Wow, this was such a lovely story! I remember watching a play about Shakuntala when I was younger, although I had forgotten the storyline. I love that this story is a happy one, where the lovers are reunited and live "happily ever after," in contrast to some of the more tragic ones that we have read before. One thing that I took interest in while reading Shakuntala's story is the fact that she had a so-called "Gandharva marriage." I looked into this further, and I learned that there are eight different types of marriages in Hinduism. Gandharva marriage is thought of as the love marriage - when the two partners have mutual feelings toward one another and choose each other without needing to seek approval from family. This type of marriage has generally been looked down on modern India as opposed to an arranged marriage, or "Brahma marriage." Here, the family selects the bride or groom, and then if the daughter or son agrees, they arrange to be married. While many families tend to oppose love marriages, quite a few people, most famously Shakuntala's father, argue that this is the most ideal type of marriage, even more so than "arranged marriages." I find it really interesting that in India, arranged marriages are so much more common than love marriages!
Here are some of the main events from Shakuntala:
- Sage Vishwamitra was performing severe penance that frightened Indra (god of heaven), who sent Menaka, an apsara to go and distract Vishwamitra by seducing him
- Vishwamitra can't resist Menaka, and they live together for several years; Menaka gives birth to a baby girl
- Vishwamitra realizes that this was all a trick, and so he leaves Menaka, who then leaves the baby at the hermitage of Rishi Kanva
- Rishi Kanva finds the baby in a flock of Shakunta birds, and so he names the girl Shakuntala and raises her as his own daughter
- Shakuntala meets King Dushyanta in the forest and they fall in love and have a Gandharva marriage
- Shakuntala gives birth to a son, Bharata
- Dushyanta gives Shakuntala his ring before returning to his palace, promising to return for her
- One day, sage Durvasa visits the hermitage and is enraged by seeing Shakuntala distracted and failing to properly greet him; he curses her saying that whoever she is thinking about will forget her
- After realizing his curse was a bit much, he reduced by saying if she shows him a personal token (ie. Dushyanta's ring), he will remember her again
- After Dushyanta did not return for a long time, Shakuntala traveled to the palace; on the way there, she had to travel across a river, and she lost the ring in the water
- When she arrived and came to see Dushyanta, Shakuntala was sad that Dushyanta did not remember her; she went back to the forest and raised her son
- Bharata grew to be a mighty child who would open mouths of tigers and count their teeth for fun
- A fisherman found the ring in the belly of a fish he caught and gave it to Dushyanta, who, upon seeing the ring, remembered Shakuntala and returned to the forest for her
- While walking in the forest, he found Bharata counting the teeth of a tiger, and curious, asked him to lead him to his mother
- After realizing that the mother was Shakuntala and the child was his son, the three of them rejoiced and lived happily ever after
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