A Paper Presented at the Fourth Biennial International Conference of the World Association for Vedic Studies (WAWES) on "India's Contributions, lnfluences and Appropriations in the World" from July 12-14, 2002 at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, U.S.A.
If we look at Shelley's writings, there is a clear shift in his views about India between the 'Revolt of Islam' and 'Prometheus Unbound', In 'The Revolt of Islam' he appears to believe in British Imperial power as the liberator of its subjects from Asiatic darkness. He views the Empire as a fertile ground for 'a grand utilitarian experiment'. Shelley, the radical aristocrat, accepts the binary model in which 'this' reclaims the 'other'. Shelley's social positionality within the English ruling class must have moulded such views. In the early 19th Century, imperialism as the expansion of European culture and civilization over the whole world, was not condemned. In the late Victorian age, this so called 'civilizing mission was replaced by jingoist imperialism. In the light of this thinking, Shelley, in 'The Revolt of Islam' presented the colonial "other" as a tyrant' and the colonizing power as a martyre in its efforts to enlighten the dark spaces of the earth. In an unpublished article "Philosophical view of Reform" Shelley had expressed the same view about colonialism in India. :
Revolutions in the political and religious state of the Indian Peninsula seem to be accomplishing, and it cannot be doubted but that the zeal of the missionaries of what is called the Christian faith, will produce beneficial innovation there ...1
By 1818-1819 these views changed. A number of factors were responsible for drawing Shelley closer to India and Indian literature.
(1) Shelley had read the poems and novels written about India or about Indian themes. The important amongst these were Southey's poem 'Curse of Kehama" published in 1810 and Sydney Owenson's novel "The Missionary" published in 1811. In this novel, Hinduism, as embodied through the character of the Vedanta priestess Luxima, is presented in better light and is preferred to the intolerant asceticism of the Catholic missionary Hilarian. Shelley was greatly influenced by this novel. On 21st July 1811 he wrote to Hogg :
Have you read a new novel, 'The Missionary' by Miss Owenson? It is a devine thing - Luxima, the Indian priestss, were it possible to embody such a character, is perfect. The Missionary has been my companion for some time ... since I have read this book I have read no other ... but I have thought strangely2
(2) On 17th December 1812 Shelley ordered books from Thomas Hookham, one of these books was the Hindu Pantheon.
(3) The influence of William Jones on Shelley's imagery, subject matter and style is also well known. William Jones, a political liberal orientalist in England, had founded the Asiatic society of Bengal. He loved and respected Sanskrit and identified the common 'Aryan' roots of and Latin, Greek and Teutonic languages and compared the Greek and Roman gods with the Hindu Pantheon. This attracted Shelley towards Hindu antiquity.
(4) Another influence on Shelley was that of his cousin Medwin of the 24th light Dragoon of East India Company's Indian army. Medwin had spent five years in India. His love affair with a Hindu woman had ended badly but it had converted him to the Hindu thought. He had witnessed one incident of Sati at Mandala and had toured the Hindu temples at Gaur, Pataliputra, Jagannath and the caves of Ellora and Elephanta. On his return to Europe, he read his Indian journal to Shelley at Pisa. He also wrote two poems with Indian settings namely "Oswald and Edwin" and "An Oriental Sketch and Sketches in Hindostan". Both of these poems were edited by Shelley. Thus Medwin also provided an important link between Shelley and India.
(5) Another important influence on Shelley was that of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. In June 1817 Raja Ram Mohan, a Brahmin and founder of Hindu Reform Movement Brahma Sabha (Precursor of Brahma Samaj) wrote a book, Translation of an Abridgment of the Vedanta. The book was published in London in 1817 by John Digby after his return from Calcutta. The book was already published in Calcutta in 1815-16. The 'Monthly Magazine' London published excerpts from this book. In this book Ram Mohan attributed the social evils in Hindu culture to the polytheistic later phase of Hinduism. The Vedic and the Upanisadic era had proclaimed the unity of the supreme being as the sole ruler of the universe. Ram Mohan also published a magazine, "The Missionary and the Brahmin"; in which he answered the criticism of the Hindu religion by the Christian writers.
Ram Mohan's writings soon drew the attention of intellectuals in London. Coleridge mentioned him to Southey in a letter dated 31st January 1819. Shelley does not mention Ram Mohan's name but he must have read Digby's London edition of the translations and the three articles published in the 'Monthly magazine'. This conjecture is based on the following information. The January 1818 issue of the magazine carried a review of his father-in-law Godwin's 'Mandeville' along with excerpts from Ram Mohan's book. The March 1818 issue contained a review of Shelley's 'Revolt of Islam'. He must surely have read both the issues.
Perhaps, it was after reading Ram Mohan Roy that Shelley gained a deeper insight into the Vedic lore. The 'Monthly Magazine' is, thus, a vital link between Shelley and the Vedic thought, the Demogorgonic Voice into the texture of his poetry.
(6) The last, but not the least important factor that drew Shelley closer to the Vedic and Upanisadic thought was, in my opinion, his self-exile into Italy. Disgraced as a mad, sad, bad Shelley, deprived of the guardianship of his own children, proclaimed by the Court as a corrupter of the morals of his countrymen, Shelley, an impulsive, emotional man of strong likes and dislikes, must have been completely disenchanted with Christianity and the alien religion must have soothed his bruised self.
Now, before discussing Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", it would be better to talk briefly about the 'Maruts' as described in the Rgveda Samhita. The different deities invoked there, are different phenomenon of nature. All of them share certain common traits. For example they are omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Their powers are extended over earth, water and sky. Maruts are prominent amongst these deities. In the ten, books (Mandalas) they are invoked in 33 hymns. Besides this, there are several other hymns in which they are invoked conjointly with Indra, Agni, Vayu and others. The hymns in which they are invoked separately are :
Book 1: Nos. 37-39, 64, 85-88, 166, 168, 171-172.
Book 2: 34.
Book 5: 53 to 61, 87.
Book 6: 66.
Book 7: 56 to 59.
Book 8: 7, 20, 83.
Book 10 : 77-78.
Maruts have close proximity with Rodasi who follows them with loose hair. They shed rain, bring storm and lightning, stir the woods with their irresistible power. They are different from Vayu which is gentle and soft.
Now, we come to Shelley's poem. 'Ode to the West Wind' is one of his best known poems. It is plea to the wind to fill him with itself.
In its direct address, the poem follows the hymns of the Rgveda. In each of the first three stanzas Shelley addresses the wind directly and calls on it to 'hear'. These three stanzas begin with 'thou' or 'O thou'. A relative clause governed by 'who', 'which' or 'whose' is added to modify 'thou' Though this direct address is found in as ancient a work as the Bible for example:
By you, O Jehovah of armies,
Are examining the righteous ones.
(20, 2, 12)
Yet the address ends there. The direct address is also found, sometimes in Greek hymns for example in Homer's "To the earth, mother of all" We have the following lines:
O Universal mother, who dost keep
From everlasting thy foundations deep
Eldest of things, G-eat earth, I sing of thee.3
(Shelley's Translation of Homer)
In ancient odes, one finds direct address and use of adjectives for deities. For example in Sappho we have:
Throned in splendour, deathless Aphrodite
Child of Zeus, Snare braider,
I beseech you.
But that is the end of the description. There is no tradition in Greek or Roman classical literature to devote so many lines to name a deity.
There is a close resemblance between Shelley's invocations and the invocations of the Rgvedic hymns, full of adjectives and adjectival clauses. To give just one example, hymn 29 of the first book of the Rgveda Samhita addressed to Agni and Maruts, uses the following adjectives and adjectival clauses to describe the Maruts:
1. Who know the mighty regions of mid-air4 (V.3).
2. The terrible who sing their song, not to be overcome by might. (V.4).
3. Brilliant and awful in their form, mighty devourers of their foes. (V.5).
4. Who sit as deities in heaven, above the sky Vault's luminous sphere. (V.6).
5. Who scatter clouds about the sky, away over the billowy sea. (V.7).
6. Who with their bright beams spread them forth over the ocean in their might. (V.8).
Shelley too, in his 70 lines poem uses adjectival clauses in the following lines:
(1) Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven.
(2) Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed.
(3) Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere.
(4) Thou on whose stream … loose clouds are shed.
(5) Thou who didst waken ... the blue Mediterranean.
(6) For whose path the Atlantic level powers cleave themselves.
Secondly, Shelley's desperate prayer – "hear O hear", ... "prayer in my sore need", "I fall on the thorns of life, I bleed", etc. find their original in number of hymns of the Rgveda such as "hearken to our call" (1.2.1); "I make my prayer … I call" (1.2.6-7); "hearken ye to my cry" (1.23.8); "hear thou my call" (1.10.9); "hearer of our cry" (1.10.10); "I crave help" (1.18.1); "Ye come with ready succour at the call of ... a singer such as I" (1.18.2); "hear this call of mine ... longing for help I cry to thee (1.25.19); "they who worship you cry" (1.38.2); "I call ... we implore" (7.58.5); "The priest loudly calls thee praising thee in song" (7.56.18).
This direct address to an object of nature presupposes giving human consciousness to it. Shelley's wind is a "Wild spirit" which is "moving everywhere". The description of the Maruts in the Rgveda is fully anthropomorphic. They are sons of Rudra and heroes of the sky (10.77.2; 1.122.1; 3.54.13). They are brothers, young and unaging, they hold lightning in their fists (5.54.11). They have chariots of lightning and they yoke the winds as horses (3.54.13). They are singers and help Indra while singing their song (5.57.5).
Thus Shelley's 'West Wind' and the Maruts of the Rgveda are given life, will and agency. Without this animism there would have been no invocation.
Shelley's 'Wild Spirit' is 'unseen'. This 'unseen' enchanter has control over the five elements – earth, air, sky, water and fire (in the form of lightning). In the Vedas too, the material existence is governed by subtle cosmic powers of 'Indra', 'Vayu' and 'Agni', the mental, vital and material planes respectively. But without the power of the 'unseen' omnipotent Cosmic being, these three are powerless.
In the 4th verse of the Chandogya Upanisad, the wind is called the life principle, the 'prana' that moves and breathes. 'Brahman' as breath extends itself, as 'prana' or breath of life in the wind. The ancient seers knew that air is the condition of life, the very 'breath' of the supreme. Shelley's west wind, too is the 'breath' of Autumn's being.
In the last line of the very first stanza, Shelley addresses the wind as 'destroyer and preserver'. This contradictory image is a common feature of the Rgvedic invocations. The elemental powers are invoked to destroy the evil ones, the enemies and preserve those who pray to them (1.29.5; 1.36.5; 1.40.9, 10).
From this image of the west wind as destroyer and preserver, we are given another image – that of the 'Maenad'. Shelley's Meanad corresponds to the 'Rodasi' of the Rgveda, who follows the Maruts in their swift race, with loose tresses (1.167.4-5; 5.56.8). Shelley's wind too has a chariot.
In the third stanza of Shelley's poem the sea (water element) is athropomorphised. While spring will awaken the earth from its winter dreams, the autumn wind has Awakened the Mediterranian sea from the enchantment of spring. The wind ruffled sea, when clouds loom large above it will not be able to receive the sunlight. The sunlight stands for the visionary gleams and the waves are the waves of thoughts during waking consciousness. The clouds are the clouds of 'maya' over the nervous system. Until these waves of thoughts subside, until the clouds of ego and ignorance, move away, the submerged dark regions of consciousness will not reflect the towering cosmic consciousness. During sleep, when the physical senses are in abeyance, the spiritual self is open to the sleeper.
The scene soon changes from summer to autumn, from Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The sapless foliage of the ocean know "thy voice". Shelley's West Wind has a 'voice'. The Maruts, in 1.38.10 of the Rgveda are addressed thus:
"O Maruts! at your voice's sound this ... ;habitation shakes". In 2.34.3 the waves raised by the Maruts are the ears with which the streams listen to the coming of the 'Maruts'.
In the fourth stanza of Shelley's poem, there is a shift from earth, sky and water to the speaker, to the man made up of these elements. The speaker is aware that complete surrender to this natural force is the way out. Hence the cry:
"Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud" In 1.38.1 of the Rgveda we have a similar prayer:
"When will you lift us up by both hands as a dear sire his son". In 1.72.3. the same prayer to the Maruts is repeated: "Lift, ye us up that we may live".
Shelley's prayer "make "me thy lyre" presents the wind as a singer. The poet wants to be a passive instrument of this singer. While the Atlantic powers are given the active voice – "they cleave themselves", the poet, like the leaves which are driven by the active agent wind and like the clouds which are 'shed', wants to be an instrument of the will of the wind. The image of the 'lyre' suggests that this musical instrument must itself be in tune to the "mighty harmonies" of the wind – an actively passive instrument. Shelley implores this singer and prophecy maker to publicise his thoughts to man-kind all over the universe. Like the dead leaves which are driven by the wind, Shelley wants his thoughts to be driven.
In a number of Rgvedic hymns, the Maruts are invoked as singers. In 1.19.4, they are "the terrible who sing their song". In 1.37.10 as "these the singers"; 1.38.15 they are 'tuneful'; in 5.61.15 they are "lovers of the song". In the Rgveda too the poet seers pray to the Maruts to spread their hymns far away:
"Bear thou far away … this my hymn ... as if chariot borne." (5.61.17)
Thus the structure of a poet's desire never changes. It transcends time and space.
The three spheres of activities assigned to the wind in Shelley's poem are the earth, the sky and the water. These are the spheres of the Maruts too. In 1.39.1 "They are shakers of the earth". In 1.39.3 "their course in through the forest trees of the earth"; in 1.39.5 "they rend the forest kings apart". In 1.166.5 we have the following description:
"the forest fears as ye drive near and the shrubs fly before thee swift as whirling wheels".
In 5.60.2 "Woods bow down in terror" when the Maruts come; in 8.20.5, "the forest trees … shake and reel ... and tremble as ye come". Shelley retains this power of the wind over the tree leaves and fits it in the framework of the Hindu cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
From the sphere of the earth, the Maruts of the Rgveda move to the sky. Their activity in the sky is described in the following hymns of the Rgveda:
"Thou kept the light and water imprisoned in the clouds" (1.11.5)
"(Ye) sit ... above the sky - vault's luminous sphere ... who scatter clouds about the sky" (1.19.6,7)
"They make the lightning with their power" (1.64.5)
"they drive forward the big clouds like wanderers on the way" (1.64.11)
"Forth rush the torrents of the dark red stormy clouds" (1.85.5)
"they who like fiery sparks with showers of rain blow through the heaven " (8.7.16)
Shelley's West Wind's activity in the sky is the abridged version of the afore-quoted lines.
There is a close resemblance between the Maruts and Shelley's West Wind in their impact on waters. In Shelley the personified "Atlantic powers cleave themselves into chasm" and the sapless foliage "grow grey with fear and tremble". In the Rgveda almost the same expressions are used : "thou ... cleft the channels of the torrents" (1.32.1); "The waters ... thou cleftest" (4.41.8); "When ye have hastened on ... the waters are disturbed" (5.58.6); (the waters) "before your coming bowed down so to acknowledge your mighty force (8.7.5).
After comparing the images and ideas of the two works, we can, now, took at the key words used. The epithets used by Shelley for West Wind are, 'wild' west wind, 'uncontrollable', 'tameless' and 'swift', spirit 'fierce' and 'impetuous'. Each of these epithet has been employed for the Maruts, not just once, but many times. In 1.85.2, 2.34.1., 7.58.2, the Maruts are called 'Wild'; in 1.64.12, 1.85.13, 1.87.1 2.34.1, 5.87.2 & 5, 7.56.11 they are called 'impetuous'; in 137.4 and 5.60.2 they are 'fierce'; in 1.64.7 & 11 and 5.87.2 & 5 they are 'swift'; in 1.37.4, 1.64.3, 1.64.12, 1.85.2, 1.85.13, 1.87.1, 5.87.2 & 5 the Maruts are called uncontrollable, 'resistless', 'strong' and 'vigorous'.
I will quote a few lines from Book 4, hymn 32 of the Rgveda to point out the lexical similarity between the two works:
"Swift and impetuous art thou
... and irresistible ...
may we be friends of one like thee.
... comrades for lively energy."
Compare these lines with Shelley's:
"O uncontrollable
... the comrade of thy wanderings
... one too like thee ...
tameless and swift
... be thou me, impetuous one."
This is not mere coincidence, Shelley acts as an 'echo chamber' picking up images and lexis from the hymns of the Rgveda about which Max Muller said:
As long as man continues to take an interest in the history of his race and as long as we collect ... the relics of former ages ... the first place ... will belong, forever, to the Rgveda.5
Poetry is a relay race and Shelley stands on the shoulders of giants – the poet seers of the Rgveda.
1. Nigel Leask, British Romantic writers and the East:, Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni. Press, 1993), p.118.
2. Nigel Leask, British Romantic Writers and the east, p, 102.
3. The works of P.B. Shelley (herfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1994). All subsequent quotes from Shelley are cited from this edition only.
4. Ralph T.H. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rgveda, Trans.; (Varanasi: The Chowkhambha Sanskrit Series Office, 1971), Vol. 1 & 2. All subsequent quotations from the Rgveda are taken from this edition only.
5. The Hymns of the Rgveda, Vol. 1, p. ix (Preface).