Abstract

For well over a thousand years, countless audiences have taken pleasure in watching unfold the following fearful event:Filled with dread, desperately tossing unchewed grass from its mouth, looking back at the hunting king, a beautiful deer springs into flight to escape a fast-approaching chariot from which repeated arrows fly — one of which will inevitably lodge in the deer’s defenseless body. This is not a scene from “National Geographic” or an episode from some sadly popular TV hunting show. Indeed, this scene has been played out far longer than any current program on America’s “Outdoor Channel,” and it comes to most Westerners from half a world away. Kālidāsa’s The Signet-Ring of Śakuntalā, the most famous poem..