Wouldst thou the blossoms of spring,
as well as the fruits of the autumn,
Wouldst thou what charms and delights,
wouldst thou what plenteously feeds, 
Wouldst thou include both Heaven and earth
in one designation,
All that is needed is done,
when I Sakontala name.

- 1792. (Edward Alfred Bowring, The Poems of Goethe: Translated in The Original Metres, London: George Bell And Sons, York Street, Covent Garden, Second Edition, 1874, p.284)

To read Sakontala by Goethe (1749-1832) in German not, English translation is to talk of the Sanskrit drama’s rendering into English and other European languages. Who are the translators of it? When was it translated into for the first? How did the foreign readers view it when the Oriental, Sanskrit drama was put before? The magic of Sakontala Europe took it time to dislodge it and the charm bewitched great men of the world, the great men of letters.

William Jones, The Socuntala or The Fatal Ring, 1792
Monier Williams, Sakoontala; The Lost Ring; An Indian Drama, 1853 
R.W. Ryder, Shakuntala and Other Writings, 1912

Who are you in Rishi’s Ashrama? Who is the pure maiden? Looking so chaste and innocent? Who is the forest girl under natural surroundings growing like a periwinkle? 

Will she fail the blossoms of spring? Who is harvesting the fruits of autumn? Who is this maiden, if to see it differently, not the reaper girl of Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper and the harvesting maid taking a nap of John Keats’ Ode to Autumn? Is she inclusive of it all, all the charms and beauties of both heaven and earth? Such a dream girl, an imaginative maiden, how to imagine it? How  to characterize it? Just like a flower, a dream flower she grows into the forests by the hermit cottage. She is both the bounty and blessing of Nature. She is the flower and charm of spring as well as the bounty and harvest of autumn.

How to name you? is the thing that Goethe feels it within. A heavenly beauty is Sakontala, is pure and chaste.

Kalidasa’s Sakontala Goethe forgets it not. King Dushyanta may not recognize Sakontala, but Goethe can know what it is in her.

Sakontala is like the red rose of Robert Burns or the Lucy of Wordsworth as it is in Lost Love and A Strange Fits of Passion.

Goethe published this epigram long ago as had been the impact of Sakontala. The name Sakontala is one reared and taken care of by birds. The image of a girl talking with the birds and flowers dances before the eyes. A hermit’s ascetic girl is Sakontala.

Goethe was a friend of Schiller (1759-1805) and Herder (1744-1803). Schlegel too wanted to translate it, but it could not materialize and Novalis also admired it.

What is Sakontala representative of? How to represent the tender of heaven and earth both?