मेघदूतम्
Examples & Exercises

Again, first year students can ignore this page. It is intended for students desiring to get some practice in commentary in their second year (or the following summer). If you have not already read the page on commentary, please go back and work through it carefully before proceeding. And be sure to review, at minimum, §§1.76-80 in Scholastic Sanskrit.
An excellent way to hone your understanding of anvayas and the syntactic information they communicate is to read an extended passage of a canonical work with a relatively straightforward commentary. Such an exercise will of course benefit all students at this level, but it is especially useful for students who have trouble construing cases, misunderstand their concatenation in anvaya, or are generally hazy in matters of predication. The example provided below comes from Kālidāsa’s मेघदूतम् with Mallinātha’s commentary. One could instead take up Kālidāsa’s कुमारसम्भवम् (also with Mallinātha’s commentary) or any similar combination. The important thing is for the commentary to be anvaya-based, though comparison with a kathaṃbhūtinī commentary is also useful, as noted below.

Translating by Anvaya

After marking up Mallinātha’s commentary on the celebrated opening verse of the मेघदूत, we have:
Reading just the underlined words, we have (vigrahas in (red parentheses)):
(स्वाधिकारात् प्रमत्तः) (कान्ताविरहेण गुरुणा) वर्षभोग्येण भर्तुः शापेन (अस्तंगमितो महिमा यस्य सः अस्तंगमितमहिमा) कश्चिद् यक्षः (जनकतनयायाः स्नानैः पुण्यानि उदकानि येषु तेषु) (छायाप्रधानाः तरवः छायातरवः, स्निग्धाः छायातरवः येषु तेषु) (रामगिरेः आश्रमेषु) वसतिं चक्रे ।
Before worrying about the details, it’s useful to note the basic subject-predicate relation this syntax reveals, since that is generally the core of any sentence and in recognizing it, you will see the skeleton on which the rest of the sentence hangs. Except in the भावे प्रयोग, the subject is the nominative noun the sentence is about and the predicate is what’s being said about it (fundamentally, the finite verb agreeing with it, together with whatever completes the verb’s sense, especially a direct object). Now that Mallinātha has put Kālidāsa’s verse into the expected SOV syntax,* it should be clear that the sentence’s predication is:
  • (कश्चित्) यक्षः (रामगिर्याश्रमेषु) वसतिं चक्रे । “A (certain) yakṣa took up residence (in the hermitages of Rāma’s mountain).”
The parentheticals here could strictly be seen as optional. They’re provided since the first is akin to an indefinite article and the second could be taken to complete the verbal activity of residing. Identifying such core predications is of course how kathaṃbhūtinī-style commentaries begin, so if you want to confirm your understanding, you could consult one, such as Vallabhadeva’s commentary below.

* While it is common to think of Sanskrit as an “SOV” language, the Sanskrit tradition itself more accurately thinks of normative word order in terms of semantic roles (and not grammatical marking). That is, the order given by the tradition is not Nominative (S) Accusative (O) Verb (V), but agent (कर्तृ), patient (कर्मन्), action (क्रिया). For active voice sentences, this does yield an SOV order since—in the active—the Subject and Object are the agent and patient respectively. But for passive sentences (specifically कर्मणि प्रयोग), it yields an Instrumental-Subject-Verb order, since in those passives the agent is in the Instrumental and the patient is the Subject. This is why Deshpande regularly places the instrumental agent before the nominative patient in passives beginning in Lesson 16: e.g., मया नृपस्य दासो दृश्यते । (and not नृपस्य दासो मया दृश्यते ।).

Kathaṃbhūtinī Excursus

Note how Vallabhadeva’s first sentence spells out this core predication for you, before building it out into the verse’s full sentence:
A certain yakṣa (a supernatural person) cakre, took up, residence in the hermitages of Rāma’s mountain, in the penance groves of Mt. Citrakūṭa. [The author] states the reason for [the yakṣa’s] dwelling there upon leaving his city, Alakā, with his power had been caused to set, his power was lost, because of the curse bhartuḥ, of his master, Kubera. Of what sort [was that curse]? kāntāvirahaguruṇā, hard to bear because of his separation from his beloved, and varṣabhogyeṇa, to be suffered for a year. Etc....

Analysis and Translation

Now that we see the core syntax (and know the basic meaning of the sentence), we can take up Mallinātha’s anvaya in full. It is marked up in three ways below:
  1. grammatically — identifying the forms of nouns, verbs, etc.
  2. syntactically — identifying subjects, predicates and their dependents (gerund clauses, participial clauses, genitives, and other complements)
  3. analytically — identifying compounds and subcompounds

मेघदूतम् ॥१॥

S

adj 1

→ (यक्षः)

(स्वाधिकारात्

प्रमत्तः)

m.s.abl. (कर्मधारयः)

m.s.nom. (पञ्चमी-तत्पुरुषः)

from his official duties

having deviated

-

adj 2 (and its series of dependents)

→ (शापेन)

→ (शापेन)

→

→

→ (यक्षः)

(कान्ताविरहेण

गुरुणा)

वर्षभोग्येण

भर्तुः

शापेन

(अस्तंगमितो महिमा यस्य सः)

m.s.ins. (तृतीया-तत्पुरुषः)

m.s.ins. (तृतीया-तत्पुरुषः)

m.s.ins. (द्वितीया-तत्पुरुषः)

m.s.gen.

m.s.ins.

m.s.nom. (समानाधिकरण-बहुव्रीहिः)

due to separation from his beloved

difficult

to be suffered for a year

master’s

by a curse

whose power was caused to end

-

adj 3

subject

→

कश्चित्

यक्षः

m.s.nom.

m.s.nom.

a certain

yakṣa

-

P

adj 1

→ (आश्रमेषु)

(जनकतनयायाः

स्नानैः

पुण्यानि उदकानि येषु तेषु)

f.s.gen. (षष्ठी-तत्पुरुषः)

n.pl.ins.
(तृतीया-तत्पुरुषः)

m.pl.loc. (समानाधिकरण-बहुव्रीहिः)

of Janaka’s daughter

because of the ablutions

those in which the waters were pure

-

adj 2

locative complement

→

→

(छायाप्रधानाः तरवः छायातरवः)
(स्निग्धाः छायातरवः येषु तेषु)

(रामगिरेः आश्रमेषु)

(मध्यमपदलोपि-कर्मधारयः)
m.pl.loc. (समानाधिकरण-बहुव्रीहिः)

m.pl.loc. (षष्ठी-तत्पुरुषः)

(shade-rich trees = shade-trees) those in which the shade-trees are densely clustered

in the hermitages of Rāma’s mountain

-

object

verb

→

वसतिम्

चक्रे

f.s.acc.

3rd s. Ā. perf. √कृ

residence

made

The syntactic analysis here (the parts of speech in the first line and their syntactic dependency, indicated by arrows, in the second) is especially worth noting, as that information is a great aid to translation. Though we have quite a few words outside the core predication, the labeling above reveals that they all comprise just 2 adjectives (one an adjectival phrase) for the subject and 2 adjectives for the locative complement. We know this because in normative Sanskrit syntax:
  1. words precede the words on which they depend, and
  2. adjectives that precede their substantives are attributive, not predicative
Hence, for the subject we would construe and translate:
  • स्वाधिकारात् प्रमत्तः कश्चित् यक्षः, “Having deviated from his official duties, a certain yakṣa....” (i.e., with प्रमत्तः as an attributive adj. Note that both Mallinātha and Vallabhadeva take this adj. as a हेतुगर्भविशेषण, a causal adj., providing the reason for the yakṣa’s curse. So one could also translate along the lines of “Because (he’d) deviated....” Finally, the ‘deviation’ here is “carelessness” or “negligence” as Amara defines प्रमादो ऽनवधानता, “pramāda means inattention/carelessness/negligence,” and the Vārttika on Pāṇini 1.4.24 stipulates that actions in the sense of प्रमाद govern the ablative (as with स्वाधिकारात् here). So we could also translate: “because he’d been negligent of his official duties”)
  • अस्तंगमितो महिमा यस्य सः कश्चित् यक्षः, “A certain yakṣa, whose power had been caused to end (i.e., had been ended or suspended),....”
  • and since शापेन immediately precedes अस्तंगमितमहिमा, it must qualify it: “whose power had been suspended by a curse,” where we see that शापेन specifically qualifies the causative past passive participle, गमित
  • the remaining adjectives in the instrumental preceding शापेन must agree with it as attributives: कान्ताविरहेण गुरुणा वर्षभोग्येण शापेन, suspended “by a curse (that was) heavy (i.e., hard to bear) because of his separation from his beloved (and was) to be suffered for a year” (Mallinātha justifies his gloss of गुरु as दुर्भर, “hard to bear,” on the authority of the शब्दार्णव lexicon)
  • the anvaya is a good reminder that genitives will come between a substantive and its adjectives: वर्षभोग्येण भर्तुः शापेन, “by his master’s curse (which was) to be suffered for a year....”
For their part, the locative complement’s two adjectives are also attributive since they precede it. Thus, स्निग्धाः छायातरवः येषु तेषु रामगिरेः आश्रमेषु, “in the hermitages of Rāma’s mountain, those in which the shade-trees are densely clustered,” etc. (The commentator, Dakṣiṇāvartanātha, takes the plural “hermitages” here to imply that the yakṣa was unable to remain in one place as he was suffering from the pain of separation.) For ease of reference, we can translate the verse literally according to the line order in the table above (though with the main predication shifted up a bit for more natural English):
स्वाधिकारप्रमत्तः
Having been negligent of his official duties,
कान्ताविरहगुरुणा वर्षभोग्येण  भर्तुः शापेन अस्तंगमितमहिमा
his power (thus) suspended by his master’s curse—(which was) to be suffered for a year (and was) hard to bear because of his separation from his beloved—
कश्चित् यक्षः वसतिं चक्रे
a certain yakṣa took up residence
स्निग्धच्छायातरुषु रामगिर्याश्रमेषु
in the hermitages of Rāma’s mountain, in which (hermitages) the shade-trees were densely clustered
जनकतनयास्नानपुण्योदकेषु
(and in which) the waters were pure because of Janaka’s daughter’s ablutions.
Once you’ve understood the verse via its anvaya, you should return to the verse to appreciate its metrical unfolding. As Sheldon Pollock has argued at length in Aspects of Versification in Sanskrit Lyric Poetry, it was with Kālidāsa that a new and highly influential poetic syntax emerged. Kālidāsa’s predecessors (for example, Aśvaghoṣa) approximated, as much as possible, prose syntax within the confines of meter, filling the cola of verse with consonant units of syntax, normatively ordered. With Kālidāsa, on the other hand, meter became a tool for liberating syntax from prose (even as the organizing power of meter itself was also subtly undermined via syntactic dissonance). That is, much more than any of his predecessors, Kālidāsa interrupted prose syntax—most clearly in separating adjective and substantive—in order to create a variety of ‘expectancies’ in the hearer. Following the German Latinists, Pollock refers to such “interruptions” as ‘Sperrung’ and shows how Kālidāsa used metrical breaks (yati)—and especially intraline breaks—to effect it. To take our verse above (in the मन्दाक्रान्ता “slow-moving” meter), we can begin by recalling its metrical structure: i.e., 4 lines of 17 syllables in an unvarying heavy/light sequence, with two intraline morphemic breaks (yati), after the 4th and 10th syllables (= 4+6+7):
̄  ̄  ̄  ̄ /   ̆  ̆  ̆  ̆  ̆  ̄ /   ̄  ̆  ̄  ̄  ̆  ̄  ̄
To display the syntactic breaks here, nominatives are in bold, instrumentals are underlined and locatives are italicized:
kaścit kāntā-/viraha-guruṇā / svâdhikāra-pramattaḥ
śāpenâstaṃ-/gamita-mahimā / varṣa-bhogyeṇa bhartuḥ |
yakṣaś cakre / janaka-tanayā-/snāna-puṇyôdakeṣu
snigdha-cchāyā-/taruṣu vasatiṃ / rāma-giry-āśrameṣu ||
As you can see, in the first 2 lines Kālidāsa has alternated the co-referential nominatives and instrumentals such that the two lines are almost syntactic mirror images of one another:
  • N-I-N in A, and I-N-I in B (concluding with N.../ in C)
Moreover, the interruptions are organized by the yatis:
  • N.../.../N ...N-/N/... and ...I-/I/... I.../.../I....
And both sets of adjectives are resolved at the beginning of a line (the instrumentals in B, the nominatives in C). On the other hand, 2 adjectives of the same length (those beginning kāntā- and astaṃ-) span the same morphemic break in A and B, obscuring it in favor of their own syntactic integrity. The power of the syntax in all this transcends even the significant semantic anticipations these interruptions create. In intertwining the nominatives referring to the yakṣa and the instrumentals centering on his beloved, Kālidāsa turns our attention from yakṣa to his love-in-separation and back again, and back again. The focus of the alternation is made clear at the outset with “One, (his) beloved-,” where the initial juxtaposition gives way to an introduction of the curse through its weight: the yakṣa’s separation from his wife; which weight will be reprised near the end of the alternation with its duration: a year of suffering. That love-in-separation is enhanced by the tension of the locative Sperrung in the second half (.../L-/L L-/L.../L), where the yakṣa’s dwelling in Citrakūṭa (his own love-in-separation made more painful by the constant reminders of Rāma’s love-in-union in the same landscape) is witheld until the very end.
This is not to say that this new syntax is an ubiquitous feature of Kālidāsa’s style. In the Meghadūta’s second verse, for example, he for the most part foregoes Sperrung in favor of a largely uninterrupted syntactic parallelism. The verse is:
तस्मिन्नद्रौ कतिचिदबलाविप्रयुक्तः स कामी
नीत्वा मासान्कनकवलयभ्रंशरिक्तप्रकोष्ठः ।
आषाढस्य प्रथमदिवसे मेघमाश्लिष्टसानुं
वप्रक्रीडापरिणतगजप्रेक्षणीयं ददर्श ॥२॥
“On that mountain the loving husband, separated from his wife, several
months did spend. His forearms bare with the fall of his golden bracelets,
on the first day of Āṣāḍha a cloud clinging to a mountainpeak
did he see, resembling an elephant playfully stooping (to butt) a rampart.”
It is the nominatives and accusatives here that are made to parallel each other in metrical syntax, highlighting their difference or opposition:
tasminn adrau / katicid abalā-/viprayuktaḥ sa kāmī
nītvā māsān / kanaka-valaya-/bhraṃśa-rikta-prakoṣṭhaḥ |
āṣāḍhasya / prathama-divase / megham āśliṣṭa-sānuṃ
vapra-krīḍā-/pariṇata-gaja-/prekṣaṇīyaṃ dadarśa ||
That is, the contrast between the subject (in separation) and object (in union) is brought into relief by their parallel metrical positions. Whereas in the final colon of A the subject (the loving husband) is described as separated from his beloved, the object (the cloud) in the final colon of C is described as having “clung to” or “embraced” a mountainpeak. And whereas the subject will be further described across two cola in B via another image of loss/separation (the loss of the yakṣa’s bracelets, leaving his arms bare), the object will be amplified with a similarly long compound across more than 2 cola in D in a new image of playful union (the cloud’s resemblance to an elephant stooping to butt a rampart). The contrast seems even to extend to the somewhat similar motions in each: the falling (from the arm) in B and the lowering (of the head) in D. In any case, the point here is that while Kālidāsa appears to have inaugurated an influential new poetic syntax of Sperrung, his syntactic innovations were not limited to it. You should therefore approach his work in an open spirit of investigation. And while Kālidāsa’s metrical syntax will often enhance the aesthetic power of his verses (as in the present poignant contrast), his focus surely lies elsewhere in a host of verses. So, our appreciation of a verse’s unfolding needs to remain open to Kālidāsa’s considerable poetic creativity and not just to its metrical-syntactic dimension.

Exercises

Students are encouraged to read a work such as Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta, with commentary, in their Intermediate year or in the subsequent summer. You should refrain from making use of translations while you work through any given span of text. Only after you’ve completed your work on a set of verses should you consult a translation to correct your work. In translating such texts on your own, you’re acquiring grammatical and morphological problem-solving skills. They’re relatively intangible but essential to gaining fluency in the language—and they can’t be acquired by leaning on the crutch of readymade translations.
The foregoing is intended to provide a model for your own work. To recapitulate its steps:
  1. Underline the anvaya and base text as described on the commentary webpage, delineating vigrahas with parentheses, etc.
  2. Rewrite the anvaya and label its grammar as above. At the same time, indicate the displayed syntactic dependencies (e.g., with arrows).
  3. Translate the core predication(s) of the verse’s sentence(s); then translate the anvaya according to its syntactic units (as above).
  4. Return to the verse and retranslate it by pāda (or yati) where possible and comment on the work the metrical syntax seems to be doing, if any.
More advanced intermediate students can expand on the first step by taking on the commentary’s glosses and less technical explanations (leaving aside whatever is obscure), and can skip the labeling in 2. above where it’s obvious. Students for whom the grammar is still a challenge can truncate 4. above.
You are encouraged to mark up at least the first half of the poem (the पूर्वमेघ, up through p. 49 in the edition of Mallinātha linked to above) as above. This mode of analysis should then be intuitive enough for you to perform it without a full-blown markup of every verse in the second half (though you should of course feel free to mark up any verse whose grammar gives you trouble).