Shakuntala (63)

Ranks 63rd on The Fictional 100

The following books will introduce you to Shakuntala, who said these words in The Mahabharata (see below). To order a book, or for more information, follow the book title links to Amazon.com, then return home to browse other characters.

• The Mahabharata: Vol. 1. The Book of the Beginning (J. A. B. van Buitenen, Trans.). University of Chicago Press, 1980.
  • Shakuntala's story of clandestine love, rejection, and eventual triumph occurs early in the Mahabharata, since she is the ancestral mother of the Bharata clan whose struggles are the subject of this, one of the two great epics of India. It is known in the West chiefly through the Bhagavad Gita, the magnificent dialogue between the hero Arjuna and his friend and charioteer, Lord Krishna. Read about Shakuntala and you will want to experience the Mahabharata's entire panorama of love, war, and spiritual transcendence.
    
• Great Sanskrit Plays, in Modern Translation (P. Lal, Ed.). Norton, 1957.
  • Includes Shakuntala, the masterpiece of Kalidasa, who is known as the "Shakespeare of India."
• Kalidasa. The Recognition of Sakuntala: A Play In Seven Acts (Oxford World's Classics) (W. J. Johnson, Trans. and Ed.). Oxford University Press, 2008.
  • A new verse translation of Kalidasa's play by W. J. Johnson, along with a critical introduction and an excerpt of the relevant episode from the The Mahabharata.
• Three Sanskrit Plays (Penguin Classics). Penguin, 1981.
  • Includes Michael Coulson's excellent transation of Kalidasa's Shakuntala.
• Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories. Ed. by Romila Thapar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
  • A noted historian of India, Romila Thapar collects and comments on the important texts that have defined this character and her story, including a portion of the Mahabharata and Kalidasa's Shakuntala. Thapar also considers the evolution of adaptations of the story, and their gender politics.

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