Urvashi, The Nymph Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

Urvashi is a celestial nymph
In Indra's court and was held to be
The most beautiful of all apsaras.
She is perennially youthful
And infinitely charming and yet elusive.
She is a source as much of delight as of dolour.
Sage Nara-Narayana struck his thigh
And created Urvashi the most beautiful.

Pururava was the first king of the Lunar dynasty.
He is associated with the Surya (Sun)
And Usha (the Dawn)and had his abode
In the middle region of the cosmos.
He was born as the son of Budha and Illa.
He was made the sovereign of the whole earth.
The Asuras were his followers and the Devas, his friends.

Urvashi with other nymphs was returning
From the palace of Kuber on Mount Kailash;
She was assaulted by Demon Keshin,
Who abducted her and nymph Chitrelakha.
Responding to the loud wail, help, help,
From a group of apsaras, King Pururava,
Then on his chariot in the air, rescued
Urvashi and Chitrelekha to their delight.

Urvashi for the first time heard the heartbeat
of a mortal when carried in the chariot;
Their physical proximity, though short,
Ignited the passions of King Pururava.
‘From the chariot jolt my shoulder brushed
The shoulder of this nymph with hips like bows.
The touch of our bodies made my hair stand on end
As if the God of love had sprouted within me.'

Practicing monogamy, can he love her?
Being celestial, can she love him the mortal?
Leaving her heart, she returned to the heaven.
Preoccupied by her love for Pururavas,
Urvashi uttered his name in answer
To a question about her choice of her husband
Which should be Purusottama as per script
In a dance drama in Indra's court.

This invoked the wrath of the sage Bharat.
He cursed her that the man who was in her mind
Would come to her life and bear him a child.
The moment the father would see his child
She would have to return to the heavens.
She sent her friend Chitralekha to find out
Whether Pururava reciprocated her love
In the garden of ‘Gandh Madan'. He was love struck.

‘She doesn't know the ceaseless pain in my heart;
She may know it by magic and scorns me.'
He said to himself that Urvashi overheard
Being invisible to him and melted for him.
Because of him, she was banished from heaven.
Because of her, he forgot his queen, Ausinari,
Urvashi and Pururava united,
And lived in the garden of ‘Gandh Madan'.

The king was watching a sylph on the bank
Of a river, that irritated Urvashi.
His appeasement of her was of no avail
And she slipped into the grove of Kumara,
Son of Siva, where woman is forbidden.
She was transformed into a creeper soon.
The king went mad searching for his beloved
In the grove, passing many days and nights.

‘Peacock, I beg you to tell me this thing:
While roaming grove did you see my love?
Listen! A wild goose gait and a face like the moon-
By the sign that I've told you, you'll know her.'
‘Cuckoo, sweetly chattering, tell me
If you've seen her in Indra's paradise garden.'
‘Goose, if you didn't see my curve-browed love
How have you copied the gait of her walk? '

‘Ruddy drake, were you splashing in the lake.
Tell me' you didn't see her splashing in the lake,
‘Bee, you'd say that her eyes are bewitching
But you cannot have seen my love's body-
Had you tasted the honeyed perfume of her sighs
You'd have found no pleasure in this lotus.'
‘Elephant, did you see my love as she passed
In this grove? The moon with scars can't match her.'

‘Lord of every earth-bearing mountain,
Have you seen the woman I deserted,
A nymph, a beauty in every limb,
Dwelling on the edge of your lovely grove? '
‘Crookedly the river surges forward
Roiling in the wake of my neglect-
Surely this is the jealous Urvashi
Transferred into a raging river.'

‘Deer, have you seen my love in the grove?
I will tell you the mark that betrays her-
As she softly blinks her large brown eyes,
My blessed love has the look of your doe.'
Some omniscient sage took pity on the king
And said about the gem he found on the rock,
‘The man who wears this jewel accomplishes
Instant reunion with his beloved.'

Pururava spotted the creeper there
And embraced it, wearing the gem, to see
Urvashi enter, stepping into the creeper.
Her emergence appeased his soul and body.
‘Peacock, cuckoo, goose, ruddy drake,
Bee, elephant, mountain, river, deer-
While wandering, weeping in the forest
Was there anyone I did not ask about you? '

For the first time Urvashi went on to live
In the royal palace. She never parted with
The jewel there on. Sixteen years passed.
One day Urvashi was taking a bath
In the palace pond; a crow dived over
Urvashi's jewel and carried it to the sky
In its beak. This was the jewel Pururava
had rescued Urvashi with in the grove.

The chased crow fell in the courtyard on its own.
The guards fetched it and an arrow that killed it.
Pururava read the name etched on it,
"Ayu, the son of Pururava and Urvashi".
He summoned the youth who was his replica.
Ayu's guardian sages broke the truth to him.
‘When the king sees his child, she must return
So, she postponed it by keeping the child away.'

Urvashi entered and acknowledged the truth.
‘I was afraid of being separated
From you so as soon as he was born I did
That he was brought up away in a hermitage
So that your seeing your son, which is linked
To my departure to Indra in heaven,
Could be postponed and our living prolonged.
She had kept her conceiving invisible.

It was a time of gain and loss for the king.
He gained an heir but lost his beloved wife.
Urvashi tearfully bid him farewell
And left for the heavens. The king resigned.
He crowned Ayu the next king and took refuge
In Gandh Madan. It was where he had spent
His best years with Urvashi as lovers.
The sufferings of lovers never go in vain
16.08.2020
(The passages within quotation marks are based on
The text of Sanskrit scholar Kalidas in 4th century)