Shakespeare's Ariel versus Kālidāsa's Yaksha : Revisiting a comparative study from 19th century Bengal

My article considers how a lesser‐known Bengali periodical essay of 1884 capitalises on the canonical eminence of Shakespeare's Ariel to establish by contrast the aesthetic and ethical merits of the unnamed yaksha , a semidivine being who forms the protagonist of Kālidāsa's poem Meghadūtam (4th–5th centuries CE). Comparison between Shakespeare and Kālidāsa, the classical Sanskrit poet and dramatist, has been a commonplace of Bengali literary criticism in the 19th century, with inputs from such luminaries as Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1887) and Rabindranath Tagore (1907). While the poet Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay eulogised Shakespeare with the aphorism Bhārater Kālidās, jagater tumi (“You are to the world what Kālidāsa is to India”), the other acts of comparison (including the essay's in question) are not so unqualified and effusive. The essay, entitled “Ariel o Yaksha” (Ariel and the Yaksha ) and written by one Bishnucharan Chattopadhyay, plays a clever game in that it starts by accepting Shakespeare as a universal favourite and enlists his character Ariel as a yardstick for assessing the yaksha but it then goes on to expose tacitly the bestiality and impetuosity of Ariel when compared with what it finds to be the higher instincts of the yaksha . The essay thus engineers a reversal of the dominant critical opinion by puncturing the aura of nobility ascribed to Ariel and countering the allegation of base sensuality often levelled against Kālidāsa's lovesick yaksha . It attempts an ethical re‐evaluation of Kālidāsa's yaksha and shows Kālidāsa to be more edifying than is often suggested by commentators. The essay gestures towards a nativist and traditionalist agenda but does not fully enunciate it or subscribe to it, thus exemplifying the ambivalence inherent in the (post)colonial modernity of 19th‐century Bengal.