Salutation to Dawn by Kalidasa

[shankara]

Pranams to all,

The following poem on Dawn is attributed to Kalidasa in "Sanskrit Love Poetry" by W. S. Merwin & J. Moussaieff Masson and also by countless blogs and sites.

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn! 

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/2011/03/23/kalidasa-exhortation-of-the-dawn/ 

Reverses translation of this poem in Sanskrit by Prof NVP Unithiri is available at

http://sanskritdocuments.org/doc_deities_misc/salutedawn.html

I request the scholars of this group to help me identify Kalidasa's original verses which are the basis for the above English translation.

 

regards
shankara

[Nityanand Misra]

On Friday, March 6, 2015 at 12:35:00 PM UTC+5:30, shankara_2000 wrote:

Pranams to all,

The following poem on Dawn is attributed to Kalidasa in "Sanskrit Love Poetry" by W. S. Merwin & J. Moussaieff Masson and also by countless blogs and sites.

The poem is attributed as ‘Author Unknown’ on page 210 of Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (2010, ISBN 9780486472881), published by the US Library of Congress (a reliable source). The editors cite the 1948 edition of Masterpieces of Religious Literature (ed. James Dalton Morrison), and add that the poem is ‘attributed in some sources to Kalidasa.’ Morrison himself on page 318 in the 1905 edition of the work (Harper & Brother Publishers) attributes the poem as ‘Based on the Sanskrit, c. 1200 B.C.’ (sic) and nothing else. That Morrison included it in the work Masterpieces of Religious Literature and that he dated it as 1200 B.C. makes me think Morrison [believed he] had the [loose] translation of a Vedic hymn and not a verse by Kalidasa. Morrison’s work predates Sanskrit Love Poetry (first published 1977) by more than half a century. If we cannot trace a source older than Morrison's 1905 work which attributes it to Kalidasa, then most likely the poem's authorship by Kalidasa is a 20th century urban legend invented sometime between 1905 and 1977. 

[Nityanand Misra]

One can see Morrison's original citation from 1905 here 

https://archive.org/stream/masterpiecesofre013772mbp#page/n318/mode/1up

 

[shankara]

Mishraji,

Thanks for pointing out that attribution of authorship of this poem to Kalidasa is a recent development.

Would it be possible to identify the Sanskrit source of this poem in the Vedas (1200 BC)?

 

regards
shankara

---

From: Nityanand Misra <nmi...@gmail.com>
To: bvpar...@googlegroups.com
Cc: shanka...@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, 6 March 2015 1:55 PM
Subject: {भारतीयविद्वत्परिषत्} Re: Salutation to Dawn by Kalidasa

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