constructed upon perhaps the most perfect plan, which human ingenuity has devised, it tempts them to an enquiry whether its perfection be limited by its structure, or whether the merits of Hindu compositions partake, or not, of the beauty of the language, in which they are composed.

Horace Hayman Wilson (1786 - 1860) was an English orientalist. He became deeply interested in the ancient language and literature of India, and was the first person to translate the Rigveda into English. In 1813 he published the Sanskrit text with a free translation in English rhymed verse of Kalidasa's lyrical poem, the Meghaduta, or Cloud-Messenger. He prepared the first Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1819) from materials compiled by native scholars, supplemented by his own researches. This work was only superseded by the Sanskritwörterbuch (1853-1876) of Rudolf Roth and Otto von Böhtlingk, who expressed their obligations to Wilson in the preface to their great work. He was interested in Ayurveda and traditional Indian medical and surgical practices. He compiled the local practices observed for cholera and leprosy in his publications in the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta.

THE advantages that have been found to result from the publication of the First Book of the Hitopadesa, and the Selections from the Mahábhárata, as Class-books for the East-India College, have induced Professor Johnson to prepare an edition of the Meglia Dúta, or Cloud Messenger, for the same purpose, on a similar plan.

The Text of the Megha Dúta was printed in the year 1813, at Calcutta. It has the faults of most of the early-printed Sanskrit books; the words are altogether unseparated, and the Text is not always accurate. In the present edition, these defects have been remedied; the faulty passages have been corrected; and the words have been detached wherever their separation was consistent with an observance of the laws that regulate euphonic combination. A Glossary, intended to serve at once as a Lexicon and a Grammar to the Text, compiled by Professor Johnson, is added to the publication.

As the style of the poem is more difficult than that of the preceding Class-books, Professor Johnson has considered it desirable to reprint the Translation in English Verse, which was the principal object of the original publication in Calcutta; for, as considerable freedom, or, it may sometimes be thought, license, was taken in that Translation, its use will not, it is to be expected, preclude the necessity of mental effort on the part of the Student, in order to developed the sense of the Sanskrit Text, whilst it may not unallowably lighten his labour, by furnishing him with a general notion of its purport. I have acquiesced in the republication, in the hope that it will afford no greater help than it is designed to render; for experience has satisfied me that the aid of Translations, in the study of any language, except for a short time, perhaps, in the earliest stage of it, is exceedingly mischievous and deceptive. It induces carelessness, encourages indolence, exercises no faculty but the memory, and employs that faculty with so little energy of application that the impressions received are faint and superficial, and fade and are effaced almost as soon as they are made. The progress effected with such assistance is a mere waste of even the scant expenditure of time and trouble with which it has been attained; for it is unreal-a mere mockery- as the learner will soon discover, to his surprise, and, if he feel rightly, to his mortification, when he tries his strength upon passages unprovided with such illusory aid, and finds that he is as little able to understand them as if his studies were yet to be begun. It has been with some reluctance, therefore, that I have assented to the proposition; and have done so only in the trust that the verse translation will by no means obviate the necessity of independent exertion.