法王还是贞妇?--梵剧《沙恭达罗》的性别建构与误读

A King of Dharma or an Ideal Woman: Gender Construction and Misreading in the Sanskrit Drama Sakuntalā

梵剧《沙恭达罗》是梵语文学中的典范性文本。沙恭达罗的故事来源于传统素材,迦梨陀娑充分运用作家的巧思对其进行了加工、再创作,成功地建构了符合当时社会政治文化需求的法王与贞妇形象。进入殖民时代,《沙恭达罗》被威廉·琼斯译为英语,成为一批东方学家研究的核心文本之一,并成了印度古代文明的象征符号:沙恭达罗被视为印度传统女性的代表,豆扇陀的法王形象则隐而不彰。从创作背景、文本的政治意涵以及传统戏剧理论来看,国王豆扇陀都应该是梵剧的主角。而就这部作品的近现代接受来看,关注的焦点往往都在沙恭达罗。本文着重讨论梵剧《沙恭达罗》中的性别建构及其在近现代接受过程中的性别错位。

The Sanskrit drama Sakuntalā model text in Sanskrit literary history. Deriving the plot from past traditions, Kālidāsa furnished and recreated a new story through his genius as a writer, successfully moulding the hero into a king of dharma and the heroine into an ideal woman, in response to the new social reality. During the colonial period, William Jones translated Sakuntalā into English. Immediately it became a fundamental text studied by Orientalists and a symbol for ancient Indian civilization. Sakuntalā was highly admired as a feminine ideal of Indian women while Sakuntalā largely faded into the background. Judged from the political context of the work, the author’s intention and the traditional Sanskrit dramatology, Sakuntalā should have enjoyed the status of a protagonist in the drama, if not the only one. Nevertheless, in the work’s modern reception, all attention goes to Sakuntalā. This paper focuses on the gender construction and displacement in Sakuntalā。