हंससंदेशः /24

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<p lang="sa">22
 
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<p lang="sa">The choice of a swan in the poem is quite appropriate.

According to the Ramayana, Rama starts on his expedi-

tion against Lanka, only after the advent of the Sarat.

In this season the swans are believed to come down into

the plains from the Manasa lake in the Himalayas, and

move to the extreme south of the land.
 
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<p lang="sa">In order that a poet may be rightly judged, one has

first to find out what the Sanskrit Rhetoricians aptly call

Kavi hridaya (the poet'&apos;s mind), or in other words, the

motive of the poem. This Kavi-hridaya is at times easy

of determination by means of a careful study of the

character of the hero of the poem. For his Meghasandesa

Kalidasa selected a hero of the Dhiralalita type in the

banished Yaksha (निश्चिन्तो धीरललितः कलासक्तः सुस्वी मृदु:). In our

mythology the Yakshas are pictured to be a type of beings

between the human and the divine. They are more divine

than human. They are fabulously rich and

subjects of King Kubera, the Lord of Treasure-Troves.

They have infinite facilities and an inherent capacity to

enjoy pleasure in all its aspects. Wealth, wine and

women are the be-all and end-all of their existence. To

suit the experiences of a hero of that type, Kalidasa has

had to build up his poem on a substratum of the sensuous,

but with a happy blending of the supersensuous here and

there, because of the partial divinity also of the hero. The

lines like
 
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<p lang="sa">मध्येश्यामः स्तनइव भुवः शेषविस्तारपाण्डुः,
or '
or &apos;सभ्रूभङ्गं मुखमिव पयो वेलवत्याश्चलोर्मि,

or लोलापाङ्गैर्यदि न रमसे लोचनैर्वञ्चितोसि,
 
are the
 
</p>
<p lang="sa">are the</p>
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