the failure of the king
to recognize Sakuntala is the result of a curse pronounced against the
girl by the irascible saint Durvasas, whom she has inadvertently failed
to treat with due respect, and the ring is merely a means of breaking
the spell. All this is highly characteristic of Hindu thought. In
Bodenstedt's poem, however, remembering and forgetting are dependent on
a magic quality inherent in the ring itself,--a trait that is at home in
almost any literature.[220]

* * * * *

There are, besides, many minor changes. The _vidusaka_, or fun-making
attendant of the king, is left out, and so the warriors express the
sentiments that he utters at the beginning of Act 2. Dusyanta does not
bid farewell to his beloved in person, but leaves a letter. Again, after
he has failed to recognize her, she returns to the hermitage of Kanva,
whereas in the drama she is transported to that of Kasyapa on the
Hemakuta mountain. So, of course, the aerial ride of the king in Indra's
wagon is also done away with.

In many places, on the other hand, the poem follows the drama very
closely. For instance, the passage in the first canto describing the mad
elephant (pp. 14, 15)[221] is a paraphrase of the warning uttered by one
of the holy men in Act 1. Sc. 4 (ed. Kale, p. 40). The discourse of
Sakuntala with her friends (pp. 37, 38), the incident of the bee and
Priyamvada's playful remark (pp. 38-40) are closely modelled after the
fourth scene of Act 1. Many passages of the poem are in fact nothing but
translations. Thus the words which the king on leaving, writes to
Sakuntala (p. 78):

Doch mein Herz wird stets zurueckbewegt,
Wie die wehende Fahne an der Stange,
Die man vollem Wind entgegentraegt--

are a pretty close rendering of the final words of the king's soliloquy
at the end of Act 1:

_gacchati purah sariram dhavati pascad asamstutam cetah cinamsukam
iva ketoh prativatam niyamanasya_

"my body goes forward; the mind not agreeing with it flies backward
like the silken streamer of a banner borne against the wind."

A large part of the whole poem is pure invention, designed to make the
story more exciting by means of a greater variety of incident. Such
invented episodes, for instance, are the gory battle-scenes that take up
the first part of the fourth canto, the omen of the fishes in the fifth,
and the episodes in which Bharata plays the chief role in that canto.