Clouds in Indian Poetry and Enlightenment science
The Indian countryside abounds in many highly colourful and fragrant varieties of trees, flowers and fruits that give a distinctive beauty to the landscape. There are also many characterful wild animals, such as deer, elephants, tigers, and so on. All the flora and fauna of India have found their place in Indian literature, adding detail and colour, but also giving further emotional resonance and stronger depth of feeling to the events taking place.
Kālidāsa in particular is one poet and playwright who uses his deep knowledge of the natural landscape of different parts of India to strong literary effect in his works. Many types of jasmine, water-lilies, lotuses, rose-apples and a hundred such flora add a charm and detail to the scenes conjured up.
This may be compared with the increasing observation of the phenomena of nature and in the late-eighteenth century West, a topic which was discussed in the recent exhibition ‘The Art of Innovation’ at the Science Gallery. Similarly, at this time -
“In the late eighteenth century, natural philosophers and amateur scientists looked at the world around them to develop new understanding of nature … With Romanticism in the air and nature becoming more celebrated as a source of wonder and awe, scientists took it upon themselves to get out more. And so did artists. They began to leave the studio … and they too turned to observation and record.”
[The Art of Innovation: from Enlightenment to Dark Matter, p.58]
In particular, this article will suggest that the developing understanding of cloud phenomena that was discussed in the exhibition and in the accompanying book seems to have some element of parallel with that of a work of classical Indian poetry. In the first part of his poem Meghadūta, Kālidāsa imaginatively describes an address to a cloud by an exiled yakṣa. This is rather strange behaviour, as Kālidāsa describes in the following verse -
Whereas a cloud is an aggregation of smoke, light, water and wind, things can only be sent as messages by means of sentient beings with suitable sense-organs; not considering this, through longing, that Yakṣa, afflicted by desire, so incapable of distinguishing between the animate and the inanimate, entreated [the cloud].
[Meghadūta Verse 5; my own translation]
We see a sort of proto-scientific comprehension of the nature of clouds in the above verse. which investigated connections between the work of artists and the development of modern science. We may compare this with similar types of theorising about the nature of clouds that happened previous to and during late-eighteenth century Europe. Discussing Luke Howard, who coined the names of cloud-types that we use today, Cumulus, Stratus and so on, it is explained that -
“According to a long-established theory, clouds were composed of tiny bubbles of water enclosing a kind of elemental ‘matter of fire’ that made them lighter than air. Howard rightly dismissed this fanciful idea. He postulated instead that clouds are formed of globules of water or particles of ice condensed out of water rising and cooling.”
[The Art of Innovation: from Enlightenment to Dark Matter, p.64]
The yakṣa nevertheless begins an address to the cloud in the following words -
“I know that you are born in the world-renowned lineage of puṣkara and avartaka [cloud-types], the chief agent of Indra, assuming the form you desire”
[Meghadūta Verse 6ab; my own translation]
As we can see in the above śloka, there are two technical terms, puṣkara and avartaka, which would appear to be part of a classification scheme for cloud-types. Certainly, this is how Mallinātha interprets this in his commentary when he glosses this as ‘kecin meghānāṃ śreṣṭhāḥ’. Perhaps, just as Howard observed that there could also be combination types of clouds such as cumulostratus, similarly here we have a combination type of puṣkara and avartaka.
Indeed, the skies of ancient India would have been filled with clouds much the same in appearance as in modern Europe, so we should not be surprised to find overlap in terms of the classification scheme that might have been developed. As such, further invetigation may be able to identify the particular cloud-type being addressed by the yakṣa.
Indeed, perhaps there are interesting parallels between the keen powers of observation of nature which the artists and scientists of the enlightenments and that of Kālidāsa and perhaps some other Indian poets. The way in which clouds and skies were depicted by other poets and by historical Indian artists could also be investigated. In fact, there might be some deeper type of affinity between the spirit of Romanticism in Europe that inspired such observation of nature and a similar animating spirit evident in the literature of classical India.
