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ACCESSION NO._?5T2.‘2)
CALL No.
KAblDAgA
HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITY &.PpKTRY

' J;928 -
K. S, RA^ASWAMiI SASTRI, b.a . B.L.,
Au^tof of **Rabirnlranath, Tagore Poet,
Pairioi and Philo5opher*\ *"Hindu
Culture \ **An Epic of Indian womer^rr -T'
hood\ **Rati Vijayarn',**BhagQ^
Git<i\ **lndian Aesthetics*'
. Delhi

ii;r.'\OP GENgML or

SRIRANGAM
SRI VANI VILAS PRESS
1933.
 .\V OKiaii

Acjr.. ..8.^ AS.

...H.i.:7.:SJ.
.
<^•11 No
 CONTENTS.

^ Chapter. Page.
*
I Introductory. t
II The Place ol iCalidaaa in Ltle
and Literature. 11
HI Kalidasa’s Predecessors. 18
IV India in Kalidasa’s Time. 30
(i V The Birthplace and the Birth-
rv Date ol Kalidasa. 36
VI The Life of Kalidasa. ^ 81
ii VII Kalidasa the Man. 89
VIII Ritu Samhara (The Scasoits).' **"’« 107
1

IX Kumara Sambhava (The Birth’’

V o( the War God-) ■ J**’' 130
X Megha Sandesa (The Cloud
Messenger). 170
Xi Raghuvarata (The DynaSy ol
Raghu.) 191
p XII Malavikagninutra. 227
1
XIII Vilcramofvastya (The Hero
1
1 and the Nymph). 245
(' XIV Sakuntala. 271
f;.

V XV Kalidasa’s Miscellaneous works. 312

w
V/ XV! Kalidasa’s Successors. 318
 FOREWORD.

1 am ending thi. book and its companion

Tolume (TTie Gen(u. of Kclidasa)^ » to be

publiabed »on into ibc «ide world though I am
Lll aware o( their many defedt. and imperleamns
My aim i. «o do »me pioneer work in a negledted
ficia. The interprctalion of Indian literature by
Indian scholarship has not yet begun in an ad^uate
^.mier and meaaure. Such work is the aad test
of the rain and vaunted Indian patriotism of t^day.
1 desired to gather together a syndi«te of schoUrs

and publish a Variorum Edition of Kalidasa. My

noble friend Mr. T. K. Balasubrahmany. Iyer, who
has dedicated hUlife and wealth to the cause o the
expansion of Indian learning and Sanskrit culture,
has been eager to publish it. But my official pre¬
occupations and the professional pre-occupation of
my friends who proposed to co-operate with me in
doing such a work have flood in the way-

The Sanskrit language is now under a doud.

But the clouds pass and the sun remains. It U the
^skrit language that is the real linking element in
 ii

Indian culture. «Tr> ^ t If

Federated India is to succeed in external life it mu^
get federated in its inner nature by means of the
unifying power of Sanskrit. Further, the entire
modern age need it as surely as a sick man needs a
physician. His Highness the Maharajah of Mysore ^
who is an embodiment of royal virtues and Indian
culture has well said : “Sanskrit learning embodies
a culture, a discipline, a type of humanism, which
no other learning old or new, dead or living, can
present to our age.” I have written this work not (-
only with the obje<5l of interpreting Kalidasa but J
also with the object of winning the love of modern
India and of the modem age to the Sanskrit langu** .
age and literature and to the Indian culture.

Kalidasa, like Valmiki and Vyasa, is one of

the incarnations of the national genius at its belt.
He has summed up the entirety of Indian life in an
inimitable way. We can well say of him as Goethe
said of Sakuntala : •,
I

“Wouldft thoH the young years blossoms and

the fruits its decline f
And all by which the soul is fcafled, ^
enraptured, (ed«
 CHAPTER I.

Introductory.

*JpHIS book aims at presenting within brief limits

an estimate of the life and the life-work of one
who was the highest expression of the Indian genius
in one of its greater epochs of self-realisation—the
immortal Kalidasa. To do such a great work
adequately an amplitude of power of presentation and
an amplitude of canvas for presentation are equally
indispensable and equally unavailable. 1 shall aim
more at suggeslivencss than at comprehensiveness
. in this work.

The task of expounding Kalidasa’s works from

a grammatical and metrical and expository point eC
4 KALI l)AB\

view has been done well by many great commentators

during many centuries. Mr. A. W. Ryder has
said well in his book on Kalidasas works: **No
European nation can compare with India in critical
devotion to its own literature.*' Of them all
Mallinatha Sun is the greatest and befi in point
of learning, scholarship, brevity, clearness and various ^
other great qualities. He does not belong to the ^
group of commentators who are described with
characteristic caustic humour by Pope when he
says: '

“Lo I G>mmenUtori each dark passage shun

And show their farthing candles to the Sun.”

He never shirks any difficulty but throws abundant

light everywhere.

But the histone and comparative and aesthetic

methods of exposition and appraisement have yet to
be applied to Indian literature and especially to
.•

Kalidasa. It is only by the application of such

methods that we can properly appreciate not only
the genius of a poet but his special excellences and
his roots in the racial life.

The aesthetic aspect of art—its power to en¬

;gt

kindle a pervasive and intense and all-absorbing feel-

■
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POETRY 5

ingof delight—was well understood in our country and

was analysed and exposed to the searchlight ol
the keen and analytic and at the same time synthetic
and sympathetic imagination of the Indian racial
mind in the course of many centuries from the sage
Bharata to the great aesthetician and metaphysician
Appayya Dikshita who lived barely three centuries
ago. I have discussed the development of Indian
Aesthetics at some length in my recent work on the
subject.a But no regular and systematic treatment
of the works of great individual poets or the great
periods of poetical self-expression and achievement
in India has as yet been given to the world. In
Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka which
is one of the treasuries, nay scriptures, of Indian
aesthetica! ideas, this work has been done to some
extent, or rather, the artistic and emotional possibilities
of such a work have been revealed. But the other
works on Aesthetics deal rather with abstract, than
with applied, poetics and aesthetics.

But even more than this desideratum, is the

♦ INDtAN i«ESTH¥TI^ by K. S. Ramaswami

Sutri B. A., B, L. Published by the Sri Van! Vilas Press,
SriraAgam. Price Rt. 2.
6 KALIDASA

need for applying the historical and comparative

methods of study and criticism and appreciation.
These are a late achievement even in the West and
are a result of the recent advances made in history
and science. The fruitfulness of such methods was
discovered only in very recent times. It is a means
of arriving at a reconstruction of the history of
human culture. It enables the spirit of man to
count the milestones left behind on the road of lime.
It enables man to know the growlli of his own
powers. This is a valuable means of acquiring
courage for assaying with success our journey in
the future along the road of time. Such a work
has not yet been done at ail in our land* The
materials for such a work are ample—nay, stupend¬
ous in mass and bewildering in complexity. We have
to deal not with a new or defunct or poor civili¬
sation but with a very old and very energetic and
very rich and complex civiL’salion. The sclf-cxpress-
ioos of the racial spirit in the course of many
centuries have been numerous and are of a perplexing
mass and manifoldness. To correlate the many and
mighty achievements of the national spirit and to
rolate them to the highest achievements in literature
and art and religion is a task of absorbing interest

a •*
 HIb rEH101>, PBBSONALrry AKD POITRY 7

and urgent importance. The difficulty of the work

is enhanced by the lack of ascertained historical
data. The problems of Indian chronology are of a
very conflidling and perplexing character. The
dates of birth and death of many of our master¬
spirits including kings and poets and saints have yet
to be fixed with accuracy. Without the doing of
such work, the attempt to reconstruct the past in a
systematic way and to present to the modern age the
mirror of the past to behold itself therein mufl be
one foredoomed to failure.

The late Mr. V. Krishnaswami Iyer, who was

one of the leaders of Indian life and thought in his
lime and whose critical vigilance and acuteness no
sophistry could lull and from which no real and
radical defects could escape, said well, so long ago
as 1908, in his introduction to Pandit Vidya Vinoda
R. Krishnamachariar s I\4eghasan<jesa Vimarsa:
“The vmters are mere expositors of the meanings of
words and phrases and of grammatical or other
peculiarities. They rarely deviate into the more
difficult field of criticism of poetic beauty, the des¬
cription of scenes, the delineations of character, and
the weaving of the plot. Except occasional hints
 8 KALIDASA

thrown out in the course of verbal annotations, they

never depart from their time-honoured practice and
try to seize the secret of the poet's power of
blending literary expression with the fine frenzy of
the imagination." Such a work has been waiting to
be done and is attempted to be done to some extent
in this work. My aim in the first volume is to present
Kalidasa s limes and trace the sources of his genius-
and give an account of his works from the angles of
vision referred to above. In my second volume
I shall describe the genius of Kalidasa with reference
to the individual «nd racial and universal elements
in his poetry and deal with him as the poet of
Nature and Beauty and Love and as poet and as
drarnabst, and show his ideals of boyhood and man¬
hood and womanhood and his social and political
and religious concepts, and describe also his por¬
traiture of Indian civilisation and his influences on
Indian poetry and life and on universal literature.

Mr. A. W. Ryder has said in his work oft

Kalidasa : “It is surely true that every nation is
the best judge of its own literature." This is my
justification and my excuse for writing this work.
We Indians have left this work undone for a long
 HI8 PKRIOl), PBnsONAUTY AXD POETRY 9

time and are bound to do it for self-realisation and

self-expression and also for the proper understanding
of us by the world at large and the enrichment of
universal life and thought. Quite recently Mr.
J. D. Anderson said : “Criticism in India lags
behind the country's literary achievements in general.**
Rabindranath Tagore has, fortunately for us and for
the world, done this work, though not in a syste¬
matic way and with reference to all the works of
any particular poet. Literature has been well said
to be the brain of humanity. It is the treasury of
the racial experience. True and appreciative and
interpretative criticism when it is worthy of thc^
poet will take fire by contact with the poet's Prome¬
thean fire and will contain an element of true
creativeness within itself. A well-known Sanskrit
verse goes the length of saying that the poet is the
parent of the bride—Poesy, but it is the critic who is
the bridegroom of the bride. Critidsm reveals the
essential truth and beauty and joy of literature as
literature reveals the essentia! truth and beauty and
joy of life. If the critic has half the gladness that
the poet's brain must know, such harmonious sanity
from his lips would flow that he should listen to him
as it listens to the poet.
10 KALIDASA

H any of our classical poets deserve such an

approach and such a study and such an exposition
it is Kalidasa. I hope and wish and pray that the
following pages may justify such a claim. If they do
not, the fault is mine and not that of the immortal
poet who is the poet of all times and climes and of
all minds and moods* I cannot deso'ibe him better
than in the words of introduction by Palgrave in his
Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics; “Like the
fabled fountain of the Azores, but with a more
various power, the magic of this Art can confer on
each period of bfe its appropriate blessing : on early
years experience, on maturity calm, on age youth-
fulness. Poetry gives treasures, more golden than
gold, leading us in higher and healthier ways than
those of the world and interpreting to us the lessons
of Nature. But she speaks best for herself. Her
true accents, if the plan has been executed with
success, may be heard throughout the following
pages.**
 i
CHAPTER II.
The Place of Kalidasa in Life
and Literature.

JT IS thus a privilege and an obligation of Indian

critical talent to take up Kalidasa for historical
■ and comparative Audy and aesthetic exposition. It
is one of the means of creating or at least intensifying
the racial self-conciousncss which is the only means
of stimulating racial originality in tlie future and thus
enriching universal culture by means of the re-
simulated Indian culture. Has not the reproach
of sterility of mind been laid, and rightly laid, at our
doors ? Have we not become a beggar-nation in
more ways than one ? Should we not save and
redeem ourselves from imminent national bankruptcy
of mind and heart and soul ? To vary the figure
and use a Kaiidasian idea, should not the blossom¬
less Asoka tree of Indian Literature and Art feel the
12 KAL1DA»«A

touch of the soft and decorated foot of the lovely

maiden whose name is Kalidasa Kaoita (Kalidasa's
Poesy) ?

It is not proper or permissible in thist work to

urge a strong plea for the intensive study of Sanskrit
literature by Indians. Professor Max Muller
expressed its value to the world at large thus in his
well-known words. “And, if I were to ask myself,
from what literature, we, here in Europe, we who
have been nurtured almost exclusively on the
thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semite
race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is
most wanted in order to make our inner life more
perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact
more truly human life, a life, not for this life only
but a transfigured and eternal life—again I should
point to India.’’ Emerson has said in his works
which are as redolent of India as of the sweet sanity
and serenity of his own soul: “If (the Veda) is
sublime as heat and light and breathless ocean, it
contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics,
which visit in turn each noble poetic mind<* •There
is no remedy for musty self-conceited English life—
made up of fictitious trifles,hating ideas—like Oriental-
 HIS PKRIOI), rKRsONAl,ITY AND POBTRY 13

ism. Thai astonishes and disconcerts English

decorum. For once there is thunder he never
heard, liglit he never saw, and power which trifles
with time and space."

I do not pursue this aspect further here, though

the enchantment and fascination of it are great. But
to us the study of our literature is an even deeper
want and a more intimate concern. Sister Nivedita
said in one of her many inspired utterances during
the many rapt and elevated moods and moments of
her noble and nobly dedicated life: “There is no
voice like that of Art to reach the people. A song,
a picture, these are the fiery cross that reaches all
the tribes and makes them one.Not only to utter
India to the world but also to voice India to herself,
this is the mission of Art, divine mother of the ideal,
when it descends to clothe itself in forms of realism."
It is by the study of the bed Sanskrit literature that
India can attain true and vital self consciousness and
hear the music of her own voice and behold the
beauty of her own face in the mirror of Art To
the world at large Sanskrit literature may be and is
a corrective, a remedy, a supplement, a secondary
or primary illumination. But to us it is a matter of
 14 KALIDASA

life and death. Let me quote Sister Nivedita again

as I desire to fortify my view—which perhaps may
be unrelished in this age of insincerelies and shams
and unashamed borrowings and wholesale denation'
alisations—by the views of critical and competent and
sympathetic and inspired outsiders and observers:
“At each step, then» the conquest must be twofold.
On this side, something to be added to the world’s
knowledge and on that, an utterance to be given for
the firsi limt, for India to herself. This is the battle
that opens before the next generation. On our
fighting a good fight, the very existence, it may be of
the next, depends. Our national defence, is become,
perforce, a national assault.” The only words to
which 1 demur in this noble passage are “for the first
time.” India was voiced to herself by herself supreme¬
ly well in times of yore. The question for our emer¬
gent consideration is how to fit ourselves again for
that noble work for achieving our own regeneration
along with universal welfare and enrichment.

This exaltatUn of Sanskrit literature does not

at ail or in any way mean, an attitude of contempt
OT negleci of the great literatures in the beautiful
vernaculars of India. This idea is one of the evil
 ms rBBIOD, I’ERftONALTTY AND POETRY 15
results of our recent political follies and vices.
Every linguishc group in India must prize and
study its lingual masterpieces, because the future
contribution of India to her own greatness and the
welfare of the world must necessarily be through
the chief vernaculars of India. But he who thinks
that he can achieve the future enrichment of the
vernacular literatures without an extensive and inten¬
sive dudy of Sanskrit is the mod deluded of mortals.
If Sanskrit literature is the corrective and the remedy
and the supplementary illumination of universal cub
ture, the filial vernacular literatures cannot afford to
rebel and to sever their affiliation. The red of Asia
knows and feels its debt of inspiration to Sanskrit.
Europe and America have recently realised and
testified to its value. But it has been reserved for
the short-sighted iconoclasts and vernacular-worship¬
pers in India to cad the dones of verbal abuse at the
grealed literature in the world.

I need not accentuate and express all the impli¬

cations of the above discussion in its bearing or

Kalidasa*$ place in life and literature. He is one of

the shining lights of Sanskrit literature. He was the
summation of Indian culture in one of its mod exalted
periods of triumphant self-realisation. His works
16 . KALIDASA

form a treasury of the true^ and the highest Indian

ideals of life here and hereafter. If we wish to
know the heights of life and super-life to which the
■authentic voice of India can reach» we must study
again and again, with loving attention and minute
scrutiny and reverential affe(5tion the works of
Kalidasa. It is not my purpose here to refer to his
excellences as a poet and a dramatist or to describe
his portraiture of India and her eternal and im¬
memorial ideals. 1 shall assay that task, whether
with good or ill success, in the ensuing pages. What
I wish to urge here is the high place occupied by
Kalidasa in universal life and literature. If Sanskrit
literature is a valuable element in universal life and
literature and is not merely a valuable but also a
vital element in Indian life and literature, the place
of Kalidasa in life and literature would be too clear
to need any expression or exposition, elaboration or
vindicatkm. By a study of his works and his genius
the rest of the world will be enabled to achieve its
true progress by attaining to a synthetic vision of life
and having a true concept of that idealised and trans¬
figured life which alone is the crown and the con¬
summation of our petty worldly life otherwise so full
of fruitless toil and unfratcrnal strife, while India will
4
 nis matoD, i*BR«oxALiTr and poetev 17

rise to a higher and truer and clearer vision of her¬

self as a whole and self-conscious unity, dowered with
eternal youth and facing the ‘*sunri5e of nations.** Pw*
Kalidasa is India and India is Kalidasa. Nay, may
I not go further and say with Mr. Benoy Kumar
Sirkar: “Nobody understands Asia who docs not
understand Kalidasa—the spirit of Asia”? Indeed,
India is the heart of Asia and Kalidasa is the heart
of India.
 CHAPTER III.

Kalidasa’s Predecessors.
TT i$ a new and pleasant task to trace the spiritual
and artistic ancestry of Kalidasa. Tliough in
the case of each great poet there is a special and
peculiar and underived and incommunicable element
of individual greatness, he derives strength and
nourishment and inspiration from the great poets and
seers of the pa^. and his greatness as well his value
to the race in which he is bom and to the world at
large can never be fully and adequately understood
unless we know his relation to his predecessors.

There is not much evidence in his works to

show that he was fired by the wonderful poetic
concepts and descriptions found in the Rig-Vedic
poetry, though he speaks of the Vedas in terms of
 nis PERIOD, PBRSOHALiry AND POBTRY 19

the highest reverence. But be seems to have

known and acccpied the Upanishadic religious ideas.
Though we do not see in him those unconscious or
consdous frequent borrowings of the immortal and
perfed symbolism and expresdon of the Upanishadic
poetic ideas which we see in the Snmad Bhagavata,
we certainly find Upanishadic ideas and passages
here and there in his works and see that he has been
influenced by what is wrongly called the ecleddsm
and what should be rightly called the synthetic
vision of Upanishadic seers. We have also a clear
indication in his works showing how he had assimi¬
lated the crescendo of synthetic doctrine which is
seen in parts in the Six Daraanas but which really
forms one synthetic and integral whole. I shall
describe these aspects fully when dealing in my
second volume with Kalidasa*s religion. But 1 shall
indicate here a few fa(5ts in so far as they bear on the
question of Kalida$a*8 mental ance^ry. The follow¬
ing verses show how he was acquainted and in sym¬
pathy with the great Upanishadic teachings and the
Six Darsanas.

w- vRoierf m: \\
Kumarasambhava II. 61.
20 KALIDASA

3Tr<T^in3^TRTvqr m w
Raghuvamsa X. 281-

?*nR^ 5^^ r^j: m

KumarasAinbhRva II. 3.

Raghuvaniaa XIII. 60.

Do- I. 5.

gn^c: 5r/&r«rH^R«RT *reat: T»€?i^3CTTi^r'T. i

Do. VIII. 9.

5f xf 1
Do. VIII. 22.

The above are a lew of the many Lanzas in his

poems showing how much he accepted and assimi¬
lated from the great saints who composed the Sam-
khya Sutras, Yogasutras, and the Vedanta Sutras.
The Vikramoroasiya begins with the well-known line

** R«rd

which is clearly reminiscent of the Svetesvatara

Upanishad. The third line in the verse clearly
refers to the Dahara Vidya.
 ms PBRIOD, PKRSONALITY AJ?D POETRY 21

35f i
In the intcre^s of the brevity of this work 1 do not
pursue these citations further.

Kalidasa s reverence to Manu is profound and

complete (See Raghuvamsa, I, 17 ; XIV, 67). In
all his works he shows the great influence which
Manu s immortal work had on ail later leaders of
thought in India. He refers often to the sacraments
as described in the Indian Dharma Saitras.

Kalidasa s debt to Valmiki is heavy and mani¬

fold and handsomely acknowledged in his works.
In the Raghuvamsa, he says ;—

flofr i nfir: it i. 4.

XIV. 70.
Not only was the idea of sending a cloud as a
messenger sugge^ed by the sending of Hanuman as
a messenger in the Ramayana, Sakuntala is full ^
ideas and incidents sugge^ed by the Ramayana.
Kalidasa took from it the idea of using a ring as a
token of recognition, Dushyanta*$ pursuing a deer,
and helping sages against demons, the sending of
22 K&LIDAS^

Vidushaka to take his place for a while at the capital^

the sending away of Sakunlala while she is pregnant,
Sakuntala*s being taken by a goddess, the protedtion
of Sakuntala by a sage during pregnancy and
after childbirth, Dushyanta*s getting into the car of
ladra driven by Matali, reunion with Sakuntala,
Sakunta!a*8 blaming her fate for her misfortunes, and
the hinted greatness of Dushyanta s son. In the
Raghuvamsa the idea of bringing in a deity of
Ayodhya was obviously sugge^ed by the introduc¬
tion of the deity of Lanka in the Sundarakanda of
the Ramayana. Tliere arc also internal indications iu
Kalidasa s poem showing the influence of the elder
poet. Valmiki says i—"

This fine poetic idea has obviously suggested

Kalidasa's verse:

^PnW5«TraT: ^ II
Meg)iasandcsa 1. 9.
Valmiki says:—

jsi: inrn^ i
 HlB PERIOD, TRESONALITY AND POETRT 23

Kalidasa brings out the same idea thus,

fen: fen: nw i
Ihid I. 13.
Valmiki says:—

dV^MRT: II

This idea is finely worked out in his own way

by Kalidasa :—

nr n: n5i% n
ll ibid 163.

In innumerable phrases and illustrations and

ideas we see Valmikrs influence on Kalidasa. Kali¬
dasa, like Valmiki, describes perfe<ft manhood in the
opening of his great poem Raghuvamsa and then
proceeds to describe great men who were incarna¬
tions of those ideals. The following few parallel
passages are given by way of illustration.

Valmiki Kalidasa

I
56, 14)
24 KAUt>ASA

«^'**5rN?r: li
(5«wi», 80, 10).
^ I I

37. 18).

That Kalidasa was an admirer of the Gita and

was deeply influenced by il is equally dear. Tlie
following lines of his verse are full of the influence
of the Gila.

vv Kalidasa
WTSftff ^ ^ ^ ST- j

flra: 3V^hl»r: II XV. 18. Raghuvamsa III. 49.

f?wwwt Kumarasambliava. VI. 48

I VI. 19.
RagiiQvamia XIII. 52.

cTOl « ITRqq^ i

fV. 37. Do, VIII. 20.

ti N

XIV. 24. Do. VIII. 21.

 HIS rjfiKlOJ), riSBSONALlTY AX1> POSTBY 25

\ 5»ih: 3^
a^jun^ils H* ?5: i
^ 3^ I Do. VIII. 24.

B B M 3^gV% II
VIII. 9 and )0.
^ ^ fi ^ r%-
^ I u. 22. ^ r;^-
^ 5rfinrf^>: n
Do. X3I.

In fadl he expressly refers to Gila Chapter X

Verse 25 when he says about the Himalaya.

(?rH ft % I
Kumaraaambhava VI, 67.

Even more than these and other passages the spirit

of the Gila shines out in his poems. Its great a(hrma>
lions of the immortality of the soul, of the supremacy
and grace of God, of His many manifestations aftd
incarnations, and of tl^e harmony and synthesis of
Karma and Yoga and Bhakti and Jnana had fired
Kalidasa's heart and imagination and appear fre¬
quently in his works.
 26 KALIDASA

I desire to make here a further and special and

detailed reference to the indications in his work
showing that he knew and admired the great Vedanta
Sutras of Vyasa. * In

wrorat irt: i
ICumaraMinbh«va. It, 6.

he refers to the well-known Sutra

Ih I. 2).

In (Kamarawmbhava II. 12) and in

5sf sjfir wr (Raghuvamia
X, 26) he refers to the next Sutra
(I I. 3)

In the stanza
(Raghuvamta. X. 26) he refers to the next Sutra

^ (I. I. 4)

(Ragh uvamia, XIV, 62) he refers to the well-known

Sutra H
(II. 1.34)
He was further well conversant with the
Puranas. We need not concern ourselves here with
the question whether all the Puranas were in existence
 ars PHUOl), PUESONAUTV AND POETRY 27

prior to his time or not. Such a bye-discussion will

draw us away from the main topic. Amara Simha,
the great dic^donary-makcr, says that a Parana should
be Panchalakshana (i. e. have five characteristics).
Some at least of the Puranas were certainly older
than Kalidasa's days. He has taken the stories of
his two great epics from the Puranas. In the Mtgha
Sandesa there is a clear reference to
(Vishnu who had the appearance of a shepherd).
I have no doubt that Kalidasa was influenced by the
Mahabharata and the Puranas and the Bhagavata
though in a less degree tlian by the Ramayana.

I shall in a later chapter show he belonged to

an epoch when aggressive and triumphant Hinduism
had asserted itself successfully as against Buddhism.
But in his age (he influence of Buddhistic ideas and
ideals and manners and institutions had not gone out
of the land altogether. The rcspeCt shown to the
Pariorajako in the Malavikagnimitra and the
e^ident sympathy with which is described the story
in Raghuoamsa about Dilipa offering himself as
a sacriflce to the lion (recalling the famous story
dramatised later in Nagananda) show the lingering
influence of outstanding Buddhistic ideas.
28 KALIDASA

At the same lime, it is clear as I shall show

presently, that Kalidasa preceded Kumarila Bhatta
and Sankara. It seems to me that the noble and
synthetic theism of Kalidasa and his concepts of
Sadhana and of Moksha certainly influenced them
to some extent, though Sankara’s original and uni'
versal intellect was peerless in its synthetic power,
its bold and fearless analysis of causes, and its asceT'
tainment and affirmation and exposition of the highest
scriptural dodrines.

It only remains for me to make a reference to

Bhasa and to Asvaghosha. Kalidasa refers with
respedt to Bhasa and Saumilla and Kaviputra in his
Matavikagnimilra. There is a controversy now going
on as to the genuineness of the works of Bhasa which
have been given to the world by that late lamented
veteran scholar Pandit T. Ganapati Sastriar of
Trivandrum. I do not wish to enter into that dis¬
cussion here. It is likely that Kalidasa was influ¬
enced by Bhasa’s poetic genius and dramatic method.
But his borrowings from all quarters were assimilated
by him and became a portion of himself and do not
in any way detract from the originality of his genius
or of his achievement. As regards Asvaghosha’s
 Hl« I'KKIOI) rBUSOSALITY AND KJBTHY 29

Buddliacharila and the occasional resemblances of

ideas and expressions in it and in Raghuoamsa and
Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa, it is enough to ^atc
here that we are in the misty realms of guess and
conjecture. Some of the stock ideas and expressions
had already become current coin bearing the royal
seal of Valmiki. Hence the use of such ideas and
plirases means nothing. Further, there is no reliable
evidence to shovr (hat Asvagosha preceded Kalidasa.
I sliall show in a later chapter that it is more likely
that he succeeded Kalidasa and copied thoughts and
expressions from Kalidasa.

I .
 CHAPTER IV.

India in Kalidasa’s time.

J^ALIDASA had the good fortune to be born in

India in one of the centuries of her splendour
and glory. It may rather be said that such a trium*
phant supremacy of her outer and inner life inevitably
found an authentic and predeitined voice in Kalidasa.
I shall show later bow hts portraiture of a unified
India from Himalaya to Cape Comorin and from
sea to sea was not a mere audacious poetic passion
or prophecy but was either an accomplished fact or
a rational expectation from an accomplished fact. I
shall show also how he had a 6rst hand knowledge
ef the country from end to end. To know Kalidasa
well* we must know as she was the land in which
he lived and described so lovingly and so well.

It is not necessary or proper to describe here

Vedic India or Epic India. India has been the
 HIK PBKIOI) PKRAONALTTT AKP POBTRV 31

cradle and home of the people who have been called

Hindus and who described themselves as Aryas or
Bharatas, though it is likely—nay certain—that they
colonised various lands in Asia and abroad and
though a colony from India lived for a while in ArdHc
regions near the North Pole in the pre-glacial epoch.
During the epic period the whole of India was well-
known. The Ramayana refers even to the Chera
and Chola and Pandya kingdoms in the extreme
south of the peninsula. Strabo says that Alexander
got Indians to describe their land to him. On the
strength of the information so collected Eratosthenes
has described India as a rhomboid. Cunningham
says in his Ancient Ceorgraphy of India: “The
close agreement of the dimensions given by Alex¬
ander $ informants with the actual size of the country
is very remarkable and shows that Indians at that
early date of their history had a very accurate know¬
ledge of the form and extent of their native land.**

Kalidasa*8 India was a more settled and popul¬

ous and flourishing land than even the India of* the
epic age. The impenetrable forests of the older
centuries had been brought under the sway of human
occupation and human rule. We And the whole land
32 KALIDAHA

dotted with many kingdoms. Many of the kings ruling

over such kingdoms are described well in the sixth
canto of Raghuoamsa which describes the svayam-
vara of Indumali. The fourth canto of Raghu¬
oamsa which describes the great world conquest of
Raghu describes the various kings subjugated by the
king. In it the poet refers also to the South Indian
kingdoms—the regions watered by the Kaveri, the
Pandya kingdom whose king gave a tribute of pearls,
the Kerala kingdom etc. By the world*conquest of
Ragim, Kalidasa has indicated his ideal of a unified
India enjoying a position of dominant suzerainty over
the re^ of the world. The Hindu Stales mentioned
by him are Anga, Anupa, Avanti, Kalinga, Kam-
boja, Kamarupa, Kerala, Kosala, Magadha, Malaya,
Mathura, Nagapura, Sumha and Vaidharbha. He
describes in the same fourth canto Raghu s conquest
of the bearded Persians and their cavalry and the
lonians on the West of India and the Huns and the
Kambhojas on tlie North of India and the inhabi*
tants of Pragjyotisha and Kamarupa in the East.
His idea! is summed up in the welMuiown word
(the lords of the earth from sea
to sea).
 HIS PBHIOD> PERSONAMTY AXD POBTBY 3*^

We Bad further from Kalidasa's poems that

there were great and famous and holy dlies—both
capitals and temple cities—in India in that age. Kali¬
dasa’s description of Ayodhya in the sixteenth canta
of Raghuoamsa shows his pathetic and vivid realisa¬
tion of tire rise and fall of great cities. In his poems
he describes in loving terms such great cities as
Vidisa, Ujjain, Vishala etc., and the high pilch of
perfe(ftion attained therein in arts and sciences.

But the intenseA devotion of Kalidasa in regard

to his motherland is in regard to her holy mountains
and her holy hermitages and her holy streams and
her holy temples and other places of pilgrimage.
The evident and pa.ssionate love with which he
describes the Himalayas in the Kumarasambhava is
unmislatceable. Meghasandaa is full of the beauty
of Ramagiri and of Kailasa. The epics as well as
the dramas are full of the Tapovana atmosphere.
Sakuntala begins with Kanva’s hermitage on the
earth and closes with the hermitage of Maricha on
the Hemakuta mountain. Raghuvamsa begins with
Va$ishta*8 hermitage. Kumarasambhava describes
the hermitage of Siva, and later on the hermitage of
Uma, on the Himalaya range. The Megha Sandesa
K. 1. 3.
 3/. KALIDASA

describes the Veiravali, ihe Nirvindbya, the Sipra,

the Gandliavati, the Gambhira, the Sarasvali, the
Yamuna and other rivers. More than any other
river the Ganga cauglu the poPt*s imagination. The
description of the Ganges in the tenth canto of
Kumarasambhava is among the marvels of literature.
The poet describes the Ganges in many other places
in his works. So far as famous temples are con¬
cerned, he has not described any of the now famous
shrines in South India, though he has described the
shrine of Mahakala at Ujjain and other shrines in
North India.

As regards the flora and fauna of India, Kali¬

dasa's poetry is full of them. The beautiful flowers
of India such as tlie lotus, the mango blossom, the
Asoka flower, the Jasmine flower, the Neelotpala
flower, the Sirisha flower etc., the lately trees of
India such as the banyan tree, the asvattha tree, the
Devadaru (deodar) tree, the Bhurja tree, the Sala
tree etc, the deer and the horse and the elephant,—
in short, all the beauties of the kingdom of nature
and the animal kingdom live with a perennial life
in his pages.

Thus Kalidasa was not onTy a great poet

 HIS PBltlOl), PBRSOXaLITY AND POETRY 35

and dramati.ft but was also a great patriot and lover

of liis motherland. He had maje^ic visions of her
eternal loveliness and charm. He had a keen
realisation of her wonderful achievements in the
realms of the real and the ideal. He had superb
dreams of the achieved paft glories and the possible
future glories of his land. At the same time he had
a prophetic vision and uttered a note of warn¬
ing in regard to her jiossible fall. But during her
rise as well as during-her fall his love of his land
never wavered and never faltered and he deeply
felt and boldly uttered that her culture was the
standard and the measure of all the cultures of the
world ;
 CHAPTER V.

The Birth-place and The Birth-date

of Kalidasa.
fT is well-nigh impossible lo fix llic place of
^ Kalidasa’s birth. The mo§t widely prevalent tra¬
dition indicates that he belonged to Benares. It
has been also pointed out that his poems— specially
his Megha Sandesa—make frequent references to
Ujjain and show his love for that dty. In the
Meghasandesa (verse I) he reque^s the cloud to
make a detour in its long northward journey and
go to Ujjain. We cannot infer from this that he
was born in Ujjain. It is more likely that during
his adult Lfe he lived there and learnt to love and
admire it. Mr. A. W. Ryder says : ** Ujjain in
the days of Vikraraaditya ^ands worthily besides
Athens, Rome, Florence and London in their great
centuries”. The claim has been pul forward that
he was a native of Bengal. But there is no proof
 HIS PERIOD PERSONALITY AND POETRY $7

whatever worth the name to support such a fantas¬

tic claim. Equally proved and fanlaitic is the claim
that he belonged to Ceylon. Dr. Bhau Daji thinks
that Kalidasa was a Saraswal Brahmin. But
this again is a mere wild itatement. On the whole
his passionately reverential poems on the Canges
seem to show that the old tradidon which makes him
a nadve of Benares contains the Irulh. The tra¬
didon explains also his great devotion to God Siva,
though he has equal reverence for Brahma and
Vishnu as well.

The date of Kalidasa is as yet one of the un¬

settled problems of Indian Chronology, though the
quedion has been discussed and debated for over
a century by occidental and oriental scholars. Pro¬
fessor Max Muller says : “It seems almoit impossible
to give the opinions held by various Sanskrit scholars
on the date of Kalidasa or on the dates of certain
works asenbed to Kalidasa, on account of their
conitantly varying opinions and the vague language
in which they are expressed *' (India, what can it
teach us, p. 301, footnote). The dates asigned to
him cover the vad period of two thousand years—
from the 8th century B.C. to 12th century A. D.
38 lULlDASA

Thus the two termini of the dates assigned to Kali*

dasa are even beyond the termini of the dates assigned
to Sri Sankaracharya. I shall discuss here briefly
the current theories and show their unacceptability
and then advance ray reasons for my own view.

Let me firit of all take up the major and the

minor limits beyond which it is absolutely impossible
to go. I have shown above how Kalidasa is full of
references to the Bhaghavad Gita. Hence his date
was certainly long after the date of the Gila. On
the other hand the Maharaman inscription at
Buddhagaya in 472 A. D., refers to Kalidasa.
Further, the Aiholc inscription of Pulikesi II (634
A. D.), refers to Kalidasa. It says :

Further, the famous Bana refers thus to Kali*

dasa in his introdudion to HarshacKarita..

The Harshacharita describes the greatness of

king Harihavardhana of Kanya Kubja (Kanoaj)-
 an PKitIDI), IM li KVIifTf AKD POETBY 3^

who was the patron of the poet. The life of the

same king, as a contemporary potentate, is described
also by the Chinese traveller Hieuon Thsang wfio
travelled in India from 629 to 645 A. D. Bana
thus belonged to the firft half of the seventh century
A. D. Dandin quotes in his Kaoyadarsa the verse i
(Sakuntala I, 20). Bhavabhuti 1
also refers to Sakuntala in his Malatimadhaoa.
Though he calls it an Itihasa story, he obviously refers
to Kalidasa’s play. He belonged to the 8lh century
A. D. We may therefore rejedl at once the dories
and legends that seem to conoe(5t the immortal
Kalidasa with king Bhoja who lived in the 11 th
century A- D. In a later Chapter I shaU show that .
it was Parimala Kalidasa who was attached to Ling |
Bhoja’s court. I have dealt with this matter in my
Tamil work on Bhojacharilra. In his essay on
Kalidasa Dr. Bhau Daji thinks that the tradition
which assigns Kalidasa to Vikrama s court and the
tradition which assigns KaKdasa to Bhoja’s court ^
could be reconciled by assuming that Vikrama also r
was known as Bhoja. But there are no grounds for
such an assumption and there is no need for it, though
it is not unlikely that there were several Bhojas as
well as several Vikramas, at Ujjain. It seems to be
40 KALIDASA

clear that it was not the immortal Kalidasa that had

anything to dojwith the court of Bhoja who ruled
at Ujjain and Dhara in the llth century A. D.

The author of Gudavaho, ^ Prakrit poem of

the eighth century refers to Kalidasa as the author
of R.aghif\>amsa {Haghukara). Nriptatunga (9th
century) refers to Kalidasa, Bharavi and Magha as
classics. In the same century the Jain Sakatayana
quotes in his Amoghavritd the words ApricchasDa
priyasakham from Kalidasa's Meghasandesa, I, 12.
Verses from Mtghasandtsa were used for Samaiya-
poorana (verse composition) by Jivasena in his
Parsoabhyudaya soon after saka 735* («r«f
In the second half of the 9th century
Vamana refers in his Kavyalankarasutra Vritti to the
use of the word Asa in Kumarasambhava, I, 35.
Hemachandra who belonged to the twelfth century
refers to the use of this word in his work. Bhoja's
Saras\>aUkantabharana and Kshiravasvami's com¬
mentary on Amarakosa which belonged to the
eleventh century A. D. abound in quotations from
Kalidasa's poems. These fadts also prove clearly the
utter untenability of the stories connedting the great
K alidasa with king Bhoja of the 12th century.
 ms PBRIOD, PBIWONALITY AKD POETHT 41

While dealing wilh this fantaitic’theory I may

dismiss also the other equally absurd ^ory connetfling
Kalidasa with king Kumaradasa of Ceylon who
reigned in the firft half of the 6th century A. D.
The ^ory is that the king had a courtesan, that he
propounded a riddle to her and told her that a
magnificent present would be given to her if she
solved it, tliat Kalidasa wets laying in her house and
solved the riddle for her. that out of cupidity she
murdered him, and that eventually she confessed
her crime and was punished with death. This itself is
a wild ftory and belongs to the general slock of pun¬
gent fables in India. Further, there is no ground
whatever for supposing that the Kalidasa referred to
above was the same as the author of Sakuntala-

I may dismiss with a few words the theory of

M. Hippolyte Fauche that the poet muit have lived
in the 8th century before Chrift. His view is that
Kalidasa muft have lived during the reign of the
posthumous child of king Agnivarna who is describ¬
ed in the la^t canto of Raghuvamsa. This is a mere
gratuitous assumption. If the poet lived then he
would have described that king also. The fa<5t that
no later prince of the solar race is described in
42 KALIDAtiA

Raghuvamsa does not imply that there were no

such later kings. On the other hand the Vishnu
Purana mentions thirtyseven kings who reigned
after Agnivarna.

I shall now proceed to discuss a few other mis'

cellaneous suggestions before I discuss tlie theory
which has been holding the Beld for some time paft
and which has been supported by erroneous con*
jedtures and baseless suggestions by which the false¬
ness of the theory has been obscured through plausi¬
ble ^Statements and ingenious thougli unsubAantial
arguments. After such discussion is over and the
debris of inaccurate theories are swept away, the way
will be clear for arriving at the truth to the extent
to which it is possible on the scanty materials which
alone time has vouchsafed to us.

Professor Lassen thinks that Kalidasa muA

have flourislied in the second century after ChriA
in the court of Samudraguptu because this king is
called in inscriptions as " the friend of poets.” MoA
princes of those and these days are friends of poets
and hence this ground is useless as a criterion for
fixing dates. Professor Weber assigns to the poet
the 2nd century to the 4th century A. D., which
 HIS PERIOD, PKB80XALITY AND PORTElf 43

was the period of the Gupta Princes. This also is

not based on any data.

Col. Wilford has built bis theory about Kali*

dasa*s belonging to the 5th century A. on the
Aatement in Dhanesvara Suri*s Sairunjaya Mahai‘
mya that the great Vikramaditya would appear after
the expiry of 466 years of the era and that 477
years after him Siladitya would reign. This theory
is accepted by H. H. Wilson and James Prinsep.
But Dr. Bhau Daji has shown that the era Anted
above was the Mahavira era and that Col. Wilford is
wrong in thinking that the era was the Vikrama era.
The verse about Siladitya runs thus in Satrunjaya
Mahalmya.

it /

Professor Wilson wrongly thinks that the

abovesaid Siladitya was the son of Vikramaditya.
But Dr. Bhau Daji shows that the Siladitya referred
to in the above itanza was a king of Valabhi who
is described in the poem as having expelled the
BuddhiAs 477 years after the Vikrama era began.
Thus the date assigned by Col. Wilford and Pro¬
fessor Wilson is palpably wrong.
44 KlLIDA^A

The tradition which brings Kalidasa and Bha>

vabhuti together is a mere hdtion. Bhavabhud
belonged to the lafl quarter of the 7th century A. D.
and the fir^ quarter of the 8lh century A. D. To
say on the basis of the above fiction that Kalidasa
belonged to the 7th or 8th century A D. is a
palpable impropriety.

(_ Anotlier theory is that Kalidasa mu^t have

lived after Aryabhatta (A. D. 499) as he displays
a knowledge of scientific astronomy which was
borrowed from the Greeks. Jacobi assigns the 4th
century A. D., to Kalidasa because the word Jamitra
in the Br^ verse in canto VII of Kumarasam*
bhava rauit have been;borrowed from the Greek word
Diametio^ This is a mere guess* Very probably
the word is from an old Aryan root and is a purely
Sanskrit word frgtTT ). Very likely
the Jamitrasudhi refers to Tilhi and not to Lagna.
Mallinatha however says that Jamitra is the seventh
house from the Lagna. Why should Jamitra have
been borrowed from Diametron} Both, like pr7ar,
mater etc., may have come from a more primitive
root. Even if it was borrowed, why could it not
have come at the time of the invasion of India by
 IflU PKKUU), I»KK«!0)IALITV AND POBThV 45

Alexander or Selucus. TTie theory about the poil-

Aryabhatta date lor Kalidasa is based on Raghu*
vamsa XIV, 40, where it is Aated that the obscura*
tion of the moon is really the shadow of the earth
falling thereon. There is some doubt as to whether
the verse refers to the dark spots in the lunar sphere
or (o an eclipse of the moon. 1 personally think that
it refers to an eclipse. But how does it follow from
this that such scientiBc a^ionoroical knowledge
was unknown to the Hindus and was
borrowed by them from the Greeks during Arya-
bhalta’s lime ? The Hindus knew for a very long
time about the sphericity of the earth and other
aitronomical fads. We can no more affirm that they
got their astronomical knowledge from the Greeks
than we can say from the word Yavanikfl that the
Hindus owed their dage to the Greeks ! Further
the Romako Siddhania is older than Aryabhalta.
Professor Mac Donnell says that it cannot be placed
later than 400 A. D. In this view Professor Max
Muller’s theory assigning the sixth century A. D.,
to Kalidasa on the assumed ground of his being
subsequent to Aryabhatta is considerably weakened.
Mr. Keith has, however, given new life to this
theory in his recent work on The Sanskrit Drama.
 46 K.\ M )>ASA

He refers lo Professor Jacobi’s view that the equa-

lisalion of the midday with the sixth kala in the
l^ikramorvasiyfo shows that Kalidasa lived after the
introdudtion from the wc^ of the system of reckon¬
ing for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horas, kola
being evidently used as meaning Hora. But Huth in¬
terprets the passage as referring to a sixteen* fold divi¬
sion. Mr. Keith says that it probably refers lo the
figure of the lion in the zodiac. Thus the above views
destroy each other. Mr. Keith says that ** Kalidasa’s
allusion in Raghuvamsa and Kumafasambhava to
the influence of the planets and his use of such
technical terms as uccha and jamiira show that he
must have borrowed such ideas and terms from the
Greek and that a date not probably prior to A. D.
350 is indicated by such passages This view
again is based on insufficient and unproved data.
As dated above there is no ground for holding that
Indian astrology was a loan from Greek adrology.
The term uccha occurs even in the Ramayana, and
the influence of the planets was as welhknown to the
Indians as to the Greeks and was known to the
Indians much earlier than to the Greeks.

Professor MacDonnell thinks that Kalidasa

 liis PKKIOI), PBRSONALITY AND POETRY 47

may have belonged to tKe court of king Chandra-

gupta II who was called Vikramaditya and who
belonged to the beginning of the 5th century A. D.
Bui Kalidasa docs not refer to the Gupta kings at all.
On the other hand he refers to Agnimitra in his
Malnvikagnimitra. 1 sliall show the significance of
this later on. The above theory of Professor Mac-
Donnell also is a mere guess and nothing more.

Professor Pathaka advocates the 6th century

A. D., tlieory on the ground the 68th verse in
canto IV of Raghuvamsa refers to the Hun kings
and that it mu^ be taken that Kalidasa was uncon¬
sciously referring to the Hun Kings of his own times
(dAo ru/edm Kashmir and Panjab, as no Huns are
mentioned in the Ramayana. In his introduftion
to Meghasandesa, Professor Pathaka has revised his
view and says that the Huns were settled on the
banks of the Vankshu (Oxus) in A. D. 450, and that
Kalidasa wrote his poem Raghuvamsa after 450 A.
D. and before their defeat in 455 A. D. by Skanda-
gupta. He says: *in his desire to enhance the glory .
of his hero Kalidasa makes Raghu vanquish the
Hunas of the fifth century and thus fall into an
anachronism.** He concludes that ** Kalidasa was
 48 KALIDASA

therefore contemporary with Skandagupta and com-

posed most of his works in the latter half of the 5th
century or before A. D. 500.” Mr. Monomohan
Chakravarlhy fixes A. D. 490 as the dale, on the
theory that Hunas were in Kashmir in Kalidasa’s
time. The above argument proceeds as a mere
gratuitous assumption. The Huna kings are referred
to in the Mahabharata. The Huns established a
powerful empire in and beyond Ba<5tria from about
the middle of the 3rd century B. C. to the end of
the 1st or 2nd century A. D. Hence even a poet
of the Ist century B. C., would have known about
the Hun Kings. Further, the identity of the Van-
kshu and the Oxus is Itself a mere guess. The
Vankshu seems to be the same as the Sindhu. More¬
over, Kalidasa described in the abovesaid verse an
antecedent and not a contemporary event at all.
Haraprasada Sa^ri’s view that Kalidasa belonged
to the court of Yasodharmadeva Dharmavardhana
in the 6th century A. D., is unacceptable as Kali¬
dasa had become a great classic long before Bana’s
. time which was the 6th century A. D.

. Mr> Ram Kumar Chaube says that as Kalidasa

uses the word “ Kumara ”, and “ Skanda ” he mu^
 HIS PKBIOI), personality AND POETRY 4^

have belonged to the Gupta period and muft have

hved .n the reigna of Kumara Gupta 1 and Stand,
'-•upta I This IS a mere unproved guess. We may
as well say that because he refers to Dilipa and
Ragbu he mua have lived during their reign,.

Dr. Bhau Daji, Dr. Bhandarkar, Dr. Kern

and Professor Max Muller think that Kalidasa
mua have belonged to the sixth century A. D. 1
shall now proceed to show the hollowness of the
fadts which have been urged in support of this
theory.

1. A familiar verse which occurs in Jyolir-

yfiaabharana says :—

<9rrft 4 ftwei II
The work in which this verse occurs is of doubt¬
ful aulhcnliaty and is not a reliable guide at all. It
IS said that Amara Siraha rau^ have lived between
the visits to India of Fahl’an in 414 A. D and of
Hiouen TTsang in 642 A. D.. because in the time
of Fahian, visit the Gaya temple, which an inscrip-
K. I. 4. ^
 50 KA LIDAAA

tk>n says was built by Amaradevay was not in exiAonce

while it is referred to in the account of the travels of
Hiouen Thsang. Dr., Bhau Dajt says that in Ama-
^ raja’s commentary on Brahmagupta’s Khandana-’
khanda-khadya it is Aated.

I Hfr: I

(Varahamihira went to heaven in the 509th

year of the Saka era i.e., 587 A. D. ). Dr. Bhau
Daji hence affirms that Kalidasa also who was accord¬
ing to the above ^anza a contemporary of Varaha¬
mihira mud have belonged to the 6lh century A. D.
But the verse above-said appears in the Jyodrvida-
bharana and is a broken reed to lean upon. Further,
it is dated that there were two, if not three, Varaha-
mihiras. The Varahamihira who was the author of
Brihadjataka was different from the Varahamihira
who was the author of Panchasiddhania. Further,
we do not know at all whether the Vikrama referred
to in the verse cited above was the founder ef the
Saka era. Tha name Vikramaditya was assumed
by many kings. The Rajatarangini refers to three
\^kramadityas; and the Kathasaritsagara says that
the Brihatkatha refers to a Vikramaditya of Ujjain
and a Vikramaditya of Pataliputra. The name was
 HJS PBRIOD, PBRSOSfALIXy AND POETRY 61

also assumed as a title by many Icings of the Cha-

lukya dynasty.

n. Dr. Bhau Daji approaches ihe que^ion

from another point of view. The Rajaiarangini
says that when Hiranya, the king of Kasiimir, died
issueless, Harsha-Vikramaditya of Ujjain appointed
a poet named Matrigupta to rule the kingdom of
Kashmir. Matrigupta ruled for four years and then
became an ascetic and retired to Benares, and
Hiranya’s nephew Pravarasena 11 then assumed the
throne. Harsha Vikramaditya belonged to the 6th
century A. D. What follows from ail this ? What
materials are there to connedl the two names Matri¬
gupta and Kalidasa 7 Kalhana, the author of
Rajatarangini, does not at all say that Matrigupta
wrote such a famous play as Sakuntala. Further,
Kshemendra and Raghavabhatta refer to Kalidasa
and Matrigupta and quote from them. It is thus
clear that they were different persons. The fad
that the Rajatarangini Aates which king patronised
which poet and that it is silent as to Kalidasa means
nothing whatever. Nor can we use for drenglhen-
ing the above theory the tradition that Vikramaditya
liked Kalidasa so much as to bedow half his king-

8928
 52 KALIDASA

dom on him. Very likely such exaggerated des¬

criptions were indulged in for the purpose of describ¬
ing the royal favour in exaggerated terms. In the
Bhojacliaritra we are told that innumerable poets
were given what is familiarly known as Akshara-
Laksha (a lakh of gold coins for each letter). Not
even Kubera s treasury can survive depletion by such
an extravagance*

in. Another argument which has been ad¬

vanced is that,a Prakrit poem called Selukaoya is
said to !»ave been composed by Kalidasa at the
request of king Pravarasena. Dandin, and Vidya-
nalha in his Prataparudriya. and Visvanalha in his
Sahityadarpana refer to the poem. The Raja-
tarangini refers to Pravarasena s conaru<aion of a
bridge of boats across the Vitasta river. It is this
bridge which was described in Stiukaoya. But
there is no reliable evidence whatever to show that
it was the immortal poet that wrote the Setufcavya.
Further, the evidence which I shall refer to presently
conclusively demolishes the theory which allots the
sixth century A. D. to Kalidasa.

IV. A side proof is sought to be imported by

a reference to verse Min the firft part of Megha-
 HIS PERIOD, PRRSOMAXITT AND POETBT 53

«andesa. T*he verse says :—

Mallinatha records a tradition that * Dingnaga *

here refers to Kalidasa’s opponent Dingnaga*
eharya and that*Nichula was a poet who was Kali¬
dasa s friend and a defender of his fame against the
attacks of hostile critics. Vallabhadeva does not refer
to any such tradition at ail. This view itself, even if
it is correi(ft, is a faint reference to a fugitive oral tradi¬
tion. Mr. Keith points out that such a double cx-
iendre is not at all in Kalidasa s manner. Nothing
whatever is known about Nichula, But Dingnaga is
known as a famous logician. From a Tibetan life of
Buddha by Ratnadharmaraja we learn that Dingnaga
and Dharmakird were the pupils of Arya Asanga
in the science of logic 900 years after Buddha s
death and that Asanga was the elder brother and
teacher of Vasubandhu. It is stated in Vachas-
patimisra’s Nyayavardka-Tatparyatika that Ud-
yotakaracharya composed his Nyayavartika, a com*
xnentary on Pakshilasvami’s Nyaya Bhashya, to
disprove the sophistries of Dingnaga. This shows
that Udyolakara was a contemporary or an inimedi-
 54 KALIDASA

ate successor of Dingnaga. Subandhu mentions

Udyotakara and Dharmalurb in his Vasavadatta*
Subandhu is quoted in Sana’s Harshacharila which
was composed in the firft half of the seventh cen-
, tury A, D. Hiouen Thsang says that Vasubandhu
and his teacher Manorhita were the contemporaries
\ of Vikramaditya of Sravashti. He says also that
sixty years before his time the reigning king was
Siladitya Pratapasila who succeeded Vikramaditya.
Hioucn Thsang travelled in India from 629 to 645
A. D. Thus Siladitya reigned about 580 A. D.
Fcrishtah says that he reigned for 50 years. This
would show that Vikramaditya of Sravashti died
about 530 A. D. The inference which is drawn is
that Vikramaditya and Kalidasa and Dingnaga mu^l
have belonged to the 6lh century A. D. The various
links in this chain are admirably described by Mr.
G. R. Nandargikar. But the whole chain is very
weak. The genuineness of the 19th verse in Megha-
sandesa is itself a matter of doubt. Further, there
is nothing to show that the Dingnaga referred to in it
is the Buddhiil logidan Dingnaga. Why should
the logician be the enemy of the poet Kalidasa ? It
is more likely that just as Kalidasa refers to a poet
named Nichula he refers to a poet Dingnaga. Further
 HIS PERIOD, PBRSONAHTY AND POITRY 55

Kalidasa uses the plural Dingnaganam Would

he use the honorific plural in regard to a disliked
rival ? Further, Professor Macdonnell rightly observes
that little weight can be attached to the Buddhisic
tradition that Dingnaga was a pupil of Vasubandhu,
(or, this statement is not found till the 6th century.”
He says also with great force : The assertion that
Vasubandhu belongs to the 6th century is opposed
to Chinese evidence which indicates that the works
of Vasubandhu were translated in A. D. 404. Thus
every link in the chain of this argument is weak.
Mr. Keith also says well about the Dingnaga theory:
** The difficulties of this argument are insurmount¬
able

V. Thus all the above arguments are weak

and useless. A startling theory was however pro¬
pounded by Fergusson who, while not disputing the
contemporaneousness of Vikramaditya and Kalidasa,
ftated that that king really belonged to the 6th cen¬
tury A. D., that the king was Vikrama Harsha of
Ujjain who fought the great battle of Karur and
defeated the Mlechchas in 544 A. D. and that the
people threw back the date by 600 years and made
(he era begin in 56 B. C>, so as to inveit the event
 66 EAI.IDA8A

wth the halo of antiquity ! But this theory about

the antedating of the era is a pure surmise. How
would such antedating increase the glory of the vic¬
tory ? Further^ Dr. Fleet shows that the Vikrama
era was m use for more than a century prior to 549
A. D. Further, Vatsabhattis Mandasor inscriptions
which were discovered by Dr. Fleet and which have
been elaborately discussed by Mr. Nandargiltar have
exploded Mr. Fergusson s ingenious theory. One of
them bears as its date the 494th year of the Vikrama
era. It shows that the Vikrama era was in use for
more than a century prior to 544 A. D., under the
name of the Malava era. The Mandasor inscriptions
prove that the verses appearing in them belonged to
472 A. D.( and they contain verses which bear a con¬
siderable resemblance to Kalidasa’s verses in Ritusam-
hara and Meghasandesa, and which show that Kali¬
dasa s works muil have been very familiar by that
time. Further, there were no Sakas to be driven out
from Weflern India in the sixth century A. D., as
the Gupta kings had driven them out a century
before then.

The well-known scholar Mr. A. B. Keith says

n his Classical Sanskrit Literature : “ It cannot
 HIS PBRIOD, pkrsonautt and POETBT 67

l« seriously doubted (hat he was later than Asva-

ghoshaandthe dramatia, Bhasa certainly, whose
plays we owe to the energy of T. Ganapati Sastrin ;
everything poinU to his flourishing in the time of
Gupta glory ; the allusion to the horse sacrifice in
ihe Malmikagnamilra is almoft inevitably to be ex-
plained as a reminiscence of the performance of that
rite by Saraudragupta, renewing the glories of the
ancient regime. The Vikramaditya. therefore, with
whom Kalidasa is associated in tradition, seems moil
naturally to be taken as Chandragupta II. whose
reign may be placed between A. D. 380 and 413”.
But with all deference to his scholarship it seems to
me that the fa(fts ^ated by him are not fully correifl
And further do not warrant his conclusion. I shall
show later that the assumed priority of Asvaghosha
does not seem to be correa. Mr. A. B. Keith
says that Bhasa cannot be placed before 300 A. D.
This again is an unproved date. Further, there is
acute controversy as to whether the so-called plays
of Bhasa are his plays at all or arc Kerala adapta¬
tions of his plays or are the plays of some Kerala
author. There is no justification for the view that
♦he horse-sacrifice stated in the Malavifzgnimitra is
Samudrgupta s horse-sacrifice. TTe play expressly
58 KALIDASA

refers to Agnimitra’s father Pushpamitra’s horse-

sacrifice and there is no propriety in the view that
what is stated is really a reference to something else.

Equally weak is his view that Kalidasa’s Prakrit

supports his date: He says in his work on the Sanskrit
Drama: ''Sinoilar evidence can be derived from Kali-
dasa's Prakrit, which is plainly more advanced than
that of Bhasa, while his Maharashlri can be placed
with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier
Maharashtri which may have flourished in the third
and fourth century A. D.” This is a pure and un¬
proved guess. Thus Mr. Keith’s view (hat Kalidasa
must have flourished under Chandragupta 11 of
Ujjain who ruled up to about A. D. 413 with the
style of Vikramaditya which is perhaps alluded to in
the name yikramorvasi'\ and that the “ Kumarsam-
bhava’s title may well hint a compliment on the birth
of young Kumaragupta, his son and successor ” is not
acceptable. He says : ** Moreover, the poems of
Kalidasa are essentially those of the Gupta period,
when the Brahmanical and Indian tendencies of the
dynasty were in full strength and the menace of
foreign attack for the time evanescent”. This again is
an unproved assumption. Kalidasa certainly belonged
 HI8 PERIOD PERSONALITY AND POETRY

lo a period of resurgent Hindu culture but I shall

show that the period was long anterior to the Gupta
period. In his recent valuable work on Classical
Literature Mr. Keith however affirms his previous
view and says “Kalidasa then lived before A, D.
472 and probably at a considerable distance so that
to place him about A. D. 400 seems completely
justified

I have thus far discussed the innumerable

theories which have been propounded about the dale
of Kalidasa and shown the futility and untenability
of them all. It seems to me that the universal and
weli-attedcd traditions that he was attached
to the court of Vikramaditya at Ujjain and
and that Vikramaditya's Saka era began with
56 B. C., to commemorate his great vicftory
should be given the credence which they deserve.
It is no doubt true that various kings of later eras
assumed the title of Vikramaditya. It has been said
well : “ In the grand panorama of ancient hi^ory
we come across the flitting shapes of several Vikra-
madityas in southern, weilern and northern India,
from the firit century before CfiriA to the seventh
after.” But it does not follow therefrom that th
60 EJkLlDASA.

tradition conneding the poet with Vikramadilya of the

firit century B. C. is weakened thereby. A Nasik
inscription of the firit century after Chrid refers to a
king described as Sakori There are no grounds to
rejed the traditions about the Saka era inaugurated
by Vikramaditya in the firSl century B. C. and about
Kalidasa having belonged to his court. It seems to
me that Kalidasa intended to pay his patron a delicate
compliment by calling his play by the name Vikramor-
vasiya. He says in Ad I of the play that humility is
the glory of valour

We may remember in this connedion the deli¬

cate compliment paid by Shakespeare to Queen
Elizabeth in the famous lines in the Midsummer
Nights Dream:

“ But the imperial votaress passed on

In maiden meditation fancy free .

Mr. A. W. Ryder says. “ No doubt Kalidasa

intended to pay a tribute to his patron, the son of
valour, in the very title of his play, Urvasi won
by valourI shall now give the many converging
lines of tediroony which judify the view that
 HIS PKRIOD, PBI130NAL1TY AND POBTftY 61

Kalidasa belonged to the firft century B. C. I

may mention in this connexion (hat this date is
assigned to him by Sir William Jones and Mr.
S. P. Pandit. Dr. Peterson says : “ Kalidasa ^ands
near the beginning of the Christian era, if indeed
he does not overtop it

Mr. K. B. Pathak says in his introduction

to Meghasandesa that the name of Vikramaditya
was not connected at firll with the Vikrama era,
that the era was known as the Malava era. and
that it mu^ have become conne<fted with the
name of Vikrama because “of some confused
remioscence of the crushing defeat inflicted by
Skandagupta. who had the title of Vikramaditya.
upon the Hunas who were settled in the Oxus valley
by the middle of the fifth century after Chrilt, and
who were at once a menace to the Sussanian and
Roman empires Every step in this reasoning is
unsupported by any acceptable reason. The fact
(hat the era was known some centuries as the Malava
era will not show that it was not originally known as
the Vikrama era. There is no justification for say*
ing that the victory of Skandagupta was somehow
transferred to Vikramaditya and that somehow
62 KALIDASA

Vikrama was mixed up with the Malava era. Mr.

A. B. Keith says in his work on Tht Sanscrit
Drama ; “ There is not ihe slightest reason to
accept so early a date (56 B. C.) lor Kalidasa, and
it has now no serious supporter outside India But
I shall proceed to show that that is the only correct
dale. Vikramaditya was not an imaginary king.
Colonel Todd has in his Rajasthan collected the
geneology of the kings who ruled over Delhi from
Yudhishlhira to Vikramaditya. The later kings who
assumed the name Vikramaditya did so because of
the unparalleled greatness of the firit king who as¬
sumed that name and to whose court Kalidasa
belonged and whom Kalidasa has alluded to and
praised in a subtle and delicate way in his immortal
poems and plays.

I have referred above to the indirect references

in Kalidasa’s works to king Vikramaditya. Another
vague reference also has been emphasised by Babu
Dhanapati Banerji with some plausibility. In Raghu-
vamsa, ( VI, 32nd) there is a delicate and veiled
praise of the king of Avanti.
9
 Hiy PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POETRY 63

^wV%r?anV ii
The reference in the fir^t half of the ^anza
appears to be to valour (Vikrama), and the refe¬
rence in ihe word Ushnatcjah in ihc second half
is to the sun {aditya). In the next verse the poet
says that Princess Indumati did not feel love for him;
ju^ as Kunuda Rowers do not feel the attra<5tion of
the sun *Tt4). Here also the refe¬
rence by the word Bhanu may be to Vikramaditya,
But these are too faint and doubtful indications to be
used as reliable proofs. But Mr* Banerp points out
that tradition says that Bhanumati was the name of
the queen of the firit Vikramaditya, the founder of
the Malava Era and the king of Avanti. Further,
in the description of Raghu*s Digoijaya (universal
conquest) the kingdom of Avanti is omitted alto¬
gether. Mr. Banerji rightly points out : “ This
therefore points to the conclusion that Kalidasa
flourished under Vikramaditya, the king of Ujjain,
not long after 2nd century B. C.*'

Babu Dhanapad Banerji points out further

that Gunadhya belonged to the court of king Sali-
vahana and flourished in the first century A. D.
 64 RALfOASA

Gunadhya's Brikaikatha has not been found ouL

We have two epitomes of it in Sanskrit viz.. Brihat-
kalha Manjari and Kalhasaritsagara. In the Megha-
sandesa (I, 31) Kalidasa refers to the Iraditiorii'
about Udayana. If Gunadhya's work had been in
existence before his time, such a reference to tradi-
hbns is most unlikely. Further Salivahana made a
colle(ftion of galhas in Prakrit. One of these poems
compares Vikramadilya to the foot of a damseL
Another praises Salivahana in comparison with
Vikramaditya. There are other galhas containing
clear references to Meghasandesa and Sakuntala.
It is thus clear that Kalidasa mu^t have lived long
before the time of king Salivahana.

A very important fact is that in the play of

Malavikagnimitra Kalidasa refers to Pushpamitra
Agmmitra and Vasumitra- Agnimitra and Vasu-
mitra are referred to in Bhagavata XII, verses 16
and 17. The General Pushpamitra killed king
Brihadratha, who was the last king of the Maurya
dynasty, and usurped the throne of Magadha and
founded the Sunga dynasty. He belonged to about
150 B. C. Palanjali, the famous author of the
Maha Bhashya. refers to him and his Asvamedha
 BIS PKBtOD, PJBUSOKALITT AKD POETRY 65

sacriBce* Patanjalfs date U fixed as about 150 B. C*

The Ist and2ad Lanzas in Act ,V of Malavikagoi*
mitra refer to a military compaign by Agniroitra
which was contemporaaeous with the events described
in the play. The second half of the laA itanza in
Malavikagnimitra uses the words.

These words show that the poet and the king

were contemporaries. In the ^anza the firit half is
the reply of the King to the Queen and the second
half alone is the Bharatavakyam. If the second
half also was the Kings reply to the Queen, it would
show the king to have been a man of vanity and
self-praise, and Kalidasa would never have described
his hero in such a light. In Katayavema*$ commen-
tary on the play, the second half of the Aanza alone
ts described as the Bharatavakya. Kalidasa evidently
described by the Bharatavakya His view about the
blessings of the reign of Agnimitra. The second
half of the ^anza says that as Agnimitra is reigning,
the troubles of life will not moleft the people and
the joys of life will come to them. Katayavema who
has written a commentary on the play says that the
reference is to a king reigning at the time of the play
K. I. 5.
 KALIDASA

Further, though the rule inculcated in works on

poetics was that a drama should describe lormer
kings. (!IT3« WRt qsrat^^rm^d). Kali¬
dasa made a departure and wrote a play on a
rmgning king and juitihed his departure by the verse

which occurs in the prologue to Malavikagni-

mitra. The poet departed from the ordinary rule
^ not invoking prosperity and blessings to the
people or referring to kings generally but boldly
referred to a specific contemporary king in the present
tense and said that during his reign ^11 blessings muSl
perforce come to the people. Such a reference to a
rffgnjng contemporary king (Chandragupla) is found
ip the Bharal^ivakya in the famous play Mudra-
rakshasa by VisakhadaUa. Mr. A. W. Ryder points
out: ** The hero Kang Agniraitra is ^ hiupricti
chRra(5ter of the second century before Cht^ and
Kalidasa s play gives us soipe information about him
that hiftory can seriopsly consider. Theplaypre-
aq^s (th^ founder of the SuDga
dynaAy* as dill ;Uviiig. "
 HIS PBRIOD, PERSONALITY AND POITRT 67

Another point to be noted in regard to the

Malooikagnimitra is that in A(^ V verse 2, there is
a veiled yet palpable reference to the contemporaneity
of the King Agnimitra and the poet. The verse
says :—

^'Vrirtar
(O God-like King I Your hiAory written by
the poets from love of heroism)* The verse probably
refers to the poet’s own exaltation of the glory of the
great and heroic sovereign. Mr. Ryder has missed
the real significance of the reference in the play to
the king as a contemporary sovereign and says :
Yet in Kalidasa’s day, the glories of the Sunga
dynaity were long departed, nor can we see why the
poet should have chosen his hero and his era as he
did.”

Another important fadt is that in Malavikagni'

mitra the charaaer Parivrajika has been introduced
and King Agnimitra has been described as showing
the greatcit respeA to her. Though Buddhism had
begun to wane in the IA century B. C, yet its
ideals wpre not treated as dj^d jr W9rthless. If
Kalidasa lived in later tfas he would not have intro-
dyc^ a woman,ascetic at all, because in those periods
68 KALIDASA.

the life of the ascetic and the robe of the ascetic

were forbidden to women. When the Parivrajika
describes to the king how she came to own the robe
of an ascetic and become an ascetic the king replies:

(What you did is the proper act of a good

person). Mr. S. P. Pandit says: “Xhe probability^
therefore, is that tlie play was written not at a time
when Buddhism was despised and had already been
driven out of India but when it was still regarded
with favour, and was looked up to with reverence.’*
I have also referred above to the Kumbhodara and
Nandini episode in Raghuvamsa as showing the in¬
fluence of the Buddhi^ doiftrine of compassion to all
beings. But at the same lime we muit not forget
that though there was a survival of some Buddhid
ideals, Hinduism with its emphasis on Veda and
Yajpa and Isvara and grace had triumphantly re¬
asserted itself and overthrown Buddhism and finds
one of its mo^t pcrfe<5t expressions in Kalidasa, though
not as clearly as in Sri Sankaracharya.

That Kalidasa belongs to the period when

Hinduism was vifJlorious over Buddhism is clear
also from the firft itanza in the Sakuntalam. Bud-
 HIS PUBIOD, PBiWONAW'Xr AND POBTRY 69

•dhism did not believe in God as it did not believe in

scnpture and as God is not an obje<3 of diredt sense*
perception. The poet affirms the Hindu doiftnne of
the importance of Sabda (scripture) as a source of
proof (vide tTfSTTJi He says further
that God is an obj'edl of perception by the purified
mind in yoga and by bhafiti.

He affirms this also in the opening benedkftory

Aanza in the l^ikfomoroasiya.

9 W15:

In the la^l verse in the Sakuntala he points

that the cessation of rebirth is not something that
comes of itself but is the result of the grace of God.

Further, he affirms, as againA the Buddhi^

dodtrine about the imperativeness of monadicism.
the Hindu view that the Karmayoga of the house¬
holder is itself a form of fapas. In Sakuntala, 11, 14.
he says that the king is acquiring t'apas by his per¬
forming daily the great work of the protcaion of his
subjedts
70 KAjbTDAflA

and that the king is a sage on the throne

Jan: ^ |

Indeed Kwva says in Sakuntala, IV. 19, that

Sakuntala should along with her lord bear the burden
of^sovereignty and achieve the good of the world
and then place the task of protection of the world m
their son^s hands after training him to the ^reat work,
and then seek the repose of meditation in the her¬
mitage. In all his poems and plays the poet praises
the sacrifidal spirit and act, though the Buddhiits had
condemned all* sacrihccs (e.g. Raghuvamsa. I, 26,
S^iihdJa Vfl, 34 etc.). He treats the great sages
with perfect reverence and says that their learning
and austerities are the means of order and progress
in the world (sec Sakuntala. II, 13).

I would however utter one word of caution in

rcfdeiice to the ailment ba!«d on the character of
Pan'vrajika in Malavikagnimitra. Though accord¬
ing to Hindu scriptures a woman could not enter
into the fourth order and become a ^any^ini, we
mTO rec&'imbtf that Buddhism, d^eated thbujgk it
was by resurgent Hinduism, left some legates of
 HU PBBIOD, PES80MALITY AHD POETBT 7l

cQjtom and doctrinb leavening Hinduism (iiougK in

a subtle and unacknowledged cnanritf* tn tbe time
of Kalidasa Hinduism had definitely reasserted itself.
But women mendicants were not unknown. In
Kaulilya’s ArthasaAra a Parivrajika spy is thus des-
cri(>ed :

qftffrftwir

(Adhik*trana I Adhyaya 12). Thus sheskould

be a poor and ertidite Brihrfiin widovir seeking service
in a royal harem. This desenpdon fits well the
charaetd* of Parivrajika Kausiki in the play. She
says

I
(With renewed widowed grief 1 entered your
domain and accepted the orange robe). The poet
describes her by means of the simile of Adhyatma
Vidya i.e., the science of the soul which is the
technical haiiie for Vedanta (A<fl 1 verJte 14). The
king bows to and calls her Bhagavati anJ
Pandita Kausiki. Thtte Kausiki is a learned Brah¬
min widow ascetic and not a Buddhlit nlendiciitat.
 72 KALIDASA

Bhavabhuti has introduced a similar chara<acr in

his Malati Madhay>a, If seems to me therefore
that though Kalidasa belongs to the poft-Bud-
dhi^ic period, he belongs to the time when Bud¬
dhism had not altogether vanished from the land
and when Hinduism was triumphant but with
Buddhiftic legacies yet fresh in her hands. His verse
inthe last itanza in Sakunlala
shows that he belongs to a time when the Veda was
rctriumphant in the land of its birth. His firft verse
in Vi^amorvasiya refers to the reaffirmed and re-
e^ablished doArines of yoga and bhalcti. Very
likely he refers to the conquest of Buddhism in the
laa line in the firit verse of Malavikagnlmitra:

R «rsT^ n
Equally important is the fa(fl that Kumarila
Bhatta has expressly referred to the well-known
verse in Sakuntala :
sSMf

In Kumarila's Tantravartika the reference to

this verse appears as follows r (Someswara says in
his Nyaya Sudha that the word kfloi in the verse
refers to Kalidasa).
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITT AND POETRY 73

«rfif Tic arf^g

«inw«»99: ^u?« 4 : u
«

The use of the word Kaoibhir in the above

verse in the plural without mentioning the poet s
name shows in what respetft he was held by Kuma-
rila Bhatta. In my monograph on Sri Sankara*
•chrarya I have given at great length my reasons for
holding that the date (788 A. D. to 820 A. D.)
assigned to him is wrong and that he lived in the firft
•century B. C. Kumarila was a contemporary of
.Sri Sankara. Hence also it is clear that Kalidasa
mu5t have flourished in the Ift century B. C., or
before then.

Further, I shall show in my second Volume on

Kalidasa, it is clear that he belonged to a time when
Hinduism was uniiihd and triumphant. The seds and
schisms of a later time were unknown then. He
sings with equal love and reverence about Brahma
and Vishnu and Siva. He harmonises adivism and
renunciation and shows the interdependence and
■congruity of Karma and Yoga and Bhakli and
 H S4I»IDASA

Jnana. His period muil have coincided with—or

rather slightly preceded—the great ftoaissance of a
unified and triumphant Hinduism in South India in
the person of the world-renowned Sri Sanicara*^
c^arya.

The internal evidence afforded by the Sakuntala

is very valuable. In regard to the law of inheritance,
it refers to a period when the widow's right of in-
heritance was as yet unsettled. In the sixth Adt
the Prime Miniiter reports that a merchant narrted
Dhanamitra had died without sons and that hence
under the law his eitate escheated to the itate. The
king orders that as the merchant's wife was pregnant
the estate should be handed over to the child in
uUro matris. Manu, Apastaraba and Bodhayana
and Vasishtha do not recognise a widow as an heir
but allow the rights of a child in the womb. Gautama
and Brihaspali recognise her right to share along
with the sagotra Sapindas. Lafer smrili-writers
like Yajnavalkya, Brihaspati. Vyasa, Narada,
Sankha and Likhita recognise her heirship. Hence
the composition of the dramii may have been after
Manu, Apaflamba, Bodhayana and Vasishtha and
prior to NaVada, Gaulatha, fCatyajrana. Brihatpati,
 HIS PERIOD, PBBSOHAUTY AKD POETRY 75
and Yajnavallcya. Brihaspati s <jate is said to be
IA ^ntury A. D*. anc^ KaCdasa muA Kence Have
flourished before Hu time.

In the same play we learn that the fisKermah;

who was charged with the theft of the royal ring
was liable to the sentence of death. In Vilcramor-
vasiya V, 1, it is said that the thief of the gem had
secured not the gem but only his own death. In
the times of Manu, Apastamba, Bodhayana, Va-
sishtha, Gautama and Nirada, the rule of law was
that a thief who Aolc prccioUs Aones was liable to rf
sentence of death. In the lime of Brihaspati, Yajni-
valkya and Vyasa the punishment was fine or death.
Hence also if Brihaspati belonged to the first
century A. D., Kalidasa must have lived before his
time.

I must however say about the above-said two

inferences that they are not of much probative value.
The dates of the Smriti-writers are themselves sub-
je(5ts of ^nsiderable dispute and it is hardly proper to
try to solve one unknown by other unknowns.

It has been fufthdr pointed out that Kalidasa

does not in his works refer to himself or his patron
in f^ms of laudation. Later writers set that literary
 76 KALIDASA

fashion. Even Gunadhya who is said lo have

flourished in the firfl century A, D.. described him¬
self and his royal patron. The literary fashion be¬
came very pronounced in the time of later writers
like Bhavabhuti. The fa<5l that Kalidasa has not
indulged in such praise of himself or his patron is
another feature showing that he flourished in an
early period.

I may refer to a few other miscellaneous facets.

A Patavali composed by Merutangacharya. a Jaina
Pandit, says : “ After Nabhovahana Garddabhitta
■ruled at Ujjain for 13 years, when Sri Kalikacharya,
on account of violence oflered to his sister Sarasvati,
uprooted Garddabhitta, and established Saka Kings
in Ujjain. They ruled there for 4 years. Gardda¬
bhitta s son Vikramaditya regained the kingdom of
Ujjain and having relieved the debt of the world by
means of gold,|commenccd the Vikrama samvat era.
This look place 470 years after Vira’s era. Vik¬
rama s reign extended over 60 years. His son
Vikramacharitra alias Dharmaditya ruled for 40
years. The next kings Bhailla, Nailla, and Nahada
ruled lor 11. 14, and 10 years respedlivciy. The
Saka era now commenced 605 years after Vira
 nis PRKIOD, PBRSONALITY AKD POETRY ?7

Nirvana.” This shows that a Vikramadilya reigned

135 years before the commencement of Saka era.

It is further pointed out that the Bhita terra¬

cotta Medallion refers to the deer scene in Sakuntala
and to the scene in the play where Sakuntala waters
the trees- The Medallion belonged to the Sunga
period. The Sunga Kings ruled at Pataliputra from
I84B,C.io72 B.C.

It is also known that Raghuvanisa in Pali was

taken to Java by Hindus who emigrated there about
the 1^ century B. C. This fadt also throws light
on the antiquity of the great poet and his works.

Further, Mallinatha quotes from Vardhamana's

Gunaratnamahodadhi. Mallinatha flourished about
1350 A. D. Vardhamana may have lived a
century before him. He says that his work was
composed 1197 years after Vikrama.

From this we can infer that Vikrama Kved be¬

fore 53 A. D.

Further, it has been pointed out that the word

Parameshthi is used by Kalidasa as a name of
 78 KALIDASA

Brahma and Vishnu and also of doma. But Amara

Simha confines it to Brahma alone. Xhus Kalidasa
muSl have lived prior to Amarasimha's time when
the significance was not loose as in Kalidasa’s time
but had become fixed and confined. It has been
pointed out also that Kalidasa often uses the word
(Pclava). Later writers such as Vamana
(8th century A. D.) say that the word is obscene
and should not be used. This also shows that Kali¬
dasa lived long before the degradation of that word.
Further, though Kalidasa was a profound gramma¬
rian there are lapses from Panini s rules in his works.
He uses the word instead of In Vik-
ramorvasiya A<a I he says while the
rwhl form is The latter form is used jn ^e-
ghasandesa I verse 41. He used as we)I as
AH this shows that .Kalidasa lived at a tinje
when Paninfs domination over Grammar had not
become rigorous and universal. It is said that
Panini belonged to the 3rd century B. C. This also
shows that it is likely that Kalidasa belonged to the
2nd Gentry or . the I ft century B. C. Further,
Kalidasa's ftyle is free from long compounds and
from even the s^ighljrfl trace of artificiality. He rauft
lienee have been long anterior to Dandin. Bana
• It .H' 'r ~v • VI, * „ ,*T.“»
 . HIS PERIOD PERSONALITT AND POETRY 7?

and BhavabKuti in whom long compounds and a

^boured and artificial ityle arc frequent feature.

Another important fatft is that Asvaghosha s

Buddhacharita has many passages*and ideas parallel
to those in Raghuvamsa. I am of opinion that there
is no foundation for the view that Kalidasa was
indebted to Asvaghosha and that it was rather vice
vena. Professor. S. Roy has shown this cleariy,
and Mr. Joglekar also is of the same opinion in his
inlrodudtion to Buddhacharita. Asvaghosha was
more of a philosopher than a poet and it is more
likely that he borrowed from the great poet Kali¬
dasa than that Kalidasa borrowed from him. The
Chinese catalogues refer to Asvaghosha as the reli¬
gious preceptor of Kanishka who lived at the begin-
ing of the Saka period i.e.. A. D. 78. It is therefore
dear that Kalidasa muit have'lived before the lime of
Asvaghosha who belonged to the I ft century A. D.
and that Kalidasa probably bdonged at the lateft to
the firft century B. C.

Thus it seems to me that Kalidasa belonged to

the great period of national greatness and prosperity
and magnificence when Vikramaditya rceftablished
Hindu religion and Hindu sovereignly in the first
 80 KALIDASA

century B. C. I cannot do better here than <)iiote

the words of Mr. Ryder who emphasises this fact
in explicit and convincing terms: ** The central
fa<ft is not doubtful that there was at this lime and
place a great quickening of the human mind, an
arhstic impulse creating works that ^cannot perish.
Ujjain in the days of Vikraraaditya itands worthily
beside Athens, Rome, Florence, and London in
their great centuries. Here is the substantial fai5t
behind Max Muller s often ridiculed theory of the
renaissance of Sanskrit literature. It is quite false to
suppose, as some appear to do, that this theory has
been invalidated by the discovery of certain literary
products which antedate Kalidasa. It might even
be said that those rare and happy centuries that see
a man as great as Homer or Virgil or Kalidasa or
Shakespeare partake in that one man of a re¬
naissance **.
 CHAPTER VI.

The Life of Kalidasa.

\TERY little that is authentic is known about the
life of Kalidasa. The habit of keeping a correct
record of the lives of great men is a new acquisi¬
tion of humanity. The biographies and autobio¬
graphies of the former centuries arc very few indeed.
In the weil the fine arts of biography and auto*
biography came into vogue in the laA three or four
centuries and especially^and on a large scale in the
iaft century. Even the art of hiitory, upon which
the weit prides itself, and prides itself fitly and legiti¬
mately, became highly cultivated and elaborated
only during the laft few centuries. It muft no
doubt be conceded * that the European races have
always had better hiftorical inftinifts and habits and
ta^es than the Asiatic races including the people of
India. It is, hence, not a matter for surprise at all
that we have few or no biographical details in regard
 KALII>A8\

to Kalidasa. TKe wodd would have been richer in

many ways if some antique Boswell had Auck to
him and turned him inside out for us so that we may
know the workings of that marvellous mind and the
good and ill fortune which attended his life and the
manner in which he met success or failure. But he
lived so long ago and has become a mere name—
though a revered and honoured name—and we have
no materials for recon^u<fting an authentic life at all.

The current tradition about his life is as follows.

The poet was a Brahmin’s child. He was left as
an orphan when he was a child six months old and
was brought up by a shepherd. He was a hand>
some child full of sprightliness and charm. The
daughter of the king of Benares was one of the mod
learned persons of ho* day and was proud of her learn¬
ing. The king resolved to marry her only to a man
of equal culture and vowed that her hand could be
won only by one who could defeat her in a learned
disputation. Scholar after scholar, poet after poet,
■assayed the task but failed ignominously. Afterwards
the rejected suitors resdved to have revenge and re-
sorted to a mean and cruel trick. They pitched upon
the above-said boy now grown into a handsome man
 HIS PERIOD} PERSOMALITY AND PORTBY $3

and gave out that he was their Guru and took him
to the Princess, after warning him to pretend wisdom
and observe silence. They told her that he was a
man of peerless learning and wisdom but had taken
a vow of absolute silence. Then she began a dis¬
putation with him by means of signs. She showed
one finger and said that the cause of the universe
was one. Kalidasa showed two fingers. His so-
called disciples then quoted - innumerable authorities
and gave out many arguments to prove that two
principles in operahon gave rise to the world. In
that day s disputation they won and the credit went to
Kalidasa. The Princess was atlradted by the young
man s beauty and personality and seemingly pro¬
found wisdom. The king celebrated her marriage
with the youth. During the bridal night, the young
bridegroom, exhausted with the fatigue of the day’s
unusual happenings amidit unfamiliar surroundings,
fell into a deep sleep before the Princess came to
share his bed. She sang sweet songs but the obtuse
aoul of the man hardly fell the charm of the melody.
He was in a date of half sleep and began to dream
and called out in dream to his cattle. The Princess
woke him up and dernly demanded that he should
reveal the truth and threatened him with dire penal-
 84 KALIDASA

ties. The timorous man who had been abandoned

without assistance or advice by his cvil-hearlcd em¬
ployers blurted out and confessed the truth. The
Princess was ashamed and grieved but there was
no help. She advised him to go to the temple of God¬
dess Kali and pray for divine grace. He did so.
in the temple he attained divine grace and became
full of wisdom and poetic power. When he returned
his face beamed with the new glory lighted in his
soul by the grace of the Goddess. He was thence¬
forward known as Kalidasa. The Princess saw
from his face that he had attained divine blessings
and asked him: (Asti kaschii-
^Q^arthah i.e. Has there been any attainment of
power of speech and thought?). It is said that
thereupon he broke forth into sweet and sublime
poetry. He began his Kumara 5amiAava wilk
the word Asti, bis Mcgha SanJesa with the word
Kaschit, and his Raghuoamsa with the word
garihah- He proftraled before her as his mother
i.e.. the mother of the higher self born in him as the
result of her suggestion and command. He then
lived as the court poet in the court of King Vilcra-
maditya and achieved immortal fame by his works.
 Hia PEBIOD, PERSONALITY AND POBTRT 85

This is the tradition most imiversally current

about Kalidasa' The stories—piquant and attradt-
live as they arc—about his conne<jtion with king
Bhoja are of no value. I have described them in
detail in my Tamil work called Bhoja Cbaritram.
King Bhoja belonged to very recent times and lived
and reigned at Dhara in Malwa in the eleventh
century A* D. The Kalidasa attached to his court
was not the Kalidasa of immortal fame but Parimala
Kalidasa who composed Naoa Sahasanka
Charitam and Vijiasri describing the greatness
of the king. It is in regard to this recent poet
that the story is said that he was attached to a courte¬
san and met his death at her hands when her cupi¬
dity extinguished her affection. It is not unlikely
that even this dory is a fiction and a fraud. We
know that the false and impudent dory about the
demon Maniman was born as Sri Sankaracharya has
been invented and has been even palmed oft as a
Puranic dory. Bigotry and jealousy and a love of
the romantic and the marvellous have been all over
the world causes of lies masquerading as fa(5ts. The
dories conne<ding Kalidasa with Dandin and with
Bhavabhuti and the stories connecting him with
King Kumaradasa of Ceylon (A. D. 315^
86 KALIDASA

and aaling that he was killed by a courtesan

in Ceylon and that the king burnt himself on
Kalidasa's funeral pyre are equally apocryphal and
worthless.

I have dealt elsewhere in this work with the

date and the birthplace of Kalidasa and the learning
and the noble qualities of the poet. We can in a
large measure recon^ruct Kalidasa the man from
Kalidasa’s works. Such a work is more interesting
and more likely to yield valuable results than the
colle<fhon and recording of the innumerable unverified
and unveriBable and irrecoocileable and mutually
conflicting incidents m his life as handed down by
traditions of different degrees of untruth. It almo^
looks as if—to adopt an idea beautifully described
in his poem Kumarasambhava—Time not only
deployed the life but the life-record as well of this
Lord of Hearts (Manmatha) and made him Ananga
^>odiless) and Kaihayfasesha (reduced to a mere
name). The life of Kalidasa can not be brought by
human love or labour into the world of facts and has
become a wanderer in Legend* Land.

The works of Kalidasa about which there is

and there could be no dispute are Ritusamhara^
 Htt PBRIOD, PERSONALITY AND POBTBT $7

Kumaraiambhava, Meghasandesa. Raghuvamsa,

Maiavikagnimitra, Vikratnorvadya, and Sakuntala.
The other works attributed to him are Syamala
Dandaka, Sringara Tilaka, Sringara Rasashtaka,
Pushpabana vilasa, Srulabodha, GangasKtaka,
Nalodaya. Rakshasakavya, the Prakrit poem Setu-
bandhakavya, Kalislotra, Jyotirvidabharana. Moa
o( these are evidently spurious and do not possess
his charac^eridic excellences of thought and itylc»
There are no grounds whatever for attributing the
agronomical treatise Jyotirvidabharana to him; the
attribution of Nalodaya to him is equally wrong.
In fadt some of the manuscripts of the poem des*
cribes it a® the work of Ravideva who was a son of
Narayana. Out of the other poems it is not likely*
that Setubandha kavya or Kali^totra is from his pen.
About the other poems it is didicult to hazard an
opinion. They are of unequal poetic merit but
contain some verses and phrases and ideas and senti¬
ments worthy of the immortal poet.

An attempt has been often made to the

sequence of the composition of the seven beautiful
poems which are undeniably tlie wo'k of Kalidasa.
This task is pure guess-work and is one that is bed
left undone. All that we can say with any degree
88 KALIDASA

of certainty is that it is likely out of the three dramas

Malavikagnimitra was written hrA. I do not agree
with the theory that Vikramorvaslya was written
after Sakuntala and shows the waning and decline
of Kalidasa’s powers. I am discussing Mr. Ryder’s
view on this matter later on. I am of opinion that
it is likely that all the plays were written after some
of the poems were written. They show a maturity
of ^le and of judgment and a knowledge of the
world which are generally attained only in adult life
by even the children of the Muses. I would put
Ritusamhara and Kumarasambhava fir^ in order of
time, then Malavikagnimitra, then Vikramorvasiya,
and finally Meghasandesa, Raghuvamsa and Sakun¬
tala. 1 shall show below that we cannot accept the
view that T^aghuoamia was composed before Ku'
marasambhaiia. But whatever be the sequence of
his works there is no doubt about the crescent har*
mony of his great works, which like the seven basic
notes of music comprise the entire realm of melodious
sweetness of thought and ityle.
 CHAPTER VII.

Kalidasa The Man.

^T^HE works of Kalidasa give us some clue about
^ the man though they throw no light on his life*
Though the modern resources of autobiography and
biography were unknown in those ancient days, yet
we have enough indications in his great writings to
reveal the man. His was a noble and pure and
pious and balanced nature, revering nature and
reverencing the noble qualities of the refined human
spirit and adoring God, equally at home in village
and in city and in the sublime solitudes of fore^ and
mountains, eager for the pure enjoyment of a synthe¬
sised life, dowered with perfecit serenity and com¬
posure of spirit, fired to the depths of his being with
the Ideals of Satya and Santi and bhakH and
ahimsa—in short, one of the moft perfe<a incarna¬
tions of the Hindu racial genius.
90 KALIDASA

It is apparent Irom Kis writings that Kalidasa

was a great traveller and that he knew the scenery
as weU as men and manners and customs all over
India. He knew South India as well as North India,
though of course he knew more minutely North
India which was his birthplace. Cantos 4 and 13 •(
Raghuvamsa describe South India. The fourth canto
of Raghuvamsa and the firA part of Meghasandesa
are full of places of inlereft in North India. Megha¬
sandesa refers also to Ramagiri in the Central Pro¬
vinces. fCumarasambhava is full of the beauty and
the sublimity of the Himalayas and of the Ganges.
He describes the saffron flower that grows in
Kashmir. I shall show in my second volume how
accurate and lively are his descriptions of nature
and how he knew well Indian manners and habits
and cu^oms. He had a special love for hermitages
in beautiful fore^s. He makes Dushyanta say in
Sakuntala:

(Let us purify ourselves by seeing the holy hermit¬

age). Raghuvamsa opens with the peaceful beauty
of a hermitage and Sakuntala opens in the heaven
of one hermitage and closes in the heaven of another
hermitage, while Kumarasambhava describes the
 HIS PBRIOD, PEBSOKAUTT AND POETRY 91

holies hernutages ol all—the places of the penance

of Siva and of Parvali.

KaHdasa had an cquaJ appreciation of the

graces and refinements and sanclides of human fife.
Mr. Ryder has said well: “ One feels certain that
he was physically handsome and the handsome
Hindu is a wonderfully fine type of manhood. One
knows that he possessed a fascination for women, as
they in turn fascinated him. One knows that •
children loved him. One becomes convinced that
he never suffered any morbid, soul'shaldng ex*
perience such as besetting religious doubt brings
with it, or the pangs of despised love ; that on the
contrary he moved among men and women with a
serene and God-like tread, neither self-indulgent nor
ascetic, with mind and senses ever alert to every
form of beauty. We know that his poetry was
popular while he lived, and we cannot doubt that
his personality was equally attraiftive, though it' is
probable that no contemporary knew the fuff
measure of his greatness. For his nature was one of
singular balance, equally at home in a splendid court
and on a lonely mountain, with men of high and
low degree. Such men are never fully appreciated
92 KALIDASA

during life. They coatinue to grow after they are

dead"*.

These are true and weighty and well-considered

and valuable words. There is a traditionally cur*
rent ^ory about the poet which shows the truth of
these remarks. One day a poor and ignorant man
sought his aid. He sent him to the king for help
and told him to tell the king :
(May you be free from the three worries !). But
the foolish man went to the king and said:
(May you have the three worries !). At once Kali¬
dasa got up and told the king that the man blessed
him and that his idea was as ^ated in the following
verse :

(May you, when you are sitting on your

throne, have the trouble of getting up to receive
honoured visitors. May you, when you are dining,
be troubled by your children trying to climb up your
knees. May you, when you are in bed, be di^urbed
in your sleep by the embraces of your queen. May
you have these worries day after day t). It is said
 HIS PKRIOD, PBRSONaLITY AND POETRY

|}iat the king applauded the sentiment and hand¬

somely rewarded the poor man.

It is not possible to deal here in extcnso with

Kalidasa*s description of virtues and graces of life.
Such lines as the following show how he knew that
it is the life of altruism and purity and dharma,
the life that refrains from adharma and vice, the life
that revers those worthy of reverence, the life that
is full of compassion and composure, which will be a
blessing to all here and a source of blessing in heaven.

^ I

(Raghuvamsa 1. 22)’

(Do. I. 29)

I am dealing with his ideals of life in my later^

volume. I do not pursue tliis aspeft further here.
Nor shall I deal here with his artiaic nature and
his spirituality as I shall deal with these aspeiits also
in that volume.

I shall however deal here at some length with

his personal qualities and his varied and wonderful
94 KALIDASA

learning. He was a man of remarkable modeAy

and urbanity and sweetness and serenity of soul.
His modeAy peeps forth throughout his early and
mature work as is evident from the following verses:

ft mi * |

sRfar^j^rrsiiiff i

*tof\ ^05?^ (^W^TT% flt 0%: a

00t: |

irq\ nr n
(RaghovamM 1.)

sTm?r<i00f
vif^0W I

MalavikagDlmitra.

gi j

TqTflf*T3 51 3«0Tg m a
Da
 HIS PERIOD, PBHSOKAUTY AND POBTBY 95

^ cTifViTfWR*? I

(Sakontaia'.

At the same time he had self*respe(5t and a

high sense of the dignity of his art. In the follow¬
ing verse his words have a noble ring which contra^s
with the noble though boatful words of Bhava-
bhuti in the equally well-known introdudtory verse
in his Malatimadhava and which shows the diffe¬
rence in nature between the two mighty poets :

€l?cT: qT*T3i^^^5r%: It

Kalidasa was a man of wide and varied and

even intensive learning. Some may think that the
^ory that he became a poet by the grace of the
Goddess is inconsistant with his having been a man
of learning. But the grace which dowered him
with poesy led him to poesy through learning. He
was a maiter of Hindu secular and spiritual learning
and is found in some respe(5ts to have surprisingly
modern ideas and to have been far in advance of
Ki$ times.
96 KALIDASA

He was well-versed in scriptural lores iir

grammar, in rhetoriCt and in philosophy. I shall
discuss his knowledge of philosophy and ee^helics
and poetics and dramaturgy in my later volume.
The following verses may be referred to here by
way of illu^ration:

(Raghuvamia. I. 11).

I Do. II, 2.

gjfa; qoi^f ?Ji6f j

«4qir: TiiS Uii\K II

Kumaraiambhava II. 12.

«3r 5f|;^ 9r«rr<fWna«Tr |

Raghuvamaa II. 16.

sqrargfqgRtjgc i

Do. Xll. 5«.

q^: li
Kumarasambhava II. 27.

, qwq«^»<j5fTWfq I
Raghuvamaa XV. 9.
 His FCRIOI), PBRSOHALJTlfANi) POETRY 97

Raghuvamsa XV, 13.

Kalidasa knew also many of the truths oF geo¬

graphy and natural science, (n the well-known
verse
Tie ch
Rnghuvamsa 1, 18.

he shows that he knew how the sun draws

water in the form of vapour and gives it back to the
world as rain to dower the world with Fruitfulness
and sustain life. He says the same thing in
Kumarasambhava, IV, 44 :

In Raghuvamsa, XIII, 4 he says :

rrn I
See also Canto X verse 58. The 12th verse
in the 6rd part of Meghasandesa runs thus :

^IS'TgWtq; tf

This shows how the poet knew that the firit

raindrops are warm on touching the heated earth.
He knew also that in summer cold water comes
K. I. 7.
 KALIDABA

down the Ganges owing to the melting of the

Himalayan snows.

Raghuvainsa. XIV, 3

He knew further that devastating fires increase

the fertility of the soil:

Jsig
4t5Tiro5>TJtiff 5^3^: I
Do. IX. 80.

He speaks thus about the increase due to

transplantation of seedlings:

Do. IV. 37.

Sakuntala shows that the poet knew ancient law

and the forms of ancient legal procedure. The follow¬
ing Stanzas show his medical knowledge. He knew
a serpent-bitten finger muft be cut off to save the life

of the man:

Raghuvanua 1. 28.
 HIS PERIOD, PRiWON^UTy AND POBTRIT 99

Sir

3[gqr^rorTRrgq; Riliq^q; 11
Malnvikagniroiira Ad IV, Vcr»e 4.

Even more remarkable is tCalidasa's agrono¬

mical knowledge. His knowledge of the pheno¬
menon of the rise of tides at moonrise is clear from
tlic following verses :

Raihuvamia, V, 61.

Kumarasambhavs. Ill, 67,

He knew that it was the sun’s heat that kept
life in bloom on the earth.

Ragbuvamia, V, 4.

He knew that it was the sun’s glory that illu¬

minates the lunar sphere and shines as the lunar
glory. He knew also the cause of the waxing and
the waning of the moon.

Do. 11.22.
»iT^i|5TrR€rr^ \

Kumaratambhava Vll, 8,
 100 KALTDASA

Tims he was quite as modern in this respe<5t as

when Shelley wrote two thousand years later that
the moon had fed her exhausted form at the
sunset’s fire.” That he knew the cause of the
phenomena of amavasya (obscuration of the moon on
new moon days) and of eclipses is clear from the
following danzas.

qTOii II
RAguvamia. VII, 33.

Salcuntala, VH, 2Z.

BCr^r f?
RaghuvamuL XIV. 40.

»Tr^f?r II

MaUvikagnimitra Adt. IV Verae 16.

The sun’s apparent motion is thus referred to

by him :

STinn^TlWq^ \

Raghuvamsa, XII, 25

The Idea of Relativity has been very nluch to

-the (6re in tiiodem thought. Ein^ein’s exposition
 HIS PERIOD, PBRaONALITY AND POETRY 10|

of it Has given it a new importance and a De>y ap'

plication. The recent exposition of it m Lord
Haldane*s great book on The Reign of ^elalioity
has given a new intensiveness of meaning to its
speculative applications and implications. My pur¬
pose Here is not to expound the ab^ruse idea of
relativity in all its manifoldness of application in the
various realms of modern thought but only to point
out its anticipation in one of the greater and moft
ancient poets of India. I do not mean to sugge^ or
^ate that Kalidasa knew the mathematical implica*
tions or the scientific evidences of the do<5trine.
But 1 certainly wish to show that having been
dowered by nature with a keen imagination he was
able to realise the truth in an imaginative way. Such
poetic anticipations by later scientific achievements
are not unknown in the weft. Tennyson’s descrip-
Uon in Lockil^y Hall adout the nation’s airy
pavies grappling in the central blue ” was an andci-
pation of what happened long afterwards in the
gTMt world-warof 1914.

Lord Haldane gives us the following telling

illuAration in regard to the idea of relativity: ” If a
lady drops her parasol and it seems to her to be
attradted by gravitation to the muddy pavement.
102 KALTDARA

it is not difficult, if we make an effort to free our¬

selves from unconscious assumptions, to represent
this adequately from another conceivable point of
view. For an observer with a sufficiently powerful
telescope, and himself at such a distance as to know
nothing of any gravitational altracflion-from the earth,
it might appear that the earth and the lady were
moving upwards with an accelerating or increasing
velocity, and that when the lady's parasol slipped
out of her hand it at that moment lo^t its accelerating
push, and relapsed into a rate of motion upwards
that was uniform and without acceleration. In
consequence it would be obvious to the di^ant
observer that the accelerating pavement and the
mud had overtaken it, in^ead of the parasol having
descended to them. The approach in position
would, for such a distant observer, with co-ordinates
of reference other than those of the lady on the
pavement, be one of the earth relatively to the
parasol, while for the lady the change of position-
would be, according to her mundane co-ordinates,
one of the parasol relatively to the pavement. In
each case the phenomenon observed would be ob¬
served as it a<aually happened, and appear as it dief
simply because of the special position of the observer..
 HIS PBmiOD, PERSONALITY AND POITBY 103

Tlie relations described, whether spatial, as in direc¬

tion and distance, or temporal, as concerned with
time in the beginning and ending of the journey of the
parasol, would depend on the ^aodards of the ob¬
server for their reality, which would therefore be
relative only.**

There are four stanzas in ICalidasa*s works where

we find his imaginative grasp of this matter. In the
Kaghuvamsa (canto XIII verse48) the poet makes
Sri Rama describe the diilant Ganga as being ^11
and shining as a pearl necklace on the breaA of the
earth. In canto XIII verse 18, he makes Sri
Rama describe the appearance of the earth as he
travels fa^ horizontally in the aerial car Pushpaka

(The foreft-belted earth looks as if it separates

jind flies away from the receding sea).

The following verse in A<lt I of Vikramor-

vasiya also describes the swift forward movement
an aerial car :
 104 KALIDASA

The following verses in Sakuntala are equally

well-known and important and worthy of note.

finrm
?rfc |
Sl^Str ^?53# ?l^q

^ ^ ^ ffet^njtniirq ^ qr^ tvsrrt ii

This verse describes the appearance of pheno¬

mena from a car swiftly moving along the surface of
the earth. What seemed small suddenly becomes
vait in size ; what appeared bent or broken is seen
io Ait continuous; what is really bent looks
freight at a distance; what is far comes near and
what is near swiftly recedes from view. The 7th
Act contains the following remarkable verse :

fgsgffi <q>ta7^qRqRqT: |

%5n'3f?a?qfrq qx«f *T?qr3&*rr^'t^(fr II

This verse describes the appearance of the

«arlh from a swift-descending asrial car. “The
 HIS TEBIOD, PKRSOXAWTy AND POETRY IQfi

earth seems to flow down the sides of suddenly

emerging hill-tops; the trees seem to shoot upward?
emerging from their envelope of foliage; thin streaks
of water broaden into broad rivers * and the earth
seems to bound up towards me as if it were a ball
thrown up by some one towards us/* Malali hears
this description and sees the sight and exclaims that
the earth is vasTl and fair at^
I do not think it necessary to compare this with the
illustrations given above in Lord Haldane*s work,
as such a comparison will be obvious to all. I may
in tliis connexion draw attention to a similar des¬
cription of the earth and the moon by two western
poets of remarkable imaginative vision. Goethe says
m the Prologue to his Faust

With speed, though baffling, unabating

Elarlh s splendour whirls in circhng flight.
Its Eden brightness alternating
With solemn awe-inspiring might.

Ocean’s broad waves in wild commotion

Againit the rock’s deep base arc hurled,
And with the spheres both rock and ocean
Eternally are swiftly hurled**.
106 KALIDASA

Rossetti sings thus about the moon in his

Blessed Damozel.

** The wild moon was like a Kttle feather

Fluttering far down the guU **.

Kalidasa’s descriptions referred to above seem

to me to be even more apt and driking and wonder¬
ful and show the power and amplitude of his
mind.
I can go on giving further instances about
Kalidasa's learning and knowledge and powers of
natural observation but I do not think it necessary
to do so. I have said enough to show that he had
a wonderful extensiveness and intensiveness of mind,
and that Kalidasa the man is as remarkable as Kali¬
dasa the poet.
 CHAPTER VIII.
Ritusamhara (The Seasons),

^HIS poem, like Thomson’s Seasons is solely

devoted to the delineation of the seasons.
It, like Meghasandesa and P^ikf^amoroasiya, shows
Kalidasa’s great originality as an inventor of new
arbstic motifs and literary forms. All the works
of Kalidasa are Iteeped in natural loveliness but this
poem is exclusi^'ely devoted to it. It is probably
one of his earlier produeftions as it does not contain
that power of maximum effect through minimum
means which is so chara<fteristic of his later works as
of the later works of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare’s
earliest poems and even his earlier plays we find
lavishness and redundancy which represent merely
the riotous overflow of a rich, nay over-affluent,
imagination. The very same traits arc found also
in the early poems of Kalidasa. But we find in it
his mo^t intimate and essential chara(5leri^ics—his
 108 KALIDASA

keen vision of nature's beauties, bis pervasive sen¬

suousness, bis power of illuminative simile, and bis
power of imaginative description.

When we compare Kalidasa's Ritusamhara

with Thomson's Seatons we find how widely the
genius of the one poet differs from that of the other.
Kalidasa's poem is the fir^ poem in the world's
literature devoted exclusively to the delineation of
nature. Thomson wrote in a sophisticated age
which had no keen love of nature. Tliough Kali¬
dasa also wrote in a sophisticated age, he composed
his poem in a land in which the beauty and sub¬
limity of nature had entered deeply into human life.
Further, Kalidasa has a more natural and initin(5tive
and genuine and reverential love for nature than
Thomson. Thomson's work is more eloquent and
rhetorical but has less human intere^ and delicacy
of touch. Mass efFe<5ls are better described by him
than by KaL'dasa but individual eff<5ts are better
brought out by Kalidasa.

When we compare Kalidasa's nature-poetry

wMh the nature poetry of Wordsworth and Shelley
and Keats and Tennyson, we shall be able to feel
the special graces of his nature-poetry well. I am
 Ills I»Klll01>, PBRSONALIT7 AND POBTRV 109

doing this work in a later chapter and hence refrain

from dilaKng on that matter here. I shall content
myself by merely Aating here that we do not find his
nature-poetry inflindt and alive with that overmaster¬
ing sense of a divine presence—be it Thought or
Love—animating nature and communing with our
soul and kindling in it moods of calm or of ecslacy.
Nor do we find in it that overpowering sensuous¬
ness which we find in Keats' treatment of nature or
that sense of law and mystery wliicli we find in
Tennyson’s nature-poetry. Kalidasa’s treatment of
nature is more emotional than spiritual or sensuous
but it is very charming and attractive.

Mr. A. B. Keith says in his Classical Sans¬

krit Literature: “ A work of his youth is certainly
Ritusamhara, which has paid the penalty of juve¬
nility by condemnation by modern, though not
ancient, opinion as the product of some other hand.
This view is plainly unsound, as was the former
attempt to deny Kalidasa the Malavikagnimitra
because of its inferiority to his other dramas. It is
clear that Vatsabhatti used the poem, and this
shows it to be of ancient dale. It is perfectly true
that it falls short of the later poems in depth of
 110 KALI DAUA

poetic insight and feeling, but a comparison, for

instance of Tennyson s early poems with the pro¬
duct of his mature years, shows precisely the same
fact. The comparison is apposite, for Tennyson is
precisely a parallel to Kalidasa; both are poets not
so much of inspiration and genius, as of perfect
accomplishment based on a high degree of talent...
.No deep feeling, it is true, marks' the
poem, but it is dislinguisbed by a profound sympathy
with the life of nature and an admirable power of
describing in pregnant brevity the aspects of Indian
scenery and life • This passage contains true and
clever and acute criticism but it errs in classing
Kalidasa with Tennyson. Kalidasa is a poet of
inspiration and genuis. nay. is a universal poet.
Tennyson is second-rate as an epic poet and as a
dramatist, though he excels in lyric and elegiac
poetry, and is a consummate artist in style. Kalidasa
is great all round and is one of the world's greatest
artists in style. Mr. Ryder says well : “ h might
even be said that those rare and happy centuries
that see a man as great as Homer or Virgil or Kali¬
dasa or Shakespeare partake in that one man of a
renaissance". He points out also that Kalidasa was a
highly educated and learned man and that “ in this
 Ills ?B»rOD, PJftRSOSALITY AND POBTRT 111

respect Ke is rather to be compared with Milton and

Tennyson than with Shakespeare or Burns*\ and
that ‘‘he was completely a master of his learning”.
1 would rather compare him with Goethe who also
was a universal poet, who was a master of learning
hut was not mastered by learning, and who com¬
bined grace and massiveness. Mr. Ryder points
out how Kalidasa harmonised and at the same time
transfigured the life of nature and the life of man
and how he was as supreme a poet of nature
as he was a poet of the human heart. In fact
Kalidasa combined in an exquisite way perfection of
form and high intellectual power and emotional
intensity and radiant imagination and a fine and
pervasive spiritual quality. To quote from Mr.
Ryder again : ” Poetical fluency is not rare ;
intellectual grasp is not very uncommon: but the
combination has not been found perhaps more than
a dozen times since the world began. Because he
possessed this harmonious combination, Kalidasa
ranks not with Anacron and Horace and Shelley,
but with Sophocles, Virgil, and Milton”.

The doubt caA on Kalidasa’s authorship of the

poem is an utterly untenable doubt. Mallinatha

t
 ♦

112 KAL(I)AS\

did not comment upon it evidently because of its

simplicity and because he confined his attention to
the major works of the poet. The later writers on
poetics doinot quote from it because they had an
abundance of material in the poet's longer and more
mature poems and plays* ^

The firft conlo deals with summer (Nidagha).

The summer is described as a season of fierce

solar heat and desirable lunar light, of waters in¬
cessantly resorted to by bathers, and of sweet
evenings. Fountains play and scatter spray and
spread coolness all around. Cryilal Hooting and
sandal paAe increase the coolness* Fragrance and
music abound everywhere. Youthful maidens in
Kght silks and radiant jewels add to the sweetness
of tlie season. The moon’s pallor becomes more
pronounced on seeing the surpassing beauty of their '
face and form. The deer roam about in search of
water. The serpent fainting with heat curls itself
up in the shadow cast by the peacock s body. The
lions do not attack the elephants which enter ponds
in search of coolness. The birds feel faint on the
leafless b*ees. The boars and bisons roam wildly
in search of water. The forests are aflame with

1
 HIS pBaiOD, personalitv and POETay il3

fofeA-fires. With lovely maids and melodious music

on golden terrace floors they spend the nights of suoi'
mer in which the waters smile with lotuses, which is
fragrant with the odours of Fatala flowers, and in
which it is sweet lo bathe and to seek cool moon*
beams and garlands of flowers. The following are
a few of the fine Lanzas in the poem :

ffJFar-
RilF«r: ii

8l5f3 ?IR esrrft

II

The second canto deals with the rainy season*

(Varsha). The season is regalia its coming, as
K. 1. 9.
114 KALIDASA

the cIouJs are like elephants and (he lightning is like

the royal flag and the thunder sounds (ike the royal
drum. The sky is full of clouds of diverse degrees
of darkness, shining like tlie Nilotpala flower and
like collyrium. The Ciiataka birds seek the graci-
OQS drops of rain. With thunder as drum, with rain¬
bow as bow and lightning as bowstring, and with
showers of rain as arrows, the season assails the
hearts of those who are away from their beloved
wives. With shining grass and otiier attractions the
earth shines like a beautiful maiden. On hearing
the sound of thunder the peacocks dance with
gorgeous tails outspread. The swollen rivers rush
like love-maddened maidens, to the sea, uprooting
the trees on the banks by the force of their turbid
waters. In such dark and rainy nights lover-seckmg
maidens go to their places of assignation, their way
being lighted up by the glows of lightning. Even
faulty lovers are forgiven by maidens frightened by
the flashing lightning and the rolling thunder. The
wives of men who are far away stand in such nights
disconsolate with tearful eyes and unadorned per¬
sons. The bees abandon the flowerless lotus pond
and sedc the outspread tails of the dancing peacocks
deeming that flowers have blossomed there. The
 His PERIOD, PERSONAJ^ITV ASTD POETRY 115

rain-gladdened fore^ seems to smile with blossomed

flowers. The wind-shalcen boughs make us feel that
the forest is dancing in joy. The season, like a
lover, decks maidens with flowers. The following
are some of the fine verses in this canto which says
at the end : that the rainy season—which has many
graces and fascinates the minds of maidens and is the
friend of parched trees and creepers and is the life
of all—fulfil all thy desires’*.

5?!^W II
116 KALli>A$A

gjSf ?« 3r^^^ww^^F:

I 'nrg«'( si t:
f^ar ^mn: «an%arq it

Tf^ W: I
jpi: liifeflT fl^aat
€5nq^^ q^w«T?taT n

gi^a fd «^»WcT3<^: H*i-dr-

qfBTOf^’Wfdi^frfrTqV dw^a: it

dfvifisr <ii9^q: qqtTT

ffiRf^aqqSV^fqVTf^laa 1

<^nfa 5(5ri[W: ^T??idWT!3 n

 HIS PEBIOD, PBRSONALITT AND POBXRT il7

«roF^
OT^r i?rffegr?irfBr ii
The third canto describes Autumn (SaroO*
Autumn comes like a new bride. Her dress is the
blossomed Kasa ; her face is the lotus ; the sound
of her anklet is the voice of the swan; and her body
is the ripened com. The season envelops the world
in whiteness by fitting the earth with Kasa flowers, the
nights with moonbeams, the breams with swans, the
ponds with Kumuda flowers, the forests with sapta-
parnc trees in Bower and the gardens with Malati
blossoms. The sky with its wind-tossed white clouds
looks like a king fanned by yak-tail fans. The sky
is dark-blue like collyrium; the earth is red with
bandhooka flowers; and lotus blossoms abound
everywhere. The night, like a young girl, shines
with her moonface free from the veil of eloud and
decked with radiant jewel dike Aars and dressed in
the white silk of moonlight. The breeze shakes the
hearts of youth when it shakes the gram-laden ^alks
and makes the blossomed boughs dance with joy
and causes the lotus flowers to have a jocund dance.
118 KA.LIDA8A

The rainbow and the lightning are seen no more.

The lovely gait of maidens is conquered by the
swans; the beauty of their laces is vanquished by
the loveliness ol the lotus Bowers; their loving
glances are thrown into the shade by Neelotpala
flowers; and their sportive eyebrows are surpassed
by playful rivulets. The cloudless blue sky with its
moon and stars shines like the lovely tank filled witlt
emerald waters and radiant with the Kumuda
flowers and swans. The breeze is cool ; the sky is
clear and cloudless; the waters are clear; and the
moon and the stars light up the universe. May your
minds be gladdened by the autumnal season with her
lo(us face and Neelotpala eyes and Kaia garment !
The following fine stanzas may be remembered.

aw II
 Hia PBRIOD, PBKaONALITT AND POETRY

CHsft W!n
ife ^jnsrr n

•Tr^q^?<fi^«n^cKiTi»5rraT-
?THa^^Wt?3ggqiaf5J?i(5i. |
?ira5fr
«?i13«3JTrer II

g3%f!r

vrfWaiTTa i)

n5r?e%rrRf

ftr«iT%yT?J^qt wnq

^T% nin-lW II

5*i^?mr5T*J^ ^ft^tr
ftf^^irrnr iRsftin: i
^amfT
wftfl ii
120 KALIDASA

^ar^i I

Wc now come lo the canto describing Winter

{Hemamia). The lodhra trees arc in bloom. The
corn is ripe. The lotus is not to be seen. There is
(ailing snow everywhere. Maidens discard their silken
garments. They dry their tresses with fragrant smoke.
The icicles arc like the teardrops shed by the season
for causing discomfort to women. The tanks
shine with clear waters which arc radiant with excited
swans and blossomed Neelolpala flowers. The
snow-ripened Priyangu creeper is pale like a love¬
lorn maid. Lovers sleep in close embrace, their
mouths perfumed with flower-fragrant wine and
their persons odorous with scented breath. The
maidens seek the morning sun after the love-vigils of
the night. May you have bb’ss in this snowy season
which has many good traits, which fascinates the
minds of maids and inclines them to love, in which
the villagers are eager about their ripe harvests,
which is always sweet to the mind, and in which
 HIB PBRIOD, PEBAONALTTT AHD POETBY 121

the Krauncha birds abound in a(5tivity. The follow^

ing are some of the fine stanzas in this canto :

r>«t5n<i: aisjuncl ggqinvtsqir ll

gqft^nsrri^i «Tit« it

qri (nFfll ffq3rT^T5rl?f*

ffl^ fqqf; fnqffagtn

qift fl5TTR?^q II

q^q^i 15q la
^tq: qiTq^«rgf^«: li

qigoTrqoftqV
qftmaqjw/^WfOTiq^itr I
«cIfTqf«iq;ft*: 9p\wqRFfrq3ft«:

qq q: ii

The next 'canto describes the season of Dew

(Shira), It is beautiful with gathered harrests.
122 KALIDAS4

screanuDg Kfounchast and intensive love. The

windows are shut. The help of fire and sun and
heavy garments and maiden’s warm embraces is
sought. Sandal and moon and terrace and breeze
arc abandoned. None stirs out in nights bright with
snow and ilar. With betel and wine and perfume-
censers maidens enter their halls of sleep. They for¬
get and forgive the errors and dcfcdls of their
lovers. May the dewy season wherein sweet
viands are enjoyed, and love is sweet to the united
and bitter to the separated lovers, and which is
sweet with ripe corn and sugarcane confer happiness
on you. The foUowing noteworthy verses occur in
this canto:

ftrwnfq II

I
 HIS PERIOD, PRRSONALITY AND FOKTBY 123

^s?g II

We now come to Spring beloved of the poets

in general and of Kalidasa in particular. The Gila
says that Spring is God s spedal manifestation among
the seasons '^5^t 3*5*1^^:. Aravinda Ghose thinks
that the poet's poem on Summer is 6ne, that there is
a falling off in the next two cantos which however
have more finish if less vigour, that the next cantos
are poor, and that the poem on Spring is not superb
and supreme but is a failure* I have shown above
how the fira five canlos maintain the same high
level; and all of them have the same drawbacks
and merits. In the poem on Spring which Ghose
well calls “the royal season of the Indian year**
Kalidasa is at his befl as it is full of colour and
perfume and sweetness in which he delights. The
warrior Spring is come with ihe mango blossom as
his sharp arrow, and with crowds of bees as the
bowstring of his sugarcane-bow to pierce the hearts
of men and maids. Everything is fair— the trees
are fair with flowers, the ponds with lotuses, the
 124 KAL1DA8A

maidens with amorous passion, the winds with per¬

fume, the evenings with bliss, and the days with
beauty. The god of Spring confers auspiciousness
(Stubhagya) on tanks with gem-set steps and moon
faced maidens and blossomed mango .trees. Scarlet
garments arc seen everywhere. The Kamikara
flower attains a new loveliness in the maiden s ear;
the asoka blossom has a new glory in her dark
tresses; and the mallika flower attains a new splen¬
dour on their persons. Sandal paste shineson their
breasts; and bracelets and wristlets and bells shine
on their arms and hips. Their frames have a
new glow of loveliness and their hearts have a new
glow of love. Light silken garments are worn by
them. The male cuckoo drunk with ihe honey of
the mango bloom kisses his,beloved ; and the male
bee in the lotus flower hums his love to the obje<5l of
his passion. The wind-shaken mango tree with
light-red tender leaves and sweet flowers lires the
hearts of maids with amatory passion. The Asoka
with its wealth of red blossoms fill the hearts of
youth with love s soka (melancholy). The earth,
wth kimsuka groves which are in bloom and look
like trees on fire, shines like a red-garmented bride.
Have not the Kimsuka trees, shining like the beaks
 SIS PERIOD, PltRSOXALlTY AND POBTRY l25

* of parrots* and the KaTnik,QTa trees in bloom caused

pain to lovers already? Yet cuckoos with sweet tones
add to the pain. Shaking the blossomed mango
trees and spreading the sweet tones of the cuckoo
everywhere, the springtide breeze, free from the
cold of snow, blows as it likes ravishing and bearing
away the hearts of men. Tlie gardens are sweet
with Kumuda flowers which are white like the
laughter of women. They fascinate even the passion¬
less hearts of saints. What then about the passionate
hearts of youth? The separated lovers, on seeing the
blossomed and odorous mango trees, shut their eyes
and noses and weep and greive. May happiness be
bestowed on you by the world-conquering God Kama
(Cupid) who is accompanied by the God of Spring,
whose supreme arrow is the mango bloom, whose
bow is the palasa flower, whose bowstring is a string
of bees, whose royal white umbrella is the radiant
moon, whose rutted elephant is the fragrant south
wind, and who has got the cuckoos as the Kymners
of his glory. The following are some of the fiocst
poems in this canto:
126 RALI1>,\SA

wg'rrn^; Tn^ n

J*ir: Rgsqr:
0^rRi; q^i?: jjjyf^iii: |

r»^r:
fq^ )(

3f^r%5r>:^fT^<Tq;T

*T^: fsrqf Trn??: |

i>q r^^jrqr: ^%x[\h n

a^r WofTm Tq|q^IRrm

^5^r: 3«q^iT ^Rr: f

f a?rl%
rW^«rTorr ii

iiff^ ^j5j: 11
 HIS PEKIOD, PBR80MAMTTA5fl> POETRY 127

i[72rrR
^^rnr^wnqrcHwift 535% 11

^153-

affli i%aT^: r%«q 1

3%w\ J»M^rR5T: ?T5F??^r
^ II

Mr. Ryder says: “The descripbon is not

objective, but deals with the feelings awakened by
each season in a pair of young lovers. Indeed, the
poem might be called a Love’s Calendar.” This is in
my opinion a wrong estimate. The poem has both
obje(5tive and subje^Aive elements. It has its merits
and defects but it does not make nature a mere
annexure to human feeling. It is of great beauty and
is in the characteristic vein of Kalidasa. It has got
a great exuberence of sensuousness and abounds in
fine pidtures and rich imagery expressed in simple
and attradtive and melodious language. Professor
Macdonnell says: “With glowing descriptions of the
beauties of Nature, in which erotic scenes are inter¬
spersed, the poet adroitly interweaves the expression
of human emotions. Perhaps no other work of
Kalidasa’s manifests so strikingly the poet's deep
128 KALI 1>ASA

sympathy with nature* hts keen powers of observa¬

tion and his skill in depicting an Indian landscape
in vivid and glowing colours*'. Nature can be loved
for itself or for its spiritual appeal or its responsive-
ness to our emotional needs. The fact that in
Kalidasa's Nature poetry we do not see mass ejects,
or a sense of the spiritual message of Nature to our
soul should not justify us in rejecting it as an inferior
artistic achievement. It is true also that we do not
find in him that minute observation of nature or that
scientific accuracy which delights in Tennyson and
some other modern poets. To Kalidasa, as to
Shakespeare, Nature was largely a frame for the
mounting of his pidture of human love. He surrounds
with Nature’s phenomena the drama of human life.
The appeal of Nature to him, as to Shakespeare, is
emotional rather than intellectual or spiritual. At the
same time the general aspects of Nature are not for¬
gotten by him. There is also the pervasive presence
of his power of illuminative simile and his talent of
concentrated expression of original ideas and fancies.
It may be said that all the six cantos are full of des¬
criptions of lovely women and that woman is a little
too much in the foreground and nature a little too
much in the background. But we must remember that
 HIS PKRIOl), I'KRSONAUTT AND POETBY 12^

the aim of Kalidasa is to link Nature to human fife not

by the link of intellect or the link of the spirit but
by the link of emotion. In the emotional treatment
of nature as responsive to human feeling, love can
never be absent but must be necessarily in the foce-
ground of poetic description. That is the reason
why, while endeavouring to depict various outward
aspects and phases of Nature as they are in them¬
selves, the poet tries again and again to describe
how each season affects the love-moods of lovers in
union and in separation. We must not seek in the
poem for what is not meant to be there and what is
not there. But we must admire it for its variety of
positive achievement in its aim of presenting to u$

“Such sights as youthful poets dream

On summer eve by haunted stream*’

K. 1.1.
 CHAPTER IX.

Kumarasambhava.

Kumarasombhaoa or the Birth oj the H^ar-

Cod is an epic poem in sevenleen cantos and con¬
tains 1096 stanzas. The ^tory of the poem was taken
by Kaildasa from the Siva Purana and the Skanda
Purana and other Puranas and Itihasas. While the
itory of Rama had been rendered in a peerless form
by a great poetic genius, the Story of Skanda had not
been so handled before Kalidasa’s dme. Kalidasa
could hence give the reins to his conflrudtive and
pictorial imagination. The subjedl enabled him to
combine grand descriptions of nature and beautiful
delineations of love, to bring near to us by the
attradtive gravitational force of his genius what was
far off in time and in space, and to inspire us by a
suggestive representation and idealisation of the
Indian concept of heroism.
 HIS PERIOD, PlSItSONALlTlf AND POBTRY 131

Epic poetry requires large canvas and heroic

figures and an amplitude and intensiveness of light
and shade, and confers on the readers a higher range
of mind and a more ardent and passionate purity of
heart and a thrilled dilatation of soul. An authentic
epic will be in toucli with the folk-spirit and will try
to sum up the great racial concepts of life here and
hereafter. It will deal with a heroic age and a
glorious theme with intensity and conviction. It
will not aim at inventing a Aory but will take up the
epic material Aorcd in the national mind and subli¬
mate it by a new artib'tic sense of values and beauties
and joys in life and by high symbolism and true
artistic significance and purposiveness. More than
anything else it mult turn upon the doing of persons
of high heroism of soul. It has been well said : ‘*A
Itory weighted with epic purpose could not proceed
at all, unless it were expressed in persons big enough
to support it”. Further, an epic will employ super¬
natural machinery as a means of elevation of feeling.

In Homer we have the ide^abon of courage

but we have not got high spiritual exaltation. In
Virgil we have a luxurious dreaming about the
legendary oiigin of the Roman race. In Cid we have
132 KALIDASA

an idealisation of loyally. In Dante we have a great

poem on hell and heaven but tlic earthly inlerefl is
slight and theology impedes the soaring wings. In
Milton wc have an exalted and sonorous poem on
a high and noble theme i.e, the origin and fall of man
but he is weiglicd down by the Biblical narrative.
He fails in his delineation of Heaven and has made
Satan more interesting llian God. The two great
epics of India are of a supreme elevation and attrac¬
tiveness. The Ramayana has been called the Epic
of the household. The Mahabharata has been
described as the epic of civil and political life. They
arc at the same lime descriptive of the highest human
ideals of Santi and Bhakti and Moksha as revealed
to man by incarnate Godhead by precept and
example.

Kalidasa had to strike out a path of his own to

avoid treading the way already trodden by the
cohorts of sublime ideas expressed in the two im¬
mortal epics of Valmiki and Vyasa. In his Kumara-
sambhaea and Raghuoamsa he chose two great and
exalted themes and dealt with them in a new and
original ^ic manner by adding the graces and
resources of condensed and delectable poetic ex-
 HIJ; PBBIOD, PERSONALITT AND POETRY 133

pression to a heavenly story and a Sory of men of true

kingliness of soul. We can never realise the origina¬
lity of his poetic aim and epic method unless we
compare his epic stories with their prototype as
found in older materials. He belonged to a later
and more cultured and sophisticated age than theirs.
But his epics» though they are national epics like
their works, are not mere artificial pseudo-epic poems
which are merely narrative poems. They have the
true epic note as he belonged to a heroic age and
they combine epic sublimity with poetic beauty.

The epic poem darts with one of the mod

suggedive and imaginative and magnificent verses in
language. “In the northern quarter there is the deity-
ensouled King of mountains named Himalaya, which,
spanning both the eastern and wedern oceans,
remains like the measuring-rod of the entire earth.**
The Indian civilisation is the gift—nay, the child—
of the Himalayas. The epic poem which is a poem
of Indian heroism naturally begins with a splendour
of description of the Himalaya. The poet speaks of
the mountain-range as ensouled by divinity. He bints
further that the Indian civilisation is the standard—
the measuring-rod-in respect of universal culture.
 KALIDASA
134
TTie magnificent description then proceeds with
true epic amplitude and sublimity. All the brighter
gems and life-saving medicinal herbs are found in
the mountain-range. The very quintessence of
earthly gifts is there. As the mountain is the
birthplace of countless precious stones its perennial
snow is no blot on its loveliness. One defeA
amidol a multitude of virtues is lost like the dark
spot in the rays of the moon. It shines with many
glorious tints like the evening clouds. The Siddhas
who enjoy life on its slopes fly up to its sunlit peaks
when the highest clouds reach up to its slopes. The
speeding tempests fill the holes in its bamboo clusters
with shrill harmonies. Its shining herbs give forth
unlit and inextinguishable radiance during night. Its
dark caves are the haunts of owls. The Chamafa
deer run about waving their tails and seem t® fan
King Himalaya with yak-tail fans which are the
insignia of royally. The Creator, seeing its value lor
sacrifices and its prote<aive power, made it the
monarch of all mountains.

King Himalaya married Mena and had a son

named Mainaka. Their next child was the goddess
who is the Mother of the Universe. Her earlier
 HIS PBBIOD, PERSONALITY AMD POETRY 135

incarnation was Dakshayani and she was then the

spouse of God Siva. She abandoned her form by
means of Yoga and took birth as the daughter
Himalaya. At her birth sweet and dustless airs spread
joy all around; conch^shells were sounded in heaven
and cele^ial flowers were showered on the earth; and
the whole universe fell a sudden thrill of bliss. She
grew like the crescent moon. She was named Parvati
and Uma. By her birth the Himalaya was both
purified and beautified as a lamp by a flame and as
the universe by the Ganga and as a wise man by
disciplined speech. During her education, all the
sciences which she knew in her former incarnation
sought her just as the swans seek the Ganga in
autumn and as the innate splendours of lucent
medicinal plants seek it when night-time cpmef.

Then she attained the season of maidenhood

which is an unartilicial ornament to the frame, which
is a non*vinous intoxicant of the senses and the mind,
and which is Cupid’s arrow different from and higher
than his flower-arrows. Her frame was inveAed
with beauty by youth and shone like a pK^ure
touched up by the brush and like a lotus opened by
the solar rays. Her feet shone like moving lotuses;
136 KALIDASA

her gait was like that of the swan ; her legs and
thighs were well-made and plump and fair; her
arms were full of softness of curve and sweetness of
tint; they were softer than (lowers and were hence
the means by which Cupid vanquished God Siva
when his own flower-arrows failed; her breasts
were the ornaments of her ornaments; the goddess
of beauty who could not feel the splendour of the
moon in the lotus or the perfume of the lotus in the
moon began to reside in the face of Uma which had
the splendour of the moon and the perfume of the
lotus; her smile lighting up her lips looked like the
co'appearance of leaf and flower or of coral and
pearl; when she spoke with her ambrosial voice,
even the cuckoo’s tones seemed harsh like a Vcena
with broken strings; her timid and bashful glances
were like those of Partied fawns; her eyebrows
excelled Cupid's bow in loveliness; in short she was
created by the Creator with the quintessential loveli¬
ness of all the lovely things in the universe.

One day the sage Narada came to King

Himalaya. Seeing Uma by her fathers side, he
predicted that she would become the spouse of God
Siva and become one-hall of His divine form.
 HIS PERIOD, PKRSOXALITY AXD POBTRT 137

Himalaya did not think of any one but God Siva as

Uma’s lord, for, which glory but the sacred Fire
can receive the sacred oblation ? But he could not
bring himself to make a direct reque^ of God Siva
lest his TequeA should meet with rejedtion.

Ever since the disappearance of Dakshayani,

God Siva lived a lonely and spouseless life and
began to pradtise penance on the Himalayas. Then
King Himalaya left Uma with her companions to
serve ihe auitere God. But God Siva was unmoved
by the transcendental loveliness of Uma and was
immersed in his auitere penance. But she continued
to render sacred service to him. Her fatigue was
soothed by the rays from the moon on the God's
head, and she delighted in her service.

At this time the gods who had been troubled

by the demon Taraka beyond forbearance went to
Brahma the creator. Indra led the deputation and
Brihaspati was their spokesman. Brihaspati said:
“We bow to you who werl self-existent in glory
before the creation and who became the Trinity
afterwards to rule and guide the three Gunas (cosmic
principles). On the cosmic waters you scattered the
seed of life from which the manifeited world has
 KALIDASA
138
taken shape. You took a male form and a female
form and became the parents of the world. Your
sleep and waking cause the dissolution and the
creation of the universe. You are the causeless
cause and the deatKless death and the kingless king ^
<>f the universe. You are the source of the Vedas;
you are both Prakriti and Purusha”. This hymn
in the second canto is one of the noblest in all litera¬
ture. Brahma replied : “Why have you all come
together! Why has the glory of your faces faded
like stars seen through raiit. Tliough I have created
the world, its protedion is in your hands.” Then
Brihaspati told him about their troubles and requested
him to create a Commander-in-chief of the armies of
the Gods to fight the demons and restore vidory to
the heavenly arms. Brahma replied : “It was I that
gave a boon to Taraka. Even a poisonous tree is
not fit to be cut down by the hand which planted it. \
Only God Siva’s son can save you. God Siva is
the Supreme Light shining beyond darkness. Even I
God Vishnu and I cannot know His full glory: Try
to charm His mind by Uma’s loveliness. Their
child will bring you Vidory”. The Creator then
disappeared from their view.

I
 HIS PBRIOD, PERSONALITY AND PORTRY 139

The third canto also is one of the fined poems

in literature. Indra went back to heaven and
thought of God Kama (Cupid). Kama appeared
at once and asked him: '*What do you wish me
to do } Shall 1 break the penance of any ascetic
aspiring to thy heavenly seat > I shall make him
give up the path to liberation and shall imprison him
in the coy glances of lovely women. Whose wealth
and righteousness shall I overthrow with love of
sexual pleasure > Do you wish any beautiful maiden
denying your love to seek you with love > I shall
overcome even God Siva on your account and to
please you." Indra replied: “I know your prowess.
My weapon Vajra (thunderbolt) is powerless before
penance. But thy shafts overthrow even penance. !
wish you to conquer God Siva’s penance and make
him love Uma. Your friend, the God of Spring
(Vasanla), will go with you." Then God Kama
and his wife Rati went with God Vasauta to the
place of God Siva’s penance.

A sudden and radiant and perfumed spring

spread delight everywhere. When the sun began
to go to the goddess of the North the fragrant south
wind blew gently like the lovc'laden sigh of the
 KALIDASA
140
goddcM of the South. The Asoka bura into unusual
bloom. The mango trees were full of tender leaves
and flowers. The cuckoo with hit voice sweetened
by the eating of tender mango shoots sent out his
liquid notes summoning all to the pleasures of love.
The Beauty of the Season had the bee as her
forehead-mark and touched her mango-leaf lip with
a brighter tint. Amatory passion fired all hearts.
Even creepers hugged trees in a closer embrace.
But the place of God Siva's penance was unaltered
in the Icaft. The trees were moveless ; the birds
and bees were voiceless; and the whole hermitage
looked like a painted scene. God Kama beheld God
Siva in dismay. God Siva sat in meditation like a
rainless cloud and a waveless sea and a lamp set in a
windless spot. This contrasted piefture is one of the
mo^l pi(5turesque and magnificent portions in thc'
poem.

Cupid was overcome with despondency and

fear when he saw God Siva in mediulion unmindful
of the Spring and the glory of beauty and of love. His
bow and arrows slipped from his hands without his
knowledge. At that moment Uma came there with
jwo forcSt-goddesscs as if with the obje(ft of fanning
 1118 rBKIOl), rBRSONAI.ITT AND 1‘OBTKV 14f

by her beauty his heroism into flame. She wore

spring flowers which were fairer than rubies and
gold and pearls. She looked, in her crimson dress,
like a blossomed creeper. Her belt of Kesara
flowers looked like a second bow of Cupid. She
was waving off with a lotus flower the intrusive bee
which hovered near her red lips attraded by the
perfumed sweetness of her breath. At that time
God Siva came down from the plane of meditation
into his ordinary consciousness. Uma scattered
flowers at his feet and bowed low before him. God
Siva blessed her saying : “May you have as your
husband one who will not care for any other woman!”
At that time Cupid fixed to his bow the shaft called
sammohana (the fascinator). God Siva felt his
fixity of thought to be in a wavering date and was
agitated a little like the sea at moonrisc, and looked
at Uma s fair face. Uma also expressed her long¬
ing by her coy and averted looks. God Siva then
redrained himself and turned round to see who
caused such agitation of mind. He saw God Cupid
about to loosen his shaft from his bent bow. A
sudden flash of flame shot forth from his third eye
in hU forehead. The gods shouted out: “O Lord!
Calm thy anger.” But in a moment the flame
 )42 KALIDASA

reduced Cupid to ashes. God Siva at once dis¬

appeared. Uma went back in shamefaced sorrow
and was taken by Himalaya to Ins palace.

Then follows the fourth canto which is one of

the maAerpieces of literature. It contains the lament
of Kama’s wife Rati. She fell into a swoon and
then woke up and broke into a heart-rending lament.
She cried and said : “You who wert the archetype
and exemplar of all beauty in (he universe art gone
and yet I live and do not go to pieces. How hard
is woman’s heart ! You have gone like a rushing
flood tossing me aside like a flower. We had not a
moment’s harshness. Yet why do you hide your¬
self > Or do you remember any playful chastise¬
ments by me ? You said often that I dwelt in your
heart. How could you then be burnt and yet I be
whole } I shall in a moment follow thee who haA
juA started for a new world. But the whole uni¬
verse has been shattered by God, for all joy is thy
gift. Who, in thy absence, can lead the feet of
maidens to their yearning lovers ? The moon who
is your friend will know that his rising is vain in your
absence and will not care to round his thin crescent
into fulness. To whom will the mango blossom be-
 HIS PKKlOi), l*Kll8t)SAI*ITy AND POETBY 143

come an arrow? The bees, which you will no longer

use as your bowilring, lament with me. Wake up,
my lord. Teach ihe sweet-toned cuckoo how to be a
messenger of love. Thy decoration on my person is
seen but thou art not to be seen. Through the gate
of Rame I will Ry to thee. What became of thy friend
the God of Spring? Has he loo been reduced to
ashes ?" Then Vasania appeared before lier. Seeing
him she broke into a passion of grief, because sorrow
is intense at sight of friends. She said : **My lord I
Will you not relent at lea^ for the sake of your friend
Vasanta. Love may be inconstant but friendship is
<teadfa^. O Vasanta! Your friend has gone like an
extinguished flame. 1 survive like a wick. The
moonlight disappears with the moon; and the light¬
ning vanishes with the cloud. Even inanimate things
show me my way. I shall, embracing my lord's ashes,
lie on a bed of flame as on a bed of flowers. When
you offer your exequial gift of water, give both of us
but one handful because he will never drink apart
from me. Offer us mango blossoms as they were
dear to him**. Suddenly she heard an aerial voice
declare: “Forbear! You will be united to your
lord again. When God Siva marries Uma, he
would restore your hubsand's form and bfe".
 KAMUAHA
144
The fifth canto is one of the moft beautiful
poems in all literature. It describes Uma's penance.
Uma censured her fruitless loveliness because the
fruit of beauty is love. She yearned to make her
beauty fruitful by penance. Her mother dissuaded
her in vain, for who can turn back a desireful mind
or a downward-coursing stream ? With her fathers
leave she began to practise a severe penance. She
ca^t aside her silken garments and her shining gems.
She put on a dress of bark but her beauty shone out
therefore, for not only bees but even moss lends
charm to a lotus flower. She who felt even
flower-bed rough lay on the bare floor. The
sages come to see her unparaHelled au^erities.
In her hermitage animals which are natural enemies
lived in amity, and the tree yielded whatever was
desired. Such was the power of her penancc-
Surrounded by four fires she gazed on the sun with
an unwavering gaze. She lived only on{cloud-givea
water and the lunar rays which fell on her person.
As she gave up even the eating of leaves, she was
called Aparna.

One day a young Brahmachari entered her

hermitage. He said to her: "Is your penance pro-
 HIS PKKlODy PERSONALITY AND POITRT 145

grossing weH ? Your penance is peerless. 1 have

a question to ast you ? Born of the Creators
direct line, dower.ed with the sum of all beauty^
blessed with matchless wealth and radiant youth
what can you seek ? If you seek a husband, for*
bear to perform penance, because a precious gem
seeks not but is sought. Take half my penance to
secure your aim. *’ Uma then signalled to her
companion to speak in reply. On hearing the object
of her penance the youth said : “ How can I
praise your aim > How can your hand bear to
clasp in wedding his serpent«decorated hand > How
can you dwell in his lonely and fearful haunts >
How can you to bear ride his old bull ? His eyes
are unusual, his birth is unknown ; the air is his
garment ; has he got anything that is sought in
bridegrooms ?*' Uma then broke forth in angry
words : “You do not know God Siva. Men of low
minds hate the superior and ununderstood ways
of great souls. He is the saviour of the world.
Being a pauper he is the source of all wealth. Living
in cremation'grounds he is the Lord of the universe.
Dreadful in seeming he t$ known as Siva (the auspi¬
cious). Who knows Him well > Before him on
E. 1. 10.
 kaljuasa
146
his old bull bows Indra riding oa his divine elephant.
Who can know the birth ol Him who is the creator
of even the Creator? Why should I dispute with
you? My mind is fixed on him and true love h^ds
not others’ opinions. I will not hear you. ot
only he who traduces holy persons commits sm; he

who hears such abuse is a sinner as wcU. I shall go

away”. As she turned. Siva—for such was the
youth—in his own form held her. Smitten vnlh
sudden bashfulnes she could neither slop nor go.
God Siva said ** From today I am thy slave
bought by thy penance”. When she heard those
blessed words the pain of her penance slid away
from her. for aU effort loses its pain of driving when
effort is crowned with success.

In this canto the verse has a majestic cadence

of its own. The poet is wrapt above his usual self
in describing the pure victory of devotion^ as com¬
pared with the failure of loveliness. Rabindranath
Tagore has said well in his essay on Kalidasa: the
Moralist: "He shows Cupid vanquished and burnt
to ashes, and in Cupid’s place he makes triumphant
a power that has no decoration, no helper—a
power thin with austerities, darkened by sorrow”.
 HIS PBRiOl), PBR80NALITY AJTD POBTRY 147

He points out how Kalidasa reserves the best re¬

sources of his art for the love “stripped of all the ex¬
ternal robes of heauty and circled with the pure white
halo of goodness He says: “Physical charm is
not the highest glory or supreme beauty in a wo¬
man.Submission to spiritual beauty is no defeat,
it is a voluntary offering of self . The highest
rank among our women is that of the matron. Child¬
birth is a holy sacrament in our country. He shows
how a European poet would have ended Sak^n^
tala with the agony of the king on recovering the lost
ring and Kumarasambhava with the grief and shame
of Parvati “ at the failure of her assault on Siva’s
heart**. 7*hu5 Kalidasa is not a poet of mere ses-
thetic pleasure. In him as in Valmiki and Vyasa,
we find the inner sanctum sanctorum of renunciation
in the midst of the vast and glittering outer temple of
sense-delights-

Uma then sent word to God Siva to request

her father to give her in marriage. God Siva then
thought of the Seven Sages. They started at once
along with Arundhati for Kailasa. They bathed in
the heavenly Ganga. They wore garments of gold¬
en bark and had rosaries of gems m their hands*
 KAL1DA8A
148
The Sun bowed with reverence to them on seeing
their higher flight. They were the auxiliary crea¬
tors of the universe. God Siva treated all of them
with respect, because in the eyes of the great it is.
character and not sex that counts. On learning
God Siva8 desire they said: “Our scriptural studies
and sacrifices and our austerities have borne fruit to¬
day as the Lord of the universe has found a use for
us. He is the most blessed of mortals in whose
mind you reside. How much more blessed arc we
who dwell in your divine mind ! Why should we
express our thougts to you who reside m the hearts
of all God Siva told them that he desired
Parvad as his bride for serving the puposes of the
Gods and the welfare of the world. The sages then
went to King Himalaya. Here follows another fine
description of the Himalayas in the sixth canto. The
glory of the descending sages shone like the succes¬
sion of imaged suns inside disturbed waters. King
Himalaya received them with reverence and said to
them; “Your unforeseen coming looks like a sudden
shower without the appearance of clouds, and like a
sudden fruitage without the fore-appearance of
bloom. On seeing you I feel like a man in swooa
re-attaining consciousness. I feel like iron trans-
 HIS TERIOD, ^ERSONALITT AVD POBTRT 149

formed into gold. I feel like one raised from earth

to Heaven. The touch of your feel has made this
mountain holy so as to confer holiness on all. I
have been made doubly saaed by the descent of the
Ganges and by the touch of your feet. This inanimate
mountain*frame of mine has been purified by your
touch; and this animate body has become sacred by
its service unto you. You have illumined me without
and within. My queen and my daughter and I
and our ail are yours**. Then Angirasa. as the
spokesmen of the sages, said: “Your mind is as ele¬
vated as your peaks. You are God Vishnu’s maoi-
fetation among mountains. Your fame and your ri¬
vers purify the world. The moon-crested God Siva
who is the Supreme God and who is the Suprem®
Yogi seeks thy daughter as his bride. She is the Mo¬
ther of the universe just as He is its father**. While
the sages made this request, Parvati with coy and
bended face counted the petals of the lotus flower
sportively held in her hand. Though Himalaya vv^
overjoyed, he looked at his queen Mena, bemuse in
bridal matters men set only through the eyes of their
wives. Mena being a perfetA Wife had no desires and
ideas apart from those of her lord. Himalaya then
150 KALIDASA

said to the sages: “My daughter is our reverential

offering to the soul of the Universe. Your sacred selves
have made the request. 1 have now attained the
consummatioD of my marital feliaty. My daughte^
who is the chosen bride of the Three-eyed god bows
to you". The sages blessed her. Arundhati look
her on her lap and blessed her. The marriage was
fixed for the fourth day. God Siva learnt from them
the result of their mission and spent the three long
days in impatient longing. If love could touch God,
how can man be but helpless when impelled by
love ?

The seventh canto is another magnificent piece

of poetry. The bridal procession of Siva and the wed¬
ding of Siva are described with all the splendid re¬
sources of Kalidasian art. The capital of King Hi¬
malaya was made a mass of splendour. Flowers
were strewn in the streets in abundance, Silken
banners fluttered everywhere. Festoons deco¬
rated the entire city. The matrons dressed and de¬
corated Parvati for the bridal hour. She shone with
fuller glory like the lunar orb lit up in the night by
the solar rays. Her beauty was so entrancing that
the attiring ladies would itol lake their eyes from her
 HCS PSaiOD, PBRSOifALITT ASB FOBTST 151

when they dressed her in a robe of white silk.

They dried her bathed tresses with fragrant smoke
and decorated them with fragrant flowers. She
ihen shone Kke a blossomed creeper or like the star¬
lit sky. In the meantime the Seven Mothers—Brah-
mi and others—placed before God Siva garments
and ornaments of glory. He merely touched these
out of respect for them. But by His divine will he
became in a moment a youth in bridal glory. His
holy ashes became a sandal-paste. The skull on his
head became a shining crown. His elephant skin
became shining silk. The serpents on his body be¬
came shining gems. What further head-ornament
did he need who had the pure stainless glory of the
moon as his cred-jewel? The Sun-God held a
white umbrella over his head. The Ganga and the
Yamuna in their animate forms waved yak-tail fans.
God Brahma and God Vishnu went before him
shouting “Victory to Siva**. It is only one Divine
Being who has taken the three divine forms of
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. In some Leclas one
would be the central and supreme figure and in some
another. The Gods bowed before Him. He
showed courtesy to Brahma by a nod, to Vishhu
by a word, to Indra by a smile, and to the ether
452 KALIDASA

gods by a look. The divine musidans sang and

there was the dance of the divine dancers- As the
divbe bridal party entered the capital, the ladies of
the dly saw with wonder the glory of the Lord.
They felt as if they had no senses but the eyes.
They said: *'lt is fitting that Uma performed much
penance,because how else could such bliss be attained?
If the Oeator had not brought such beautiful persons
together in love, his creation would be vain. If
Kama had not been burnt, he would have committed
suicide on seeing Siva*s beauty transcend his own *
Then followed the happy and holy marriage- God*
Lakshmi held above their heads a shining lotus
^flower. Goddess Sarasvati sang praises of the
bridegroom and the bride, Thep^i^t the request of
the assembled gods, God Siva restored Kama to
life.

The eighth canto describes the conjugal bliss of

the divine pair. It has been said that only the fir^t
seven cantos are the work of Kahdasa and that the
remainder of the poem is the work of some other
Poet. This is a baseless theory. The fact that in
die Ia|er cantos the same height of poetic beauty is
moi attained Is not an argument of much force at all.
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POETRY 153

If ICalidasa did not write (he other cantos, wc would

have to assume that he stopped the poem on the
birth of the war-god without referring to such birth
and with the marriage of his parents ! Further, thfe
poem would not have the essential charecleristics of a
Mahalcavya without these later cantos. The poetry
in the last ten cantos is full of characteristic ICalida>
sian touches. It is vigorous and beautiful though
not so charming as the fir^ seven cantos. Actual
fighting can never be poetically described with success;
aud further, grand descriptions of battles have already
been given to the world in the two supreme epics of
India. Besides, Kalidasa*s gentle genius was not
-equal to the description of the rough sublimities of
war. T*he bridal bliss of Uma and Siva is described
with a reticence which charms and with a wealth of
detail that is at times oppressively cloying with over-
sugared description. They LVed in Himalayas
palace for a month and then went to Kailasa and
then to the Gaodhamadana forest. A hundred
years thus fled like a single night. This
contains a beaudful description of night to which 1
shall refer while discussing Kalidasa's poetry of
Natpre.
 K\LID48A
154
We now come to ihe ninth canto. One day
a dove entered into the nuptial room. It was bwu-
lilul to behold. lU sounds were like those of a
damsel during the bliss of love. lu red eyes were
lurnmg incessantly this side and that. It was mov-
bg its neck up and down in an attractive manner
and wagging iu lovely tail. Us wings knew no fetters.
It walked with sportive pride. It was white >"**"*•
It had tufted forefeel. It flew in lovely circles. God
Siva bew it to be the disguised God Agni and be¬
came fuU of wrath. God Agni then supplicated
him and told him that he came on behalf of the
gods so that God Siva may give them a generalissimo
to bring victory to their arms. God Siva allowed
him to bear his potent seed- Then he and Uma
went, accompanied by the gods, to Mount Kailasa
about which a splendid description occurs in this
poem.
Indra advised Agni to leave the seed in the
waters of the Ganga. Agni accordingly did so.
Here occurs in the tenth canto one of the most
-splendid pieces of Nature-poetry in the description
of the Ganges. But the fiery seed was unbearable
even by the Ganga. Then the six Kjittikas (Pleta-
 HIS PERIOD, PBRSOSALI'fy AND POKTBT 155

des) came and bathed in the river* The seed

entered into them. They then gave birth to God
Kumara and left the baby in a clump of reeds
(Saravaoa). The goddess Ganga suckled the child
with ]oy. The Krittikas also protected him. They
and Agni each claimed the child. At that time
Siva and Uma came there. Uma asked Siva about
the divine and beautiful child. Siva told her that
■the child was her child. She embraced and kissed
the child. Then Siva and Uma took the child to
Kailasa. The whole universe rejoiced at the birth of
Kumara. But the glory of Taraka trembled in
fear. The eleventh canto describes also Kumara*s
Balaleela (sportive childhood).

Tlie 12th canto describes the coming of Indra

to request God Siva to give the boy as the com¬
mander of the armies of the gods for defeating the
demon Taraka. In six days Kumara had become
a blossomed youth. In this canto there occurs a
wonderful description of Siva seated in Kailasa with
Uma by his side. Then Indra requested him to give
Kumara to them to lead them to victory. Gladly did
Siva and Uma give the boy to the gods. Here we
■aec the perfed art of the poet. In the Ramayan^
Jf6 KALIDASA

Dasaratha grieves to send the boy Rama to fight the

demons. But such a description would be inappro'
priate in the case of God. Kalidasa with a perfe(ft
self-restraint refuses to foUow the Ramayana ind'
dents which would be unsuited to the level of his
epic narrative.

The thirteenth canto describes the onward

march of God Kumara after receiving the blessings
of Siva and Parvati. On reaching Swarga
(heaven) the gods were afraid to enter it le^t the
demons be there, and each of them began to ask
the other to enter first. Then Kumara gave them
assurance of protection and they entered their old
home. What a scene of desolation met their eyesi
Kumara's anger blazed forth at that sight. The
gods then anointed him as their generalissimo.
The fourteenth canto describes the march of the
armies of the gods m martial array with flags flying
and trumpets blowing- The golden dust raised by
the march reached up to the cloudland and the
clouds shone with untimely evening tints and spjen-
dours. The fifteenth canto describes the demon
Taraka is wgrned by omens god pprteptSt
apd yojces but he fl^s defiapce at diem and
 HIS rERlOD, PKKSOHALITT AND POETKY 157

rushes to battle. The sixteenth canto describes the

battle between the two armies. Taraka's fight and
death are described in the lasEt canto. He fights
the chief gods with astras (magic weapons) and
defeats them. Then he approaches God FCuniara
and tells him ; “Oh child of the ascetic Sambhu I
Give up your pride of arm. Do not help these
gods. Why do you fatigue yourself by bearing the
heavy load of arms on your soft and gentle and
handsome boyish shoulders? You are the only child
of your parents. Why do you thus s«k death at
my hands? Run away to your parent’s lap and
live happy there. Escape before the Stone ship of
Indra’s foriunc flounders in the sea and vanishes
altogether”. God Kumara replied: “Your proud
words are worthy of you. Let me see your pro¬
wess. Take up your weapons of war”. They then
fought with wonderful and terrible magic weapons
till the world shook with terror of (he battle. God
Kumara overcame all the weapons of Taraka juft
as a pcrfed yogi conquers all the varied and power¬
ful armies of worldly desire. Then Taraka rushed
at him in anger to kill him with a sword. Finally
God Kumara hurled at him his resifticss and invin¬
cible shakii (lance) and slew him. At once there
 158 KAUDAftA

fell on the holy head of God Kumara a blessed

shower of cool Ganges spray and a perfumed sho*
wer of rained flowers from heaven. The faces of
the gods shone with recovered joy and re-attained
glory. They praised God Kumara as the liberator
and protector and saviour of heaven. Thus by the
grace of God Kumara the sorrows of heaven were
healed and the enemy of the gods was slain and
Indra was rdflored to his proud sovereignly of
heaven.

I wish to dwell awhile here on Mr. A. B. Keith’s

condemnation of cantos IXtoXVil of the poem.
While some other critics rejedl canto VIII also, he
is lender to it and would ascribe it to Kalidasa.
He says in his Claisical Sanskrit Literature:
**There can be no doubt whatever of the late origin
of cantos IX to XVII. They must have been by
one who thought that the eight cantos did not ful¬
fil the purpose of the work, since they end with
the description of the joys of Siva and Parvati in
wedlock. He insists therefore, on bringing Kumara
into the world, and in describing in full his victory
over the demon Taraka, whose description affords
the motive for his birth, thus exceeding the promise
 H16 PKRIOD, PERSONALITY AND POETRY 169^

of tKe title mucKjjmore* than the actual poem falls

short of it. Fortunately, the defcdts of taitc of
the new cantos arc the only evidence of their later
dale. While Kalidasa after the i^i7uMim/iara
carefully avoids the repetition of the same phrases,
his follower shamelessly brings forward again and
again a phrase, which has caught his fancy, much as
does Bhasa in his drama. He delights in the use of
prepositional compounds, contrary to the manner of
Kalidasa, but in keeping with the later taste, as also
is his use of the perfed^middle with subjedt in the
instrumental. Kalidasa shows in a high degree the
power to use his complicated metres without filling
them with meaningless or feeble words, but this
poet light-heartedly slips in words like saJyas
or d/am, delights in preUxing su to every available
phrase, and shows his ingenuity in coining long
synonyms for his charaters. The metrical evidence
is equally decisive; the caesura at the close of the
lirit and third verses of the sloka is always observed
by Kalidasa;.in these cantos it is omitted five times,
and the same laxity occurs six times with Upajad
Stanzas; in the latto*. even when the caesura is res¬
pected it is often weak that is at the end of a por¬
tion of a compound, a licence almost unknown to
 leo KALIDASA

Kalidasa. Furlher, the writers on poetics and the

commentators leave these cantos aside. Their
spuriousness is thus incontestable; from the frequent
use of anta in the end of compounds, which he
compares with the Marathi locative suffix anl.
Jacobi has conjedured that the author was a Mara¬
thi writer. The case is entirely different with canto
Vin, which is often passed over in the manuscripts,
avowedly sometimes because of its erotic charadcr-
It is known to the writers on poetics, and is full of
the spirit and style of Kalidasa. It does not, we
must admit, bring the poem to an effedive termina¬
tion, and no explanation of this defed is obvious. Oo
all our copies go back to a manuscript on birch-bark
whose last leaf as often was hopelessly injured?
Was the poet deterred from writing more by the
criticisms of his fird audience, to whom, as to Mam-
mata and Visvanatha, the depiding of the erotic
play of the supreme deity was di^adeful? The
question cannot be answered; that Kalidasa was
cut off by death before completing it is improbable,
for the T^aghuvamsa has every sign of later date**-
I have quoted this long passage partly because of
Mr. Keith’s eminence and deserved fame as a
scholar and a critic and partly as a sample of a
 HIS PRaiOD, rKHSONALlTT AND POETRY |6l

thoroughly errorteous type of cridcism. Mr. Ryifer

says with equal error that the Raghuvamia was oUe
of the poet’s earlier works and that he then tumeiJ’ to
other works and never cared “to lake up the rathfcr
thankless task of ending a youthful work;” If the
poem Kumaraiamhhaoa topped with the eighth
canto the poem should have been called Porva/t-
Parinayam and not Kumarasambha^jam at all.
The criticism that the poem, by describing Kumafa’s
Viflory over the demons, goes beyond the purpose
of the poem is palpably incorrc(5l. The title KamaYa-
Samhhay>Qm docs not imply that the poem should
5lop with the birth of the babe. The poem certaiidy
implies and aims at describing the glory of the God.
The remark that the offending cantos are spurious
because the author of the cahlos brings up i(rid
agatin a favoefrite phrase has rio truth or vaFue in it-
Kalidasa, like other poets, lids such peculiarities; and
there is nothing unuSuUl or coiidemriable about it.
Homer has several * s^ch adJeiiliYaf and other
phrases fe. g. silver-foiJted Tfeetis efc.) inf Tcp^s
them frequendy in his imtnbrtaF efJlc. TTid ^Wni-
matical and mclrfc^r remarks ati'd obsfefvatiods ftaled
by Mr. Keith in support of his theory arc equally
fanciful arid baseless. The word aiidyas is found
K. 1, 11.
 KALID&3A
162

also in the admilledly genuine cantos of the poem

(e. g. HI. 26. 27, 29). Thc^anzas in cantos IX to
XVII are as vigorous and beautiful and as corredl in
respea of accent and quantity and caesura as any
other aanzas in the poem or in the other unimpeach¬
able poems of Kalidasa. In faa the wonderful des¬
cription of the Ganges in canto X, the equally re¬
markable description of the dove in canto XIII, the
supremely sublime description of God Siva in cantoX 11
when Indragoes to meet Him, and other descriptions
in the poem show the maSter-hand of Kalidasa in an
even greater measure than the remarkable descriptions
of the Himalaya, of Siva*s penance, of Ratios lament,
of ParvatTs penance, of the dialogue between Siva
and Parvati. of the seven sages, and of the marriage
of Siva and Parvati in cantos I to VII of the
Kumarasambhava. The fa(5t that the writers oh

poetics and the commentators have left the later

cantos aside is of minimal importance. The wnters
on poetics do not quote from every canto of every
great poem. They quote such stanzas as arc fine
illustrations of alankofo and rasa and dhvanL The
fad that the commentators have not commented on
particular cantos cannot show the spuriousness of
these portions. On tlus basis Ritasamhara will

a .
 ms ?BBIODf FBRBONALITT AKD POBTRY 163

have to be rejeded as a spurious work. Jacob's

guess that the author of the cantos in quedion was
probably a Marathi writer is too fantastic and absurd
to need or deserve any serious consideration. The
reasons urged by Mr. Keith to disprove the heresy
about the spuriousness of canto VIII wiU disj^ove
his own heresy about the spuriousness of cantos IX
to XVII. His suggestion that Kalidasa probably
read out his work to an audience which strongly
disapproved of the description of the loves of Siva
and Parvati and that thereupon he probaUy
desisted from continuing his poem is thoroughly
fantastic and unacceptable. Why should their
imagined disapproval have such a result ? He might
have well omitted the offending canto and proceeded
with the poem and completed it. Mr. Keith is
certainly right in demolishing the heresy that Raghu-
camia was an earlier work of the poet. To use
Kit own words, cantos IX to XVll of Kumara-
sambhava are "full of the spirit and style of
Kalidasa."
«■ Ur'

Mr. Ryder says with justice that the entire

work is certainly that of Kalidasa. He refers to
the vague tradition that the poem had twenty-three
 164 KALIDASA

cantos. This is an absolutely uafounded tradition.

He says: “It has been somewhat more formidably
argued that the concluding cantos arc spurious, and
that Kalidasa wrote only the first seven or perhaps
the first eight cantos. Yet after all^what do these
argum^Qts amount to ? Hardly more than this^
that the first eight cantos are better poetry than the
lut nine. As if a poet were always at his best,
even when writing on a kind of subject not calculated
to call out his best. Fighting is not Kalidasa s forlc ;
love is. Even so, there is great vigour in the
journey of Taraka, the battle and the duel. It may
not be ihe highest kii^d of poetry, but it is wonder-.
hiBy vigorcais poetry of i^ kbid. Thus Mr*i Ryder s
arguments. completely demolish the arguments of

Mr. Keith.

I think that, however, a more than passing

mention is needed in regard to Kalidasa s over-
luscious description of the nuptial bliss of Siva and
Parvati. I personally think that he has niade
too sugared and too human. But he brings in the
b^her note also and saves the description from the
chaiigo of ^ indeceocy. Svva U detcribed
as telling Parvati that Sandhya (evening) is a holy
 HIS PERIOD, PERSOilALlTy AND POETRY 165 j

time and is not an hour for dalliance. We are

reminded again and again that the hymeneal bliss of ^
the divine pair was only for the salvation of the
vforld. In the last stanza in Canto VI, the poet
glorifies love and asks that if pure love can rule the
hearts of even gods, how much more should it fill u$
with delight. We find descriptions of dalliance in
Magha also. They arc found in Homer’s great
epic as well. The great aesthetic critic Ananda-
vardhana says that though the delineation of thei
love of gods is not a fit subject for poetic treatment
a great poet could sublimate it and lift it to the level
of an adequate poetic theme. Kalidasa’s description
in Raghuvamsa about Agnivarna’s amorous dalli¬
ances is not regarded as showing that he is not the
author of canto XIX of Raghuvamsa or as a breach
<A pMtic propriety. It seems to me that canto Vll^
of the Kumarasarabhava is not a supreme piece of
poetry but it is noble enough in execution and is
certainly Kalidasa's work.

A comparison has been often made between.

Kumarasambhaoa and Raghuoamsa very often to
the depredation of the former in comparison with
lh« Utter poem. But in the former there is more
166 KALIDASA

unity than vanety while in the latter there is more

variety than unity. In the former we have more
scope than in the latter for magnificent descriptions of
Natare*8 glories -fore^s and mountains and streams
and day and night and their ever*same yet ever-
new splendours. In the latter we have more human
intered than in the former. In the Kumarasamhha^a
we have a less crowded canvas but on the other
hand the few figures that are painted there are
touched up with infinite care and art.

Mr. A. W. Ryder says : “Further, it mult be

admitted that the interest runs a little thin. Even
in India, where the world of gods runs insensibly
into the world of men, human beings lake more
interest in the adventures of men than of Gods.
The Gods, indeed, can hardly have adventures ;
they must be vi<florious. The Birth of the War-
God pays for its greater unity by a poverty of
adventure”. This is acute criticism but it errs by
exaggeration and insufficient vision. The interest in
the poem is not thin at all. Of course all descrip¬
tion of battle must have a sameness and a uniformity.
The varieties of cut and thrust and parry must have
an uninteresting uniformity despite ma^cal weapons.
 Hlfi PERIOD, PERSOKALITT AKD POETRY 167

Further, Kalidasa was by the bent of his genius a

poet of love and a poet of nature than a poet of
war. But Kalidasa has shown how even su^ •
subjc<5t could be handled with poetic power. In the
last canto he has made the use of astras (magical
weapons) an occasion for magnificent descriptions of
universal nights and tempests and deluges and con¬
flagrations. The martial marches and the clash of
armies also are rendered with power. Within the
artistically limited scope of a martial campaign, he has
given us a more artistic presentation than Homer or
Virgil or Milton or even Vyasa or Valmiki. It is
difficult also to follow Mr- Ryder s veiled remark
about “the world of gods” and “the world of men
in India. Yoga is the meeting point of the two
worlds, and the nearness of gods and men—not only
in poetic faith but in the living faith of the day—
is an advantage both to the poets and to the people.
The poverty of adventure in the poem is to the
limitations of the story and is compensated for by the
splendid nature-poetry, the painting of the chief
figures in the story, and the genera! high altitude
of feeling pervading the entire work.

Mr. Ryder thinks that Raghit)>amia was per-

168 EALIDAiSA

the earlier work and was written hy a poet

who yet had his spur? tq win. But this inference
from the poefs expressed modesty in Raghui^amsa
is one resting upon a slender foundation. Kalidasa-$
modesty n^ure w^s with him all through life and
appears eyen in such a matpre produ<ft of his genius
as It seeips to me that the Birth of the
WqT‘Go4 is probably his earliest work next to the
Ritusamhata. It is full of a youtliful exuberance
of imagination. Love of nature is yet his ruling
passion. His inlerit in the realm of emotion was
al^yays as deep as his interest in the beauty of nature
all ^OUgh his life. But that reticent ripeness of
fee(ug ai)d uUeranpe which is h^ most magical
p<^c gift i? seen ipore in Rqghuvamsa than in this
po<un and is seen at its b^i in Sakuntala. As in
the case of Shakespeare, so in the case of Kalidasa,
we find a prodigal largesse of poebc thought and
c^rpssiqn giving place to poignancy of poetic feeling
and condensabon of expression consummated at the
end by a divine passion of peace in which love of
man ^nd of nature and of God is seen in harmonised
beauty of perfection and pfffccb'on of beauty. * '
 HIS PBRlOn, PBttSOXAXTTY AKD POETRY 169

is valuable to us for all lime as it gives us perfect

pictures of God Siva, Goddess Parvati, and God
Kumara. Indian imagination has clung round these
divine figures which are our archetypes of ascetic
power, grace, and heroism. We have a full des¬
cription of Uma as maiden and as bride and as
mother, and Kalidasas portraiture of Uma is one
that will fire men’s hearts for ever. By her side
Eve s delineation loob jejune, and the pictures of
Helen and Andromache and Dido seem to be
symphonies pitched in a much lower bey. Sita apd
Draupadi have more human interst for us because
of their sufferings and fortitude and tried and proved
purity. But for elemental loveliness and lovefulness,
for supreme grace and graciousness, for the supreme
fascination of the eternal feminine, Kalidasa’s por¬
traiture of Uma stands supreme in universal Ktera-
lurc. We may well say of Kalidasa’s delineation
jof Uipa he says of Uma herself.-

9T«M4ii-ir u
ono CHAPTER X.

Meghasandesa.

R, C. A. Kincaid has well called iKis work

as “the most wonderful love-poem in any
language’’. U has fascinated men’s minds for count¬
less centuries hy iu originality of conception and its
charm of sentimenl and style. Kalidasa obviously
took the root idea of a messenger from the Tiamo-
yana. Verse 39 in the second part of the poem
says: ar (as Sita saw Hanuman).

Mallinatha says in his commentary on verse I

of the poem:

To Valtniki he was indebted in many ways

*and made no secret of his debts. He probably
 HIS PERIOD, FBBSONALITT AND POBTBT 171

derived ha inspiration (or the fird part o( the poem

(rom the journey o( the aerial car from Lanka' to
Ayodhya. But Kalidasa has used the borrowed
ideas in such an original way and given it such a
new and jewelled frame that it has become an
original idea in his hands. Mr. A. W. Ryder says
well .* “In fa<5l, Kalidasa created in the C/oud-
Metstngtr a new genre. The poem has been a
source of inspiration to many later poets. Though
these have written similar Sandtsa Kavyas^
Kalidasa’s poem is far and away the greatest of such
poems**

Professor Wilson says about it: “The Style of

the work is also simple, while at the same time it is
exquisitely polished.*' Mr. A. A. Macdonnell says :
“It is full of deep feeling, and abounds with fine
descriptions of the beauties of Nature.** He says
again: “Kalidasa's Meghaduta or ‘the Cloud
Messenger* is a lyrical gem which won the adroirar^
tion of Goethe...The idea is applied by Schiller
in his Maria Sluari where the captive Queen of
Scots calls on the clouds, as they fly southward, to
greet the land of her youth,” It is needless to cul!
otho’ appreciations from the Weil. In India the
 172 KALIDASA

poem has been a universal favourite. There have

been nearly 6fty commentaries written on it, Mr.
Nandargikar refers in his edition of the poem to
twenty commentaries. Mr. M. M. Chakravarihi
refers b an article on the poem to forty comm^-
taries. Professor M. Rangacharya has in Kis critical
ap^eciation of the poem described it as “one of the^
moit pcrfecH product of the poetic art known to
human culture and civilisation.**

In every lyric poem there should be dynamic

feeling expressed in simple and direct and impas¬
sioned language. Only then will such vibrant feeling
l^ave, an aliv^ess whicK would thrill and captivate
t(»e hearts^ others^ Though lyrics of war and
Godward devotion come withm tlie class of lyiK
poetry, yet the lyric poem par excellence is the fyric
of love. The truest realisation of life is in joy, and
the joy of youthfiJ love and loveful youth is the
earliest and the most persistent of the higher joys of
life. Byron says well :

“Devotion wafts the mind above ;

But heaven itself descends in love.**

i*v9 test of all great literature is whether It

pleased a4d obarnu Md edtreptures and elevates by
 HIS PERIOD, PERSOKALITY AXD POETRY 173^

the very purity anJ power of it$ charm and loveh'ness.

Does it lead to scif-forgelfulness—the merger of our
lower self so full of work and vexation and vanity in
a higher self full of wonder and virtue and wisdom >
The poet of love, if he is tuned to the highest
moods of love, is a rare and radiant and fortunate
being, because he feels and kindles and communicates
a higher joy than the earth owns in its ordinary and
humdrum moods. That is why a great poet of love
has an eternity of fame. Valmiki, Kalidasa, Sappho,
Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Burns, and Shelley
will abide for ever while other reputations are
engulfed in the Lethean flood. As Watson, sings :,

“Princes and captains leave a little dust,

And Kings a dubious legend of thdir reign.
The swords of Caesars they are less than rust.
The poet doth remain.'*

Mr. A. B. Keith has (^nibined his praise of

the poem with subtle hints of faults and demerits
but his criticism is defective and inaccurate becauM
he has missed iKe scope, of the poem. He says iii
his Classical SanskfH Ijicraiure that the poem is
the nearest approximation in lone to the Greek
elegy in Sanskrit literature, and that it is however
174 KAU1>A8a

deficient in reality as it deals with divine beings.

He says further ; “Their severance is but temporary,
their reunion certain, and the grief of the hero seems
thus to modern feeling less than manly, for to us, as
to the greatest of Greek historians, courage to endure
what is sent by heaven appears the duty of man.
Schiller, who in his Maria Siaari makes the captive
queen hid the clouds as they fly south greet the land
of her happy youth, uses the mjti/In more effective
guise ; the hapless queen is well aware that for her
there is no more chance of seeing again the fair land
of France, and her position evokes true pathos”.
This is unfair and ungenerous and inaccurate criti¬
cism. What Kalidasa aimed at should not be
wrongly assumed to be an elegy, and it is not fair to
proceed to draw inferences and comparisons on the
basis of such an assumption. If we want a true
elegy by Kalidasa, we must go to the Indumati
episode in Raghuvamsa. There we find the desola¬
tion of life, the overflow of tenderness, the attempt
to endure in a heroic spirit, and the breakdown of
the soul which form the essential elements of a noble
elegy. Kalidasa’s aim in Mtghasandesa is to com¬
bine a descriptive lyric and a love lyric and fuse
them into one by the fire of his imagination, and in
1) ^
 H18 PERIOD, PBRSONALITT AND POETRY 175

this task he has achieved supreme success. 1 shall

show presently how the choice of semi-divine beings
as the hero and the heroine of the poem was a
stroke of the highest and the happiest art. There
is plenty of real pathos in the poem but it is subordi¬
nate to the descriptions of nature and of love. Mr.
Keith is more just and accurate when he proceeds
to say: ‘The poem is a master-piece of the des¬
cription of the deepest, yet most tender affection, in
which passion is purified and ennobled* The power
of description of nature foreshadowed in the RitU’
samhara is here seen heightened and more brilliant,
as a result of the human emotion which pervades
the poem. It is signiBcant of the development of
Kalidasa's skill that the metre chosen for the work
is throughout the Mandakranta, with its four .padas
each of seventeen syllables, making up the danza,
with caesuras at the fourth and tenth syllables. A
much ampler means of expresrion of a single thought
it thus availale than within the restri(5ted limits ci
the Indravajra and Vamsastha, which 1 make up
more than, half of the RUusamharOf but at the same
time a severe strain is imposed on the capacity of
the poet, but one to which he shows himself equal,”
 1
176 KALIDASA

Mr. A. B. KaitK says that the Jain Jinasena in

the eighth century A. D., ‘'acJopling the principle of
samasyapooranot the building up of a stanza on the
basis of a given verse, has managed to work the text
of the Meghaduta, as he knew it in 120 verses, into
his account of the Jain saint Parsvanalha (i.e. Parsva-
bhyudaya). He then proceeds to say i “Vallabha
deva in the twelfth, Mallinatha in the fourteenth
century, give the poem as having III and 118
verses rcspe<flivdy, a sign of the possibility of inter¬
polation even in so famous a p ,em, which is attested
also by the various recensions of the dramas”. While
interpolation is by no means improbable, it is not right

1 todraw any inference like that drawn by Mr. Keith

from linascna's work. The text d th#*
not seriously meddled with and we have got a vwy
largely accurate text of the poem as the result of the
^ careful study and editing by Indian scholars.

Kalidas s lyric poem is in its first part a des¬

criptive lyric and in its second part a IJric of longing
love. His artistic plan has enabled him to oombme
in hi* work the glories of nature and the gibrica tif
)ovo. He is an expert in linking up naturfc'“'1At!
hiiman fisjftftgas dtown abeye & my chapter oh
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITT AND PORTRY 177

RitusamhaTa. The powers seen there in youthful

and somewhat undisciplined exuberance are found
here in perfedtion of maturity and self'Control. The
result is a poem of transcendental beauty and charm
m artistic motif, in sesthelic conception, and in emo-
tional presentation.

The 5ory of the poem is very simple and

attradtive. A yaksha {yal^shas arc demigods) who
is employed under Kubera—the God of Wealth
and the lord of Alaka—is banished for a year by
Kubera on account of some fault and is sent away
from the divine regions in the Himalayas where
Alaka is situated, to the ordinary life on earth in the
plains of Central India. During his exile the yaksha
lakes his abode in the hermitage on the Ramagiri
Mountain in Central India. The poem describes the
^untain as having been sacred by the touch of Sri
Rama*» feel '’ and as
wntaining the waters made holy by the bath of SiU
therein. There is a si^cance in .this subtle and
artistic reference in the first itMzi in the poem.
It shows that the abode was a.holy one; it suggests
also by referen^ to the ^mayana story that the
burden of the poem is the pang of l6ve in’separation;,
K. 1. 13.
175 KALIOASA

U suggests also that as ihe yaksha took his abo<ie in

a spot where Rama and Sita (the use ol both the
words is a further significant (act) lived in wedded
and united happiness, such a Uiss would come to
the yaksha also ; it suggests further that though in
the home of wealth (Alaka) the yaksha forgot bis
duty and had a heavy punishment, he would attain
a ♦hgher plane of being in' the Asrama (which is a
home of austerity) on the holy hill and would very
soon be free from his troubles. By the words
and atwmsRTnilnr the poet prepares our
mind tor the moods of the disconsolate lover who is
feeling the pumshmcnt’iritenscly because it involves
sepafttion from his bclbved and fo Whom the banUh-
ftrent IS at once a soom^ of refJhttt&nce and p^urilfica*
tioft and of obscuration of the plenitude 6t htif foTifler
power and pleasuries. The ciirsfc had obscured his
p6wer ; wid love and grief had almost changed him
into another person nhogelhcr. It is by such subtle
strUkos of art thetthe poet prepares our minds’to
accept the story that the yaksha even went so Tar at
to bestach a ckiud to be his messenger to his beloved,
in the Mitorid verte he (ells us that \ht feStfle had
cotttiMed for ioiMU ioM^i and that the'ydksha was
pab and thin and'dltobHitolMe. By unttg the word
ji
 HIS PCRlOD, FERSOVAUTY ANl) POETRY

the poet suggests that the hero had an element

of self-deception common to all lovers. He says m
Sakuntala He suggests also (hat
(he yaksKa was a child of pleasure and a being boro
for a life of love and was shrivelled up by the first
touch of the fire of sorrow which he felt when he saw
the amorous and playful cloud embracing the hill. In
the third verse he tells us that even ordinary men who
are as much accustomed to the pains as to the plea¬
sures of life feel a new passion of love if living wki^
their beloved and an intense grief if separated from
their beloved. In the fourth verse the poet suggests
by the word that the yak^a’s
love have taken a purer range. He was no longer
a mere vnft thinking of his own love and his
sorrow, . He yearned for his.beloyed wifesi cpo-'
ft)lation and hence wished to send a messi^ to her
about himself as he was her life. This element of
(joy ioy.o^ belavecO is the real
soul of human love as well as,divine love*

Tfiui the first loor stinzai artiine ouir minds to

that pure and refined emotional mood whereby atone
we cab/eidly enter the poet s heart and enjoy the
pSeta. By making the Wo dt the poern a dfcm^dd
 KALIDASA
180

and isolating the passion o( love, Kalidasa was

enabled to achieve that idealisation and concentra¬
tion which would intensify the leslhelic appeal of
the poem. The yakshas arc called in the poem as
Yakshavaras and Yittesas (lords of wealth.) They
have many pleasures in life and have a keen enjoy¬
ment of such pleasures. Their women are fair;
they have all the resources of art besides immense
affluence ; they live in stalely mansions built of rich
metals and precious stones; their gardens have
unfading and evef-fragrant flowers ; their nights
arc fair with ever-present lunar light; they shed no
tears but tears of joy ; they have no fever but the
fever of amatory passion ; they have no separations
except through friendly quarrels ; and they have no
seasons of life except the season of youth (sec verses'
I to 4 of Part II). They indulge in honeyed and
vinous drinb; the breezes blow there gently and
with odorous coolness; they have luminous gems
as tapers ; they lounge on crystal floors and enjoy
sweet and heavenly harmonies ; Cupid who is afraid
of God Siva has no need of his bow and arrows to
(ascioate the hearts of men because the sweet glances^
of the ladies of Alaka have more power ; and ^e
Kalpako tree gives thqm bright garraenU and flashing ^
 HIS PBRIOD, PBRSONALITT A»I> POBTRT 181

jewels and fadeless flowers (verses 5 lo 13 of

Part 11). At the same time they are not mere
epicures. They are persons of true refinement and
delicacy and chivalry of nature. In verse 4 of Part F
the hero welcomes the cloud with chivalrous courtsey.
He is attentive lo its wants and enjoyments through¬
out the poem though he is full of himself and his
sorrows. He tells the cloud that the lady is his friend
and also his brother’s wife thus calling
the cloud as his brother in the message to her that
the cloud is his dear friend. As the poet has given
such a setting, the sensuous sweetness of the poemy
and the glorification of the emotion of love and the
gorgeous descriptions of Nature in it gain a ptxicA
fitness and appropriateness. Such an exaltation of
sense-delights is successfully and appropriatdy
achieved also in Vikf^amoroasiya where also the
heroine belongs to the celestials.

Thus the choice of the hero and the isolation

of the love-emotion were two mader-^trokes of art.
In epic or dramatic poetry there mu^ be a crowded
canvas and all the passions of life should be shown
in all thar intensity of inter-play. But in a lyric
poem the isolation and idealisation of the emotion
182 EAlilI>AaA

^ love give us a ^iffereot and wonderful artistic

e^e<5t. Kalidasa's poem was thus h^pily imaguied
so as to give adequate scope for the expression of the
Vdcal gcnuii of one of the greateil lyric poets of
the world.

Kalidasa's greatness is further apparent in the

subtle ^rokes by which he introduces a higher ele-
UiCnt into this poetic conception of love. Not only
has he by a rcfeience to Janaka Tanaya (Sita) and
Rama uplifted the love-emotion of the poem into’
a higher plane. By bringing the love from his
lUansion into an Asrama he has linked up pleasure
and peace. Further, he says fh verse 7 of Part I
that Alaka Ts lit ^'up by * the rays from the moon
shining from the head* of God Siva who lives in the
gardens in the outskirts of Alaka. Tims even in
these children of pleasure there is an awed sense of
divinity close by. In the same way we are told in
yikromorvasixfa that the jewel which was to effe<Jt
reunion sprang from Gauri’s fool. AH this prepares
us for the poet's delineation of love in longug.'
The Sanskrit aestheticians say that love ia separatioft
reaches a lugber he^ht than kxvfi in
UBibn li:.have’dealt with this matter
 HIS PBRIOD, FBIt^OKAiJ^fr AND POETRT

fully ia my work on Indira i» Stfmkh^ga

Srm^ora there are elements of selBshoess and
grossness, however much we may rehne it. Biit in
Vipralambha Sringora love is spiritualised. In
Sakantala we have both. The most pcrfe<a iltuitr^>
tion of this truth is in the Gopi episode in thjQ
Bhagavata. The Eternal Lord disappeared from
their midst after fascinating them and purifying them
in the very proc.ess of such fascination. He th^
reappeared and accepted the love-offering of their
adoring and purified hearts. He told them to go
back to their homes because by roeditatioa ucf
song and prayer they could realise His sweetness
and love far more intensely than by mere physical
proximity.

5r <r«iT ^r^ii X. 29,* 27.

Only then will; bvc be cultpd to ithe level q|,

telig^oD. aed ndUigiQQ 4own to. the level of htifft.
All the higher ekmeiUs lol seb-9£Eacein<sfc
UDselish lavft oi others ace enk^dM by jbvtr iHk
longing (Wbg epforced sepvatipt- Tbe poel^ ihua
Utu Srin^ara Rasa to the level of BhokM
 154 KALID4SA

and at the same time preserves its human sweetness

and charm.

I do not think that we need pause to discuss

whether the yaksha would believe that an inanimate
thing like a cloud could carry a message of love.
Such conundrums will appear ludicrous il we put
ourselves into (he right emotional mood which is
needed to enjoy the poem. If a swan could carry
Damayanti s message to Nala and Nala’s message
to Damayanti, why should there be any inappro*
pnateness in there being a cloud-messenger ? In
poetry personification is a means of producing great
artiAic effe(!ts. “The lover, the lunatic and the poet
are of imagination all compad**. Poets put their
heart and their tongue into nature and make it fee!
their thoughts and speak their words. A sdentift
has to put himself and his moods out of the life of
nature but a poet is under no such necessity or
obligation. Further, the poet himself has tried to
disarm such philistine scepticism by saying that those
who suffer from the malady of love cannot make a
sharp differentiation between the animate and the
inanimate (Verse-5 of Parti). Call it a lover’s
neverie or a poetic personification as you like ; there
 nis PEBIOD, PBB80HAHTY AND POETRY 185

is no violation of artistic truth in the idea of the

poem. 71ie lover asks the cloud to go on a mission
of beneficence and pilgrimage, because it can save
his life and also go to the holy home of Siva and
Cowri (See Part I Verse 8). It is asked to
go slowly, to drink water on the way, to shower
rain and extinguish the devastating forest fire and to
be beneficent to all and not to the lover alone.
This enables the poet to begin and complete his
magnificent description of the natural beauties of
Northern India. The metre adopted (Manda-
J^ron/a) has that slow and royal dignity of move-
ment which befits the ideas in the poem. The poet
takes us to Vidisa, UJjain. the river Nirvindhya,
Avanti, the river Sipra, the shrine of Mahakala,
the river Gambhira, the river Saraswati, the
Ganges, Kailasa, the Manasa lake, and finally to
Alaika itself. The lover naturally dwells lingeringly
over the route leading to his beloved, and the poet
thus creates an opportunity to describe nature as the
outer court of the soul. It is only a meretricious
and vitiated taste that can find in this scheme any
poetic unfitness at all.

I have already referred above to the splendours

 KALIDASA

of the dream city of Alaka, the gorgeous descriptions

of which in ihe poem show the poet's graphic power
of delineation and gifts of picturesque expression in
a remarkable pleasure. The city of Alaka, like
Avalon, is buift to l^c music of Kalidasa's verse and
therefore not built at all and therefore built for ever.
The gorgeous description of Alaka and of the hero s
mansion there is meant to be enjoyed by itself and
also in contrast with the ascetic self-denial of the
yaksha’s bride, juft as the magnificent description of
the Himalayas in the Kumarasamhhava sets off the
penance of Siva and the penance of Parvati.
Further, such a gorgeous description would have an
air pf naturalness in the case of lords of wealth and
pleasure like the yakshas, though it would savour of
exaggeration in the case of cities of the earth.

I shall not linger here over the description of

the yaksha's bride, her beauty, her grief, her longing,
her pious austerities for securing her lord's welfare,
and her pining expeeftation of his return, as I shall
refer to these aspedts in my later chapter on Kali¬
dasa as the Poet of Love. She is of few words.
She is his second life. She pines for him and boks
a liCitMi bitteft, by Here ^iga«i the. poet if full
 H18 PERIOD, PBRSOKAI^trY AND POETRY W7

ol Valmiks $ description of Sita in Asoka foreft

She has pale lip^ and' tye^
Hei; face is reding on her hand. Her tsre^s are
dishevelled. Her face looks like the moon sgfjy
trough a cloud. She is worshipping the gods and
praying to them to show grace to her lord. She
tries to paint his beloved form. She asks the pet
bird in the cage if it thought of the master of the
house. She tries to sing songs descriptive of him
but her tears fall faA and she forgets the time and
the words again and again, l^e is counting the
days of exile by means of flowers. She is loft in a
reverie of amorous thought. Her sorrow deprives
her of her sleep and she tosses in her bed in grief
and longing. She prays for at leaft momentary
sleep so that she may behold her lord in dream.
She is waiting for him to come and bind up tier
tresses. She has discarded all her ornaments. She
has but one thought—-and that is about the idol oi
her heart.

The m^sage sent through the cloud to her is

equally beautiful In the verj| opening portion of
the message fwyTftpw) we see the poet s
wonderful art. Juft as in the Ramayana Valmiki^
 188 KALIDASA

makes Hanuman say to Rama ^— thus

emphasising the word ‘seen* because if he used the
word Devi firit the too eager listener might be in a
mood of trepidatioD»—even so the poet makes
the fir^ word and even adds the word The
message itself is full of the spirit of (longing)
and abounds in the hneit sentiments couched in the
fined language. The yaksha sends her his love and
embraces her with his thoughts. He says that he
seeks in vain to find even faint and secondary resem¬
blances of her loveliness in the sweated and blighted
aspeds of nature. So much does she transcend all
other loveliness in the universe. He welcomes even
the breeze whicK comes after touching her beloved
form. He yearns to compress the period of his
exile into a moment so as to fly to her arms. He
calls her Kalyanu meaning thereby that he lives
because of her auspidous goodness of soul which
pleads with God for his welfare. He says that»
when God Vishnu rises from his serpent-bed,
he would be with her in four months. In Part II
verse 50 the lover indudes in the message a secret
love-incident known only to him and his beloved.
This recalls the Manai Sila TV/a^oJincideot referred
to hy Rama in his message to Sita. Love does not
 HIS PERIOD, rEBSOHALITY AND POBTRT 189’

die of separation but becomes the very essence of

love because non-attainment kindles ardour and
purifies and perfects love. Shakespeare says.

**Lovc is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove ;
O no ; it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempers and is never shaken**.

The lover then asks the cloud to come back

and save his life by bearingf her reply message and<
conveying it to him. 1 see nothing artistically in¬
appropriate in this at all. He then blesses the cloud
for its pitifulness and its af!e<ftion and says : "Float
through any regions as you like; let thy glory be
augmented by the gifts of the rainy season; and may
you never be separated from thy spouse the lightning
even for a moment**.

Thus in this lyric of a lover*s heart-ache we

find the higheA poetry of Nature and of Love. It
has a wonderful unity of conception and an equally
wonderful unity of execution. It excels as much in
the details as in the total effe(5t. The parts are not
sacrificed to the whole nor the whole to the parts.
190 KAMDA.SA

iTic Ayle is simple and sweet and musical. It is called

Vaidarhhi RHi in Indian Ae^hetics. Even more
than the dyle is the ascent of thought in the poem.
It shows how love in iu higheit aspeds is a mood of
self-forgetful and unselfish love of the beloved and of
beneficence to the world and of pious dependence
on God. To it Nature and Love are full of a new
meaning and are related in a new way to God. To
it comes a new intensification (Premarasi) and a new
transcendence (LTpachita Rasa) and it becomes the
very soul of love.

iiji)'»! ^

iVM bna ifoif'slbt sti brc* ; j :Oi

J .a kp.

- ■ .1

' joa :>’•&

ptU pjoilvr Ui 'xm w. i.st:'::
 CHAPTER XI.

Raghuvamsa.
rpHIS epic poem has been the delight of the
young and the old in India. It is the earUeft
book of Sanskrit fludy in the case of boys. We of
the older generation remember with keen delight
our Sanskrit Judies beginning with the words of the
first stanza of the fourth canto «
Truly was this itudy a gift of scvere^ty to us by
our fathers—a sovereignty of a whole universe of
feeling and thought.
t '-1 ■ k -i. ' Of‘i

Kalidasa ^ose a great thenue as the aabietft of

Kb epic poem and showed the greater artistic gesuts
in the ways In which he elaborated and condeiM«i
the malpdals available to him ; Tie taje of ,Aqfedhya
divine had been rendered by one of. th^ world-poets
who was also one of the greatest s^es and saints of
the world. To write a poem or a play^on such a
theme was to court certain failure. Asides, sucK an
192 KALIDASA

attempt to paiat the lily would be a wasteful and

ridiculous excess. Yet many poets and dramatists^
who had not the keen sense of htness which Kali*
dasa had, had assayed such a task in verse and in
drama and committed the wasteful and ridiculous ex>
cess referred to above and also conspicuously failed in
their attempts. Kalidasa*s attempt to present the
exploits of the solar line, expanding the achievements
of Sri Rama's predecessors and condensing the life
of Sri Rama, enabled him to handle one of the
greatest epic themes of the world and at the same
time avoid a comparison with the poet>saint whose
work had thrilled countless generations and was
Sure to be an inspiring force for ever. Mr. Ryder
says that the Hindus are "connoisseurs of story**
telling" and that "the Hindus may fairly claim to be
the best story-tellers of the world". Kalidasa is
one of the best of the Indian story-tellers, and
Raghuoamsa is the greatest and the best of his
stones.
What a glorious line of kings is descried by
the poet! Let roe quote his own words ; ^

an’.'..., « , ' . '* 5; )

 HIS PBRIOD, PBESONALITT AND POZTRY 103 *

§«rnfrHT i

*u
3rmR «^5r*rhir rira»TTTOi*^ i
jTsrdi’ II

?i5r^sv-qRrft«iriir i *
3pf?€i^r ^rgsisTr*!, ti , ’ '

(I. 5.o9lj

I am not able to accept Mr. Ryder s view that I

Kalidasa really desired to write "the wonderful Story ^
of Rama** but that, fearing comparison with ValmikTs '
immortal work, wrote a work which is "an epic -
poem in which Rama is the central figure, giving it~'
such unity as it possesses, but which provides Rama
with a most generous background in the shape of
sclcetcd episodes concerning his ancestors and his
descendants. This is not the express obje<fl of the *
poet. He affirms that he is going to write about ■
the kings of Raghu’s line f^r). Why
should we then imagine his unexpressed thoughts
and build a fabric of artistic theory thereupon ? I
do not think that the poet condensed the story of
E. 1. U,
 194 KALIJ>A8A

Rama merely out of fear of comparison with

Valmilu and added the lives of other Kings to swell
out his poem to the regular epic length. In com¬
posing his poem on God Kumara he did not con¬
dense his work because of antecedent long Puranic
works on the same theme. Quite naturally he
did not try to do again what had been done
by Valmiki in a way which no later poet could
equal or excel. It seems to me that he rightly
felt with the true and unerring artistic initiQ<5t
which was always his own that the lives of the great
kings of the solar race formed a noble and heroic
epic theme and that a poem on the subject could be
given to his race as a record'and as ai prophe^,- as
a treasury of racial ideakt and. as the for^wamiog* •
index-finger of the genios of the race warning the*
people for all dme against errors and excesses which
would bring them low in the scale of nations and
make them bite the dust Mr. Ryder says that *‘it
is not properly an epic of Raghu's line, for many
kings of this line are unmentioned.** This again is an"-
erroneous view due to a defedtive poetic tempera- *
meat without which the poet's heart cannot ’be ^
known. To use the language of Indian aeAhetioiisbff-
oijy a SahrUaya (man of poetic taste) can know
 HIS PERIOD, PERSOSAI-ITY AND POBTRT 195

the Kaoihridaya (ihc heart of the poet). Kali¬

dasa is not a chronicler in verse. He was not
writing a kind of Polyolbion. He knew that if he
tried to write a verse history of all the kings of the
solar race he would be giving to the world a long
rambling verse chronicle which might be intere^tiDg
and even poetic but which would not be a great
epic poem. A poem on Harischandra would by
itself swell into epic dimensions and would further
have epic dignity and sublimity enough to dwarf the
lives of all the other kings except the life of Sri
Rama. Kalidasa wanted to give his poem true epid"
unity ; he did not wish to treat the life of Sri Rama'^
at great length ; and he wished to write an epic
about the great epic theme of the lives of the great
kings. He achieved this by selecting a few kings
before and after Sri Rama and by describing a few
inddents In their lives. He was thus enabled to
present a unified epic poem which would have Sii
Rama as the central figure, which would at the same
time describe other great kings ^of the. solar line,
which would enable him to amplify his c^vas and
present the interlinking of urban and fored life and
the self-expansion of the Hindu race, and which
would not only give to the people a mirror to behold
 196 KALIDAHA

itself and a treasury of the racial ideals but would

itand as a clear warniag to the race for ever.

It is now clear that Mr. Ryder’s critical remark

that **the result is a formless plot” is ungenerous and
untrue. We mu^ always pause and examine our*
selves before we fling remarks carelessly about the
peetic intentions and achievements of the truly
immortal world'poets of all time. Of course to err
is human. But let us apply that rule to ourselves
fir^. Kalidasa has not given us a rambling plot.
He has given us a deliberately well-woven plot and
not merely beautiful ^yle and fine presentation of
chara<fler woven as an embroidery around a defe<5live
plot. The kings chosen and the incidents chosen
in their lives show Kalidasa’s poetic intent and
method. Mr. Ryder himself says that such defedtive-
ness of plot is inevitable in long poems and gives us
the in^ance of the /Eneid. His fundamental error
is shown in his remark that ”the Rama cantos, ten
to fifteen, make an epic within an epic”. It seems
to me that Kalidasa conceived of the whole as an
epic poem, and treated the life-Aory of Sri Rama
as an integral and supremely beautiful portion of it
but only as a portion. Once again I say that if
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POETRY ].97

Homer wrote his great epic poem to show how out

of trifling causes spring devaftating wars and if Virgil
wrote his great epic poem to suggefl and describe
the origin and destiny of the Roman race and if
Dante wrote his great epic poem to present to
dwellers on earth the eternal regions of hell arid
purgatory and paradise and if Milton wrote his
poem on the creation and fall of man to vindicate
the ways of Ood to men, Kalidasa's express objedl
is to describe the lives of perfedt kings who were also
pcrfedl men so as to pidture the eternal racial ideals
and warn our kings and our people about their
disaAer if they departed from those fundamental
ideals. With perfcdl art the poet has placed in the
centre the ^tory of Sri Rama who is incarnate God¬
head come into the world of men to leach man how
to be perfedt men and how by being perfedt men
to attain the bliss of Godhead. He has called his
poem Raghu»amsQ and says He
evidently thought that it was the perfcdlion of King
Raghu which made the lineage wortliy of the incar¬
nation of Raghava (Sri Rama). The very word
Raghuvamsa is found in the Ramayana in the 9lh
verse in the 3rd sarga of the Balakanda and in the
I Ith verse in the 1st sarga of the Yuddhakanda. t
196 KALIDASA

I am thus of opinion that it is wrong to say

that "there is a lack of unity of plot** in the poem.
Raghuoamsa is a unidve and integrated epic giving
us the ideals of perfeift manhood, forming a treasury
of the racial life, and intended as a national warning.
The verses translated above contain the key-ideas of
'the poem. The ideals of purity from birth, resolute
and victorious pursuit of ideals, sovereign guidance
over the whole earth, soaring freedom of move¬
ment. acquisition for munificence, courtesy and
chivalry and hospitality, punishment for purification,
perfect measure in thought and word and deed, and
a disciplined regulation of life from birth to death—
liking sacred and secular knowledge in youth,
'asking not merely the pleasures of married life but
also its graces and obligations and sanctities for
glory of lineage and service of country and of God,
seeking an auAere yet universally helpful old age>
*and seeking above all exit from life not through
disease but through Yoga—throb in these pages*

I have said above that the poem is a record, a

-treasury, a propliecy, and a warning. I see a great
.pu^se in Kaiidaia-s beginning the poem with cow-
worihip iaBkl'ther1i»king)of the dt|y and the hernutage.
 HIS 1>BSI01>, r£B80MALITT AND POBTBT f99

Cow-worship is not a mere (ad or sUperstitton of

a nerveless and thin-blooded race. It is not a mere
gUiification of an economic idea. It is a symbol and
a shrine of a great race-idea. The cow is a symbol
of innocence and purity and service and siniessness.
Its prote<5tion is a symbol of the ideal of chivalry.
The very names of God as Gopala and Pasupad
show how the ideas for which the cow itands have
>gone into the vitals of our people. Equally vital is
the ideal of the hermitage. We have always kept
our social life sweet and sane and supreme by link¬
ing it with super-social ideals. The rich stream
life-giving ideas flowed all through the entire body
social from the heart of the Topovano. Kalidasa
shows how a people upholding these ideals deserved
and attained universal suzerainty as idealised in
Raghu'slife. Nay, he makes us see how such a'peo^le
^and such a lineage alone could deserve the supreme
glory of the incarnation of God. 'He shows us at
the same time the devitilisation of the people hy
pleasure and by a turning away from the greilt idenls
'of the Hindu race. The ideals of purity* and lof
disciplined chaAity, of courtesy and chivalry, 'endiof
piety of renunciation ware given up :and loA. The
result was not only the loss df universal sovereigaty.aad
 200 KALIDASA

even self-rule which the race had ceased to deserve

but also self-ruination by self-devitalisation. In^ead
of kings who cail off (He body through Yoga after a
fulfilled life which served the people and raised them
to the pinnacle of universal overlordship we had King
Agnivarna who died of consumption. The poet living
in a great age of racial glory points to a great age of
glory in the pait and also warns the people againS
a possible (and as the events have shown the ccriain)
decline and fall of the Hindu race if they and their
kings departed from the root-ideals of the race.

It is thus clear to me that the poem has not

come down to us in an imperfect form. The epic is
not. incomplete or mutilated and does not end
abrupdy as Mr. Ryder says “with this strange scene,
half-tragic, half-vulgar*. It ends deliberately with
perfect art. Mr. Ryder, with Grange inconsistency,
^^blames Kalidasa for spoiling a fine tragic itory in
VikramorvQsiyam and says at the same time that
■ * Kalidasa should not and would not have ended this
h^epic poem with a tragic note. The feeble and scanty
tiadition that the poem had twentyfive cantos is in
my opinion wrong. Mr. Ryder says that a literary
work should according to the rules of art end with
 HIS PERIOD, PRR80NALITY AND POETRY

a bcnedidlory epilogue. I am not aware of any sucH

inflexible rule in the case of the Kavyas or epic
poems. Mr. Ryders guess that the la^ six
cantos may not have been preserved as they were
not to be a school text is the wilder of conjedures.
If the Agnivarna canto was thought ht to be pre¬
served, why should the later cantos have been left
to die > The numerous commentators who have
annotated the epic have known only the currant text
of nineteen cantos : I have shown above that the
close of the poem is not “a lame and impotent
conclusion** but a deliberate and artistic conclusion.

I have already shown above how the view that

Raghuoamsa mud have been written before
Kumarasambhava is incorred. The fad that in
Raghucamsa the poet describes himself with becom¬
ing modesty is no indication at all. The poem is a
work of ICalida$a*$ ripe maturity. It does not
contain the glorious exuberance of feeling and style
of Kumarasambhava. The Meghasandesa shows
a riper mellowness than Kumarasambhava. But
it is in Raghuvamsa that we find the poet taking
the widest range of all and showing life in all its
 202 KALIDASA

uiter-Iiokedness of failure and success and of

Kell and earth and heaven. I am of opinion that it
is the latest and most mature of his poems, just as
Sak^ntala is the last and most mature of his dramas,,
and is probably his latest work I

Mr. A. B. Keith has made in his Classical

Sanskrit Literature some curious remarks in regard
to Raghu\famsa. He says ; “The more mature
genius of Kalidasa manifests itself in the Raghu’
vamsa in his insistence on the Yoga asped of
philosophy rather than on the personal aspe<5t of the
divinity in the Kumarasamba\>a. ‘He recognises
^^the three Gunas or constituents, which make up
^lature in the Samkhya-Yoga belief and the existence
of spirit, but with the Yoga he admits a deity. How
precisely he conceived existence, whether the diver¬
gences of spirit and matter were for him reconciled
in the Absolute, we cannot attempt to decide ; what
is important is that he represents his heroes as
seeking release from rebirth by the methods of Yoga,
mentioning the technical terms Dharona, concentre'
tion, and Yirasana, a special posture deemed suited
to aid the attainment of the end desired. He
'hlhides also to the magic powers which Yoga gives.
 els PERIOD, PERSOKALITT AKD POBTRT 203

the ability to penetrate a closed door, as well as the

higher attainment desired by .Sita of reunion with
her beloved in a future life. Vishnu, indeed, in the
Raghuoamsa receives his meed of devotion, as was
inevitable in an epic of Rama, but Siva remains the
higher expression of the poet's conception of divinity,
for Siva is a Yogin par excellence^ though Vishnu
follows in his train1 am afraid that this criticism
is full of those half-truths which are worse than
downright untruths. The Kumarasambhava con¬
centrates on Yoga even more than Raghw^amsa,
and some of the fined descriptions of Yoga in all
literature occurs in Kumarasambhaxfa. On the
other hand the personal aspe<5t of God is more em¬
phasised in the dory of Rama in Raghuvamsa than
in the dory of Siva in Kumarasambhava. Mr. Keith
seems to feel a mod inexplicable and remarjkable
doubt about Kalidasa s Samkhya-Yoga as he calls
it. 1 shall show in my second Volume on The
Genius of Kalidasa the quintessence of Kalidasa's
religious dodrine. He was a most catholic exponent
of that mod eatholic of all religions—Vedantism.
His so-called Samkhya-Yoga is but a phase of his
Vedantic creed and can never be underdood vNnthout
reference to it. Kalidasa never felt puzzled by
 204 KALIDASA

Spirit aad matter and the Absolute. He barraonised

them perfcdly. Mr. Keith spcats with a suppres¬
sed lack of convidtion and an under-current of unfaith
about Kalidasa*s heroes seeking release from rebirth
through the methods of Yoga. In the description
of Uma he shows the attainment of life's auspicious¬
ness—as apart from release—by Yoga. His sneer
about “the magical powers which Yoga gives, the
ability to penetrate a closed door” we can afford to
pass by. But Kalidasa does not exalt Yoga above
Bhakti and Jnana. Nor does he exalt Siva above
Vishnu. Mr. Keith's views on these matters are
obviously unsound and will be proved to be so in
my later volume. j

Equally incorredt is his half-praise of Kalidasa ;

in a later portion of the same volume. He says :
“We need not seek in Kalidasa foi any solution or
suggested solution of the mysteries of life ; with the
orthodox view of his time he seems to have been
duly content.” We can detedl here a note of contempt
mingling with the note of half-praise. I shall show
in my later volume how Kalidasa did not iland up
for any rigid and soulless orthodoxy and how he
gives a satisfadlory solution of the myiteries of life.
 H18 PBBIOD, PBR80XALITY AND POBTRY 205*

Nor is there any justification for Mr. Keith's

view that in describing Raghu's conquest of the
world, Kalidasa is giving us “a poetic reflex of the
achievements** of Samudragupta and Chandragupta
and suggesting to us their glorious military achieve¬
ment. He says: **Kalidasa extols the sway of the
Guptas and the Brahminical restoration by remind¬
ing his audience of the glories of the foregone days
of the solar, race". ! have already shown the hollow¬
ness of this theory. We might urge with more
plausibility that he referred rather to Vikramaditya's
vi<5tories, because at least the word adilya (sun)
suggests the solar line of kings.

With what a perfetfl opening stanza the poem

opens! It says: “To Parvali and Paramesvara
who are the parents of the universe and who are in
union like speech and thought, 1 bow ‘for attaining
perfect speech and thought.** U not poetry perfect
speech embodying perfed thought ? I cannot imagine
a more perfe<5t commencement for a poem. Yet no
less a scholar than Pandit R. Krishnamachariar
hurled, in his Raghuvamsa Vimarsa, his shafts of
ridicule at this commencement of the poem, saying
that it was worthy of a mere Vedic scholar or a
 206 KALIJDA9A

piolu Brahmin and that the simile employed in the

verse is not an illuminative simile worthy of Kalidasa
and that thence the stanza must be an interpolation.
Yet with a strange self-forgetfulness he begins his
own critique with the famous verse of Dandin :

Does it follow that because Kalidasa began Kumara-

sambhava with Vastunirdtsa i.e., a dire<5l reference
to the story or because other poets did so, he could
not begin a poem with Astfvoda or Nonutsf^oro
{beneditfdon or reverential prostration) ? The classical
diredtioo ist

I am referring to such a piece of crude cridcisai

to point out the need for a reverential approa<Ji
when dealing with such a master of the poetic art
as Kalidasa. To proceed to a description of the
poem itself, the poet plunges straight into the story.
King Dilipa is one of the great kings of the solar
race. Broad and tall and strong he was the incar¬
nation of chivalry^. His wisdom was equal to'his
 BIS PERIOD PBBSONALITT AND POETRY 307’'

beauty ; his culture was equal to his wisdom ; his

activity was equal to his culture; and his attainment
was equal to his a<5tivity. Under his lead his subjc<aso
went along the narrow path of righteous life as laid*
down by Manu, just as the wheels of a car obediently
follow the charioteer’s will. He received taxes from
his subjects only to distribute the same in a suitable
and effective manner for the public weal, just as the
sun takes water in the form of vapour only to give it
back with a thousandfold blessing in the form of
rain. He had a powerful army but his culture and
prowess brought him vidlory and prosperity and he
had no need to use military force anywhere and at
any time. He kept his state secrets well and ex¬
tended his sway to achieve peace and prosperity.
His endeavours became known only after successful
attainment. He was measured in speech though
of unmeasured culture, he was merdfiil though
matchless in valour; and he was not vain though he
was unrivalled in liberality. In fadl as good qualities
love one another’s company, one good quality'"after ^
another came to him and resided in him;*' He '
was the real father of his people as he gave universal
education and protected all by bis justice and pro¬
vided employment for the entire nation. His fort-
 208 KALIDASA

walls were the shores of the universal seas; his

moats were the oceans themselves ; and he ruled as
one city the entire earth which never felt such a
unitive rule before. His queen was named Sudak'
shina. They had only one grief—the sorrow of
toolessness. They left the cares of State in the
hands of the ministers of State and started for the
sage Vasishtha's hermitage to learn from him the
means of attaining God's grace resulting in the birth
of a noble son to adorn the line and rule the world.
They went in their chariot unattended by servants
as they did not wish to cause inconvenience to the
hermits in the forest. They went in their chariot
through the country roads breathing the sweet and
cool and gentle and fragrant air from lotus ponds.
They saw with delight the dancing peacocks and the
large-eyed deer. As they went along, the glad
and grateful villagers blessed them with brimming
eyes and hearts. At sunset they reached Vasishtha's
hermitage. They saw the hermits returning with
holy grass and sweet fruits. The wives of the
sages were watering the trees in the hermitage.
The deer were freely roaming about or resting there
in peace. The king and the queen bowed before
the sage. The king told him about Kis heartache
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONALWr AND POBTET 209

and prayed for guidance. Vasishta told him that

on a former occasion he Had unwittingly treated the
divine cow Surabhi with disrespe<il and that the
latter had cursed him with sonlessncss until he
pleased and propitiated her own offspring. The
sage said : Surabhi s child Nandini is here. If
the queen and yourself tend and please it, your wish
will be fulfilled." At that lime the cow returned
to the hermitage. It was red in colour like a tender
leaf and had a white mark and shone like the sunset
ht by the crescent moon. The king and queen
began to carry out the commands of the sage. The
second canto describes how during twenty-one
days the queen tended the cow at home after due
worship and the king accompanied it during its
wanderings in the foreft. On the twenty-second
day the cow was attacked by a lion. The king
tried to let loose his shaft to kill the lion but fell his
become suddenly limp and powerless. The
lion then spoke with a human voice saying that he
was a servant of God Siva and had been appointed
to guard that fore^ and live on such animals as
trespassed there. DiJipa perceiving that a fight
with earthly weapons would be ineffedual prayed
to the lion to leave the cow harmless and accept his
K. I. 14.
210 KAUhA9A

own body. The lion told him : "You have uni¬

versal sovrrignly and you have also youth and beauty.
Why do you sacrifice these lor the sake of such a
petty thing as a cow ? If compassion for the cow
is your motive, you save only the cow. But if you
live you can protedl millions of subjeds. If the sage
gets angry you can propitiate him by the gift of
crores of such cows. Save your body which is
born to enjoy a succession of royal pleasures.
Dilipa replied to this sophistry : "A Khasiriya is a
man who saves (stl^Ifr) others from injuries
If I atfl otherwise what is the use of my sovereignty
or even my lile tainted by the odium of abuse ? I
cannot please the sage by the gift of other cows.
Know this cow to be Surabhi s child. I offer my
body to you. Take it and be satisfied and leave this
cow to go unharmed. Do not be kind to this
physical body but be kind to my fame-body. I
do not have any attachment to this perishable physi¬
cal frame.” The king then placed his body near
the lions mouth. But the illusion vanished in a
trice. The cow told him * "Not even the God of
Death can touch me, because of the power of the
sage. I merely tested you. I am pleased with thy
devotion to the sage and thy compassion for me.
 Illh PKU.'OD, PKRSONALITT AND POETRY 2\\

Astc for a boon.'* The king was overjoyed

asked for the boon of a child and was granted the
boon. The king then returned with the cow to the
hermitage. He and his queen drank the cow’s
milk and returned to the capital with accomplished
vow and attained desire.

In opening his epic ])oem Kalidasa was actuat¬

ed by a liigh epic motive. The Indian civilisation
of which the poem is a presentation and panorama,
though wisely urbanised and vs'ith attained potencies
of political power and refinements of aesthetic culture,
was never out of touch with village life and was in
wise interlinking with pastoral and forest Tife.
Further, it had its inspiration from the Tapovanas
where lived godly men who were beloved of gods
and men. Its idealisation of the cow was one of iti
special graces and distinctions. Kalidasa desired,
as shown above, to emphasise these aspects and
brace began with the story of Dilipa. It has been"*
asked by critics why he began with Dilipa and not
with the Sun-God himself or with Manu. To my
mind it appears that the clue lies in his desire to
present by means of the poem, by means of the art
of suggestiveness (Dhvani) of which he is a past
 KALIDASA
212

master, a mirror to the race to behold itself in its

true and essential perfection.

The third canto describes Raghu’s birth and

glory. Raghu was born as the son of Dilipa and
Sudakshina. At his birth five planeU were in the
ascendant—a fact-which is recorded in respect of
Sri Rama’s horoscope also. The poet records also
lhat at his birth gentle and pure breezes blew and
skies were clear and the world was full of
auspiciousness and that such births are for the wel¬
fare and happiness of mankind. Even the gods in
heaven rejoiced at his birth. The poet then des¬
cribes in detail Raghu's childhood and youth and
education and marriage and anointment as the heir-
apparent. It is noteworthy that with perfect self*
restraint he refrains from describing Raghu’s queen,
leaving himself the fullest freedom of such descrip¬
tion in regtu^d to Aja, because the story of the love
of Aja and Indumati lends itself to a first-rate
poetic handling and elaboration. With Raghu’s aid.
Dilipa performed ninety-nine asoamedhas or horse*
sacrifices. When the hundredth sacrifice was begun
and the horse was set free to roam at will for a year,
Indra Stole it. When Raghu taunted him, Indra repli-
 HIS PERIOD, PBR80KALITT AND POETRY 2f3

ed ; “Juil as Hari alone is known as Purushottama

and as Siva alone is known as MaKesvara, so" the
• sages know me alone as Sataicratu i.e. the perfornner
of a hundred sacrifices. Yet your father desires to
perform his hundredth sacrifice and eclipse my
fame". Then ensued a great fight between them.
Though hit by India’s Vajra, Raghu showed
wonderful fight. Indra then said ; ‘‘I am pleased
with your prowess. Ask for anything but the horse."
Raghu then asked him to give to his father the fruit
of the sacrifice. Indra agreed and sent his charioteer
Matali to inform Dilipa. >

The fourth canto describes the wonderful ex¬

ploits of Raghu. Dilipa left him in charge of the
kingdom and retired to the forefi along with his
queen, because such is the family vow (Kulaorata)
of the kings of the solar race. Raghu’s reign was
of a unique glory. Though great kings had preceed-
ed him, yet his qualities were of matchless attra<Aive'
ness. He loved his people and was loved by them.
He then began his career of world-conqueft. As
he went in his onward military march, deserts had
tanks and lakes dug in them, bridges were thrown
across unfordable rivers, and forests were cleared
 KALIDASA
214
for settlement and colonisation. Thus conqueit and
civilisation went hand in hand. He conquered the
dominions up to the casern sea (the Bay of Bengal).
He conquered only the unbending foes and that for
Uhc sake of Dharma (atsramt €g««Tr and
He then went south and conquered the Sales up to
aad inclusive of the Pandya kingdom, and received
immense presents of pearls from the Pandya King.
He then went westward and northward and con¬
quered the countries there. He went by the land-
route and vanquished the Parasikos (Persians) and
the Huns. He planted pillars of victory {^Jayos-
tkambhas) everywhere.

Then Raghu performed the great sacrifice of

(i.e., the conquest of the universe). The
fifth canto describes it and the later incidents in
his leign. After he had given away all his
belongings in that sacrifice. Kaulsa who was the
disciple of Varatantu, went to him to request him to
give money for payment as Gurudakshina (tcacliing
Jees) -lo his master. Kautsa, who was asked by
the king to slate his desire, was sorry that lie
Lad' come too late, at he needed four crores of
Tupees lo give the same ^as teaching fee to his
 HIS PEaiOD TERSONALITT AND POBTRY 215

teacher. The King told him: “ Lei not the world

say oF me that a request was meant to be made to
to me and was not granted. Please wait for two or
three days.*' Raghu then prepared For a fight with
Kubera, the god of wealth. Learning this Kubera
sent a shower of gold into the king's treasury. With
it the king satisfied the waiting sage. By lha
blessings of the sage a noble child was born to
Raghu. Raghu gave the name of Aja to the prince.

Cantos five to eight deal with Aja and are fall

of poetic charm. He travels to attend the
svoyamuara (self-choosing of bridegroom) by
princess Indumati. On his way his party is attacked
by a wild elephant.. He kills it. It became a
Gandharva (demigod). The latter praised Aja and
stated how he had been cursed to bedomc an ; ele¬
phant. He gave to Aja a celestial weapon called
Saminohana. In the svayamvara-hall of Indumad,
all the princely suitors sit in thrones. To the sound
of sweet music'enters in a litter the prince .{n
bridal dress. So beautiful she was that she drew all
eyes and hearts, and only die kings' bodies adorned
the thrones. Her maid-servant describes each
long to her but she signs to the bearers of the litter
216 KAIIJ>A8A

to move OR. Here occurs in the poem the famous

simile which has given to the poet the name
Deepasikha Kalidasa. “Juft as when a lit lamp is
taken down a ftr^t, the houses in front are bright
and those left behind are wrapt in darkness, so the
Kings whom Indumati was yet to pass were bright
*and eager and happy whereas the Kings whom she
had passed were gloomy and depressed. She even¬
tually chose Aja as her lord and placed the bridal
^rland round his neck. Then the marriage of Aja
and Indumati took place admift great pomp and re¬
joicing. When they returned, the discarded Kings
surrounded him on. the way and attacked him.
But he hurled the celeftial weapon Sammohana at
them and stupehed them all and bore away his
beautiful bride.

King Raghu then handed over the kingdom to

Aja and desired to betake himself to the forest. The
people loved Aja regarding him as Raghu returned
to his youth, and he loved the people and ruled them
with ability and righteousness. When Raghu wished
to go to a foreft Aja fell at his feet and prayed him
to ftay. Raghu then lived in retirement in a hermit¬
age close by. Aja ruled the kingdom; Raghu ruled
 ms PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POETRY "2T7

himself. Aja sought the counsel of ministers; Raghu

sought the counsel of yogis. Aja was incarnate pros¬
perity; Raghu was incarnate renunciation. Aja sat
on the radiant throne; Raghu sat on the holy grass.
Aja rejoiced in adtivity; Raghu rejoiced in his retire¬
ment. Aja conequered the enemies of the land;
Raghu subdued the foes of the soul. £ach was great
in his own line and in his own way. Aja became
one with his people; Raghu became one with God.
These verses in the poem are full of sonorous music,
and stately thought. In the fulness of time Raghu
left his immortal name on earth and went to heaven.

Some years later a son was born to Aja and

was named Dasaratha. Aja was deeply attached
to his beautiful queen and used to spend much of
his time with her in the palace gardens. One day
the sage Narada went to Gokarna to worship at the
shrine of God Siva there. He had his Vina on his
hand, and as he was going through the upper regions
the garland of flowers placed on it fell down. The
garland fell on Indumati and she suddenly took ill
and expired in the lap of the king. Aja was over¬
whelmed with grief. His lament as described in
the eighth canto is full of poignant pathos and is one
 2(8 KAUUikSA

o( the mo^ beautiful episodes in the poem. Aja

cried out in grief: **Can even soft flowers cause
death ? Death comes through any means if Fate
has resolved to smite. The softly-falling snow
bears death to the soft lotus flower. I place this
.garland on me so that it may slay me as well. But
)|t has no effecfl on me. Even nedtar becomes poison
somewhere and poison becomes nedtar. Such is
God’s command. This garland lias become a thun¬
derbolt because of my evil fortune. The tliunder-
bolt has struck the creeper twining round the tree
but has not struck the tree itself. You would not be
rough to me even when 1 was in fault. How then
can you leave me thus when 1 did no wrong } I
must’ have been an evil soul or else you would not
^ have gone away like this once for all. The south
wind yet gently i^irs your fragrant tresses decorated
with flowers. How can I place on the rough
funeral pyre your fair frame fit to lie on downy
beds ? These trees and creepers yearn for you. You
08cd to lend them lovingly every day. The Asoka
iitree sheds its flowers like tears. You were to me
wife, queen, miniver, disciple and comrade. When
Death took you be took away every thing in life
ftte\ Thus lamented the> king in- descladoo >o(
 HI8 PRBIOD, PBRSOMALITY AND POBTRY 219

spirit. Vasishtha sent words of counsel and consola*

tion to him. But these words found no place in the
heart of the king who had loit his only true and
precious joy in life. For eight long years he bore
1 the pangs of grief for the sake of his boy. He then
crowned his son as king and left his body at the
jundion of the Ganga and the Sarayu and went to
heaven anti met lus beloved in the Nandana garden
in Indra's paradise.

The ninth canto describes King Dasaralha and

cantos ten to fifteen deal with tlie ^^ory of Rama. It
seems to me that the higher art of the poet is shown
here* He has expanded what is condensed in the
Ramayana and has condensed what has been ela*
borated with wonderful beauty of thought and style
in Valmiki’s immortal epic* In the ninth canto he has
shown how magic felicities of could sound be intro¬
duced into metres m Sanskrit. He gives us a splendid
description of Dasaratha’s sovereignly and his queens
and his memorable hunt during which the sonless
King received a curse of separation from liis son—a
curse which proved a blessing to Kim and to the
world. There occurs in the ninth canto a magni¬
ficent description of* spring which shows how Kali-
 220 KAL1DA.8A

dasa's youthful poetic power as displayed in Ritu-

samhara has taken a higher range and achieved a
higher perfection after the ripening of his powers.
The poet also gives us a carefully executed descrip¬
tion of Dasaratha*s hunt. The description is rich in
detail and is worthy of the poet. In the tenth canto
I the poet takes up for description a beautiful scene
left by Valmiki with a scanty reference. Valmiki
was emphasising the humanness of Rama while
hinting his supreme divinity. Kalidasa emphasised the
divineness of Rama while showing that he was a per¬
fect man. He thus showed the way to later poet, who
adopted his method and reaped an abundant harvest
oi spiritual beauty from the field of the story. The
description ol God Vishnu in the milky ocean is at the
same time lovely and sublime. The hymn to God
Vishnu in the tenth canto is full incandescent spiritual
feeling and is the higiteit syntfagsis of Indian religious
thought. The poet covers in aiew verses the ^tory so
perfectly elaborated by Valmiki in six Kandas. But
where he could get an opportunity to describe a
great scene which was not perfectly and elaborately
described by Valmikii he does not miss it« Such is
the description of the contest between Parasurama
and Sri Rama. In fact Kalidasa's presentation
 HIS PBEIOD, PERSONALITT AND POKTRY 221

of Sri Rama's life is a series of vignettes than

a grand painting upon an extended canvas.
The poet however embarks upon a most beauti¬
ful and poetic description of the return journey
of Sita and Rama in the aerial car Pushpaka.
Here was a poetic opportunity afforded to
him by Valmiki. Further, he had already des¬
cribed Nm'lh India and its spots of supreme
intereil in the Meghasandesa. Here was an
equally splendid opportunity to describe South India
and the poet availed himself of it in an ample
measure and showed his wonderful powers of
graphic poetic description. Even in this grand
description, probably the grandest is the description
of the mingled waters of the Ganges and the Jumna
in verses 54 to 57 in the thirteenth canto. The
description of the abandoned Sita in the fourteenth
canto gives the poet another splendid opportunity to
describe the feelings of the human heart in its bare
desolation and its purity and fortitude, and the result
is a marvel of the poetic art. Hie description of Sita's.
farewell in the fifteenth canto is another marvel.
The poet shows how the fickle people whose blame
of Rama led to his abandonment of Sita were moved
to penitent tears on hearing the Ramayana sung by
222 KALIUA8A

Kusa and Lava. Thus poesy purified by pity llieir

vision which nought else could purify, just as
poesy was enkindled by pity in the case of Valmikl’s
heart itself. Sita appeared in the assembly. The
very appearance of that perfe<5lion of purity carried
emotion to the national heart. The people itood
mute with shamed and sorrowful hearts. In res¬
ponse to Sita’s appeal to prove her purity by app¬
earing and bearing her away, the Earth-Goddess
appeared in glory and took her, her last look being
on her Rama's adored and adoring face. This is
one of the greatest scenes in literature and nobly has
the poet rendered it. Thus it seems to me that
Kalidasa's rendering of the ftory of Rama shows his
wonderful genius and his perfedl artistic sense.

Rama then established his brothers and sons,

and nephews as kings in different Kingdoms and
perfornted the funeral rites of Dasaratha's queens and
then went to his paradise, preceded by Lakshmana.
His other brothers and the citizens of Ayodhya
followed him and entered the Sarayu river and rose
up and went to paradise. Kusa and Lava had
Kusavati and Saravati as their capital cities. One
night when Kusa lay awake he saw a female figure
 nis I'BKIOD, PBU«ON.\MTY AXI> POETRY 223-

in widowed grief. She ^old him that she was the

presiding deity of the ancient capital Ayodhya which
had been deserted since Rama’s departure to para¬
dise. Kalidasa evidently look the idea from the
presiding deity of Lanka as described in the Ram-
ayana. Then follows a fine description of the
deserted city. The goddess begged Kusa to return
to tlie ancient capital city [KulQrajadhanfy He
then transferred Ins capital to Ayodhya and reAored
it to its former splendour. Then follows a fine des¬
cription of a bath of Kusa and his queens in the Sa-
rayu river. During that bath the jewel got by Rama
from Agaslya and given to him by Rama fell into
the river and was taken away by the serpent Kum-
uda’s sister Kumudvati. Kusa then prepared to hurl
the Garuda weapon (astra) to kill Kumuda. Kumuda«
at once brought the jewel and also his si^er Kumud*<
vati and gave her in marriage to Kusa. The son
of Kusa and Kumudvati was Athithi. Sometime
after his birth Kusa was kiUed in the process. of
killing a demon. He went to heaven followed by
Kis loving queen. Athithi then became the King.
The poet describes in extenso the great qualities of
the king and the splendours of his coronation.
224 KALtUASA

In the eighteenth canto we have a brief sketch of

^wenty one kings who succeeded Athithi one after
another. The last cantof describes King Agnivaran
who spent his life in ignoble dissipation and died a
premature and unlamented death through consump-
boD. Whenever he had to show himself to his subjects
he used to dangle his foot out of a window. He lived
in the palace of art and sense^delights and forgot his
people and God. The poet describes in a beautiful
verse how song and dance beguiled the King's pass¬
ionate hours and how he was always in the soft
fetters of maidens* arms* The poet says that the
King was absorbed in the joys of the senses
f ). How far we are away here from
ibe manly and godly life described in the opening
verses of the poem! What an ignoble end ! While
the other kings flung away their bodies—which had
done their meed of service of God and man—by their
pbwcr of yogic will, Agnivarna died of a wasting
disease which foiled the skill of the physicians of the"
lung< Instead of

&5r^s«r«fT^?iRt |
•. II
 H18 PFiBtOD, PERSOKALITY AND POETRY 225

we have one who may be described thus:

?:TW^ir n
His ministers cremated him secretly in a portion
o{ the royal garden. But his queen carried on the
Government in a royal and righteous way with the
aid of the wise minif^ers of state. Slie was pregnant
and the people wailed for the birth of the child,
knowing and expecting that a great ruler will come
to rule and protedt the land. I have stated and
shown above that the poem did not end abruptly and
was not left incomplete. What did the poet imply
by the ignoble end of Agnivarna. the rule of the
queen, and the expectation by the people of a great
King to come ? I have no doubt that living in a
great and heroic age he felt—great and fine-strung
souls have premonitions of coming troubles and utter
poignant words of warning—that the time might
come when India’s glory might disappear. It dis-
appeared in Agnivarna's reign, and India waited
for the Messiah to come after Agnivarna. The poet
is not afraid of a melancholy and tragical close. As
Shakespeare had a period of ebullition of tragic feel-
E. 1. 15.
 KALIDASA
226

ing, even so: had Kalidasa. Both passed from radiant

youth through observant and pessimistic manhood to
a calm and benignant maturity of age. 1 shall show
below how the prophecy with which Sakunlala
closes has a ring of reachieved faith in the people and
thrir high destiny.

tjr .

iwV , • ■
 CHAPTER XII.

Malavikagnimitra.
J N this play we find Kalidasa’s prentice-Iiand, The
Praslavana or introduction contains a verse
which shows that Kalidasa was making
Hs debut as a dramatist and was diffident about the
manner of his reception in that capacity by the
public. But we find in the play the characteristics
■which afterwards blossomed forth in full perfection
in Sakuntala. The emmenl scholar Shankar Pan-
durang Pandit has, in his excellent edition of the
■play, shown what analogies of diction and thought
are to be found in the three plays of Kalidasa. He
says 1 It is the repebtion of those analogous ex¬
pressions, phrases and ideas with a characteristic fie-
quency in each of the compositions that is of im¬
portance in determining the idenh'ty of their author.”
Professor H. H. Wilson is hence wrong in thinking
that Kalidasa was probably not the author of Mai-
226 KALIDASA

aoikflgnimUra and that the play might be the pro¬

duction of another Kalidasa who lived perhaps in the
tenth or eleventh century A. D. or even later. He
says that “ there is neither the same melody in the
verse nor fancy in the thoughts as compared with
VikTamotVQsi^a and Sakuniala, and that 'Ulie man¬
ners described appear to be that of a degenerate Aate
of Hindu society. " Mr, A. W. Ryder says, " It
shows DO originality of plot, no depth of passion. It
is a light graceful drama of court intrigue.” Neither of
these criticisms is just. The verse is as melodious
and the poetry is as imaginative in this play as in the
two other plays. The play does not allow the same
scope for flights of fancy and imagination as the sister
plays but the poet's delicate grace of fancy scintillates
in it as well. The play delineates the life of a King
in court and camp and harem and has not that min¬
gling of city and forest and earth and heaven which
the two other plays have got. Professor Weber
rightly points out: “ Both reit moreover upon a my¬
thical background and consequently bear a more
magnilicent and idea) character; the Malavikagnimitra
portrays the life ia the court of a historic prince, and
consequently the bare actuality, with its self*made
and therefore scanty concerns. ” Even more than
 HIS PERIOD, PEBSOXALITY ASHD POETRT 223

iHis fad the cause of the slight inferiorily of Mala-'

Vikagnimitra is the circumstance that it is Kalida$a*s
fir^ attempt at dramatic composition. Wilson's cri>
ticism about Malavikagnimitra delineating a deg¬
enerate ^ate of Hindu society is equally unsound. In
the case of every drama of love intrigue we can
exalt it or condemn it according to our angle of vision.
There is undoubtedly a deeper note of pathos and
passion.^ruck in Vikramooa&iya and Sakuniala than
in Malaoikagnimitra. But the love depicted in
aH the plays is as pure as it is tender. We muit not
allow ourselves to be carried away by the fad that
Agnimitra was already married. Vikrama andDush-
yanta were already married as well. Indian prin-
oes married more than once save in the case of
illuArious personages like Sri Rama. I shall show
presently how the ftate of society depicted in the
play can in no wise be called degenerate at all.

In this play we find not only Kalidasa's char*.'

ming ideas expressed in charming language, but we
find also other fine traits peculiar to Kalidasa. The
prologue is as short and full of modesty as in the
case of the two other plays. The play shows Kali¬
dasa's fondness for the Arya metre as much as the
33a KAUDA8A

•ther plays. Id short though the play does not

show as much poetic fancy or knowledge of the
human heart as the other two plays, it is of a high
order of merit and contains unmistakeable traces of
Kalidasa s handiwork. Even in Shakespeare we
fatd inequalities of attainment due to the author'*
time of life, the theme, and other factors of literary
composition. There could thus be no doubt about
Kalidasa s authorship of the play .

The ^lory of the play is not one that lends itself

to the delineation of the deeper elements of life. One
day King Agnimitra, who was king of Vidisa, saw
the. painted hgureof Malavika in the pidure of his
qi^een Dharini and her attendants. He fell in love
vyith her painted form .and asked his friend Gau¬
tama, the Vidushaka, to arrange to enable him to
see her. She was a pupil of Ganadasa who was the
queen's dicing master. Gautama fomented a quarrel
between Ganadasa and the king's dancing master
Haradatta* Both these persons asked the king to
decide as to who was the superior in their art. The
king said that he and the queen and Pandita Kausiki
who was a Sanyasini or female ascedc should form
the’commitfee of jodger. Then all of them witDessecI
 H18 PERIOD, PERBOXALITT AND POBTBT 23T.

Malavika*s representation of a song by noans of-

voice and dance and gesture. The king fell deeply in
love with her and she also fell in love with Kini. One-
day Malavika was ordered by the queen to perforiB
the dohada ceremony in respedt of an aso^o tree
in the palace garden. The dohada ceremony is one.
by which flowerless and fruitless trees are said to be
made bloomful and fruitful. In respect of an asoka
tree the ceremony consists of a kick by the decorated'
foot of a young and beautiful maiden. To perform
this ceremony Malavika was deputed by the queen*,
and she and her friend Bakulavalika went to dte>
garden for that purpose. The king along with the
Vidushaka had gone to the garden at the same tine'
because the junior queen Iravati had asked him to go
there. He met Malavika in the garden but before
he exchanged a word with her Iravati came on tho
scene and upbraided him and went away despite
his entreaties. Queen Dharioi, on learning about
the incident, had both Malavika and BalculavaHka
placed in fetters and ordered that they should not be
released unless her signet ring was brought' There^
upon the Vidushaka* some time later, pricked his
finger and cried out that he was bitten by a serpent.
The court physician to whom the Vidushaka was sent
m KALIDASA

said that to effect a cure something having a serpent's

figure should be placed in water. Queen Dharini
thereon gave her signet ring which had such a figure*
The Vidushaka used it to get Malavika and her
friend released. The King met Malavika in the
arbour. But Iravati turned up then accidentally and
grew furious. But meantime the dohada had been
successful and the asoka tree was in full bloom.
Quean Dharini had promised to grant Malavika’s
desire if the asoka tree blossomed well. It was also
ascertained that Malavika was of royal birth. There-
upon Quean Dharini requested King Agnimitra to
accept her as a junior queen. The play closes with
sudi espousals in an atmosphere of hymeneal joy.

In such a Aory there could not possibly be any

sounding of the depths of passion. We have not
got here “a pair of dar-crossed lovers” nor was
there any occasion.

*'To shake the yoke of inauspicious itars

From this world-wearied flesh”

‘ But we have here a pure passion and its

foenuag mishaps and its sure success. There are
Ad mnoeent adulteries or indelicacies of love in Kali-
diM. His comedy is not like the Rejt<Hration corn.
 HIS PSRIOD, PBRSONALITT AND POETRY 233

edies of English literature—mere decorated and lace-

garmented rottenness. The mere fatft that Ag-
nimitra is a much-married King is not of much
consequence. It is better to be polygamous than to be
a Bluebeard or a Henry VIII. Further, we should
not judge the marital ideals of one age or land in
the light of those of another age or clime. Hindu
princes used to marry many queens. It is not a fair
aiticism to say that the play describes a degenerate
state of Hindu sociely>

The play is valuable in that it shows a freedom

■from being lied down to Puranic themes and exhibits
a real power of presentation of contemporary social
4ife. I have shown in an earlier chapter how Kali¬
dasa and Agnimitra were probably contemporaries.
The play shows also a 6exible date of Hindu
society when Buddhism had not yet gone completely
out of the land but Hinduism had triumphantly
reasserted itself. It refers to a period when the
Hindu race was vigorous in war and politics as well
as in the fine arts and in the pleasures and refine-*
ments of social life.

Further, it belongs to a time when the Sanskrit

language was the spoken language of the upper classes
 234 KALIDA9A

or was at leaA well understood by them. That is

the reason why it has not got the diffiness and itilted
pedantry of style which vitiates the ^udio Sanskrit
dramas of- a laler date. The ityle of Kalidasa t»
always free from straining after effe<fl and front
elaborations and complications of style. Both the
isersoand the prose portions of his plays have a
directness and a terseness and a naturalness which
were certainly due, at lead partly, to the larger
currency of Sanskrit in his day.

I shall show later on how this play like the

ether plays of Kalidasa contains subtle suggestions, and
evesv wonderful expositions, of Aesthetics. Though
Sriagara (love) is the chief rasa (emotional mood)
of the play, the drama contains also elements of Hasa
(comedy), Karuna (pathos) and Vira (heroism). It
shows his great mastery over the sister arts of song
and dance as well. It shows also Kalidasa's wide
and varied learning and observation of nature and
humanity. As 1 am dealing with these aspects
elsewhere in this work 1 make only a brief artd
passing reference thereto here.

tWe bave inthe.play a full length portrait of

King Agnimitra. Hois .eveey iach a gearieman.
 Ht8 PKRIOD^ PBRSONALITY AND POETRY 235

He is as successful in arms as in love* His over-

lordship over other kingdoms is assured and ensured.
His Commander-in-chief Virasena carries his arms
successfully into the kingdom of Vidarbha. But
though the Vidarbha king Yajnasena was beaten,
he was not deprived of his throne, though he had
imprisoned his cousin Madhavasena who was pro¬
ceeding with his sister and others to King Agniraitra
with the object of contracting a matrimonial alliance.
Agnimitra divides the conquered territory between
Yajnasena and Madhavasena. making the Varada
river the boundry between them. I shall show later
on how Hindu suzerainty always aimed at unifying
India as a state without uprooting the minor kingdoms.
Agnimitra shows other traits of a great Hindu King
when he takes the above step only after getting the
sanction of his cabinet (manirt parishad). His
cabinet approves of his adion and informs him that
by dividing the domain and controlling the two kiqga-
by his superior will, he would have two friends -. 'vi.-t
stead of an enemy and would also convert two en¬
emies into friends. By an expressive simile it is
dated that they would be like two steeds acting
jointly under the will of the charioteer and bearing
along the Lakshmi of national prosperity in the
 236 KALIDASA

chariot of a beneficent administration (Act V verse

14). Agnimitrais well learned in theoretical stale-
craft and refers to the Arthasastra (i. e., Tantraka-
ravachanam) in Act I. His son Vasumitra is a
great commander of armies just as was his father
Pushpamilra. The epilogue shows that he feels
sure that there could not be any national calamities
during his reign. Thus Kalidasa gives his king a
fine setting of political and national life. But for this
subtle suggesliveness, the love motif in the play
would not rise above the level of a court intrigue,
especially when the play did not permit the del¬
ineation of the higher notes of love which are struck
only when sorrow smites the lyre of love.

Kalidasa lifts up the level of the love motif in

the play in other subtle and delicate ways as well.
Even though the object of the rivalry of the dancing
Piasters was to enable the king to have a look at
A4alavika and though the object was attained wh^
Malavika came and danced before the king, the
tatter with true courtesy tells Haradalta that he is
•eager to witness his pupil's performance and would
do so next day. He is tender and considerate to his
•queens even when they thwart and upbraid him.
 HIS PBRIODi PERSOKALITF AND POBTRY 237

Samabhritika says about him (con¬

siderate to the feelings of Dharini). This cA/-
karakshana is one of the many virtues of Agnimitra
and instances of it abounded in the play* He
moves throughout the play with the composed grace
of bearing and manner (Dakshinya) that comes-
only to those who are noble in birth and noble in
soul. He says that Dakshinya is his Kula^raia
(family vow). But yet his royal dignity is such that
he inspires reverence in all. He is a Dhirodatta as
well as a Dhiralalka Nayaka, to use the technical ex¬
pressions of writers on aesthetics and dramaturgy.
Mr, Ryder's criticism that “ there is in Agnimitra, as
in all heroes of his type, something contemptible ”
may be smart but is not just and true.

Butthekingis most vividly sketched in the

play as a lover. He has a keen and vivid sense of
the beautiful in human life as well as in the life of
nature. He has a high regard for womanhood and
respects as much the mental graces of women as thdr
physical loveliness. He says
(women have an inborn and innate keenness of
mind). His descriptions of nature and of emotional
moods have as much restraint as passion. In fa^
 238 SAMI) ASA

it is such restrained passion that is the secret of

the union of ^rength and delicacy and sweetness.
He says in a great stanza that the higher love is
that wherein two lovers of equal and pure passion
fling away their lives knowing that fate has denied
them the consummation of their love. His love for
Malavika was a full and dominating love.

w ir Act II verse 16.

The other male characters in the play need but
a slight mention. The dandng masters Haradatta
and Genadasa are slightly but clearly drawn. Gana-
dasa is proud of his art, irascible, and of fine
mettle. The Vidushaka is more fully portrayed
in this play than in yikramorvasiya or Sakuntala.
He is not so full of scintillating wit as the fools of
Shakespeare. But he has ingenuity as well as
humour. He is not a mere promoter of royal love
intrigues. He has a keen love of beauty in nature
and in human form. He says that in the royal gar¬
den the Lakshcni of spring is more fair and de¬
corated than a young maiden.

and that the ^ring if of achieved adoleseeoce

 B18 i*R«ior>, ri5a«oKALiTr and pobtby 239

He calls Malavika the honey of the eyes

Hs is full of wise reflections on life. He says that
learning becomes more expert by teaching.

aftrrtfRftsft di: f^mr i

He is full of vivid and humorous verbal dis¬
plays. He calls the king as a kite hovering near a
butcher s shop-eager yet afraid. In his turn he ij
described by Nipunika as a bull in the bazaar which
sits and steeps sitting there.

?? arr^uir i
Among all the female characters, Dharini, Ira-
vati, Malavika and Vakulavalika and Kauriki are
well drawn. I am dealing elsewhere with Kalidasa’s
power of characterisation and referring only 16
special features in these chapters dealing with hfs
individual works. The name Dharini itself has
been well-chosen. Self-control and capaciousness of
soul arc her chief traits. She is full of graciou«Cis
and dignity. The Parwrajika refers in Act I, v«<e
16, to her being as forgiving as the earth
In the language of Indian aestheticians she is Pra-
galbha and Dhira. Her matronliness goes hand in
240 KALIDASA

kand with love. She is attached to her lord and to

her children and to her dependents. She is well
called by Kausika as Kccropo/n? (the wife of a hero)
and yirasunu (the mother of a hero). She is a
keen lover and promoter of art. She rules her royaT
household wisely and well. The king shows the
highest regard to her and the tenderest consideration
to her feelings and makes pleasing her one of his
prime cares in life. She is as shrewed as she is for¬
giving. She easily sees through the king’s man¬
oeuvre in Act I to have a sight of Malavika and tells
him that if he showed as much skill in state affairs
as in his a^airs of the the heart it would redound
to his honour and g^ory. She is loyal to her word.
After promising to Malavika that she would fulRL
her wish if the Asoka tree blossomed after the
dohada ceremony, she faithfully carries out her
plig})ted promise* For the sake of her son’s success
she offers up prayers and gives gilts of piety.
When she learns about her son’s victory from her
attendant, she loads the latter with jewels so much
so that the latter gratefully exclaims that she has
become a peripatetic box of jewels. She is thus full
of dignity and generosity and other loveable qualities
despite her shrewdness and caustic humour.
 HIS PERIOD, PBRSOHALITT AHD POBTRT 24^

Iravati on the other hand is young and pas¬

sionate and impetuous and impulsive and is flushed
with youth and loveliness and wine. She takes ^
offence soon and forgives slowly. In the language of
Sanskrit rhetoricians she is Pragalbha and Adhira,
She is fond of pleasure and is always apprehensive
that she might be displaced in the king's affe<ftions*
by a younger and lovelier queen. She thus forms
a fine foil to Dharini and Malavika.

The character of Malavika is charming and at¬

tractive and is painted with all the strokes of art by a
genius who is capable of producing the maximum of
effe<5ts with the minimum of means. She has the
highest feminine charms of bashfulness and modeity.
Her nature is one of admirable purity and delicacy
and sweetness. In the language of Sanskrit rhe-
toriaans she is a Mugdha. She is of a quick mind
and becomes an expert in the dancing art with sl^t
inftruddon. Her tenderness for other's feelings is a
marked trait of her character. When she itretches
her foot for decoration by Vakulavalika for the
dohada ceremony, she asks the latter to forgive her
rudeness in stretching out her foot. She has quick
sensibilities and an afledtionate disposition. Her pad-
X. 1. 16.
242 KALIDASA

«nce during her early trials in life is another pleasing

trait in her. She is thus of a quite diffierent type
from Dharini and Iravali.

Of the many female attendants in the play,

Vakuiavalika deserves a prominent mention. She is
pasrionately attached to Malavika and promotes her
fortunes with assiduous love. When Malavika be¬
sought her fargiveness for ^retching out her foot she
replied: "You are my own body”. When Malavika
asks her to help her in her misfortunes, she replies
with a pun on her name: "Vakulavalika (the garland
of Vakula flowers) smells all the sweeter when it k
crushed”. The ruling principle in her nature flashes
out in her advice to Malavika to requite love by love

The pidture of Kausiki alone remains to be

considered. Kalidasa has tried his uttermost to
make it full and attradtive. She is an old woman
and the Vidushaka makes humorous reference to her
moonbeam tresses She is
called by one and all Arya and Bhageoati and
Pandita. As already ponted out by me Kalidasa
does not put in the mouth of the king any words
disapproving of a woman s assumption of the orange
 HIS PERIOD, PBRSOXALirr AND POETRY 243

robe, when she Aates at the end of the play how

she became an ascetic {Pariorajiko) when her
brother was killed in defence of Malavika who was
then carried away by the bandits. On the other
hand he says that her adt was that of good persons
She is however not an ascetic
hating life and human beings, but an ascetic full of
love of art and friendliness to all. A saint severely
aloof from life would be too high and shadowy for a
drama which is concerned with warm-blooded
figures in a £tate of hodile clash or friendly interplay.
She is an expert in medical knowledge as well as
ae^hetic knowledge and arti^ic appreciation. She
is a paiSt iftaAer in decorative skill and Queen
Dharini asks her to apparel and bejewel Malavika
as a queenly bride in a fitting way. At the same
time she knows that in the art of dance the body
should not be too heavily loaded by jewels which
would encumber the artift and di^radt the attention
of the audience. She says :

E<rirr> i
I ”

She shows an intimate knowledge of the art of

dance. She is a clever doryteller and is sought by
 244 KALTDASA

Queen Dharini to while away her time and improve

her mind. At the same time she never forgets or
omits the ceremonial respe<5t to sovereignty and
never want into the royal presence without taking at
lead a fruit as a present. She had attendants of
her own in the palace and was treated with rever¬
ential courtesy by all of them. In conclusion, I may
well quote the beautiful simile by which the king
compares his queen to the Veda (Scripture) and
Kausiki to the Adhyatraavidya (the Science of the
Soul).

II
One other aspect of the play also deserves to
be borne m mind, it shares with Mtxdrarak.shasa
and other plays the di^indtion of being a hi^orical
play. In Shakespeare’s plays we find taught the
truth that a country cannot prosper unless there are
interna] harmony and external power, while the
panorama of English life is unrolled to us in the
course of its evolution. In this play also we have
a clear suggestion that there should be a ^rong
central power ruling over a united India.
 CHAPTER XI n.

Vikramorvasiya-
rriHlS play is one of great beauty and altraiJtivc-
^ ness and forms a sui generis in the realm of
dramatic composition, Mr. Ryder's view that the
play is a failure is in my opinion entirely wrong* It
is Kalidasa's supreme merit that he had not only an
originality of his own in the matter of ftylc and
thought but had a diftinA and wonderful vein of origi¬
nality in his choice of themes, in his subtle and arti^
transformation of them consUtently with the laws of
poetic truth and poetic beauty, and in his originaboo
of new literary forms. Ju^ as the Megha Sandesa
was the hr£t sandesa kooya, even so this play is the
oldeit musical opera in India—an opera in which
the charm is heightened by its being woven into a
play full of wonderful suggediveness. Mr. Ryder
thinks that the play was the Ia£t work of Kalidasa
■and was probably not produced ia his lifetime.

f
 246 EALI0&8A

**Some support is lent to this theory by the fadt that

the play is filled with reminiscences of Sakuntala. in
small matters as well as in great; as if the poet $
imagination had grown weary and he were willing
to repeat himself.'* This is a mere guess. I rather
think that Sakuntala is the poet's ripeA and moft
mature work. The pet ideas and fancies and ex¬
pressions of the poet occur in both the plays but this
is a natural feature in all poets. If any inference
oould be drawn from insufficient data, it seems to me
that the prayer in the lait danza of Sakuntala shows
—like the epilogue in the T't'mpes/—that the poet
b bidding farewell to the world, wishing it well and
and desiring liberation and beatitude for himself.

yrkramoDfastya belongs to the species of

dramatic composition known as TrotaJ^o which has
been thus defined in books on Indian iC^hetics.

rRsnf; ii
It muit consifl of 7 or 8 or 9 or 5 Adlst it
•j ^ ^ '

muA concern both divine and human personages; and

the Vidushaf^a (buffioon) should appear in every ^
Acf of the play. ^
 HIS PBB10I>» PBRSONALITT AND POBTBY 2^

T*hcre arc two recensions of ihe play, one in

Devanagari and Bengali characters with the com'
mentary of Ranganatha in A. D. 1656 and the'
other in South Indian manuscripts with the com'
mentary of Katayavema about A. D. 1400. The
former contains Apabhramsa verses with directions
as to the mode of singing them but these verses are
absent in the South Indian edition. The northern text
calls the play a Trotaka while the southern text calls
it a Nataka. Mr. Keith has given various reasons
for not rejecting the northern manuscript. I have
described above what are the essential elements to
a Trotaka and it seems to me that the play has got
those characteristics.

Kalidasa has used the previous slender elements

of the story and transformed them into a great work
of Art. The story of the love of Pururavas for
Urvasi is as old as the Rig Veda (See X, 195).
In the above said Rig Vedic hymn he requests her
to bless him with her company again. The hymn'
is explained in the Sathapatha Brahmana, 11, 5, 1.
The story of the birth of Pururavas himself is in¬
teresting to note when we attempt to understand his
character. He was the son of King 11a. Ila entered
 246 KALIDASA

a forest in respect of which Parvati ha<i ordained

that whichever man enters it should become a
woman. He became a beautiful woman. God
Budha, who is the son of God Chandra, fell in love
with her and had Pururavas as his son by her. I la
afterwards became a man by seeking the grace of
Parvati.

The story of Pururavs and Urvasi is given in a

detailed, though a crude, form in various Puranas
such as Bhagavata, Vishnu Purana, and Padma
Purana. The story runs as follows:—Urvasi was
cursed by Gods Mitra and Varuna to leave heaven
and become the consort of a mortal. She fell in love
with Pururavas and became his consort on condition
that he should keep safe her pet rams and should
never allow himself to be seen without dress by her.
Some GanJharoos, with the object of restoring
U(Oasi to heaven, carried off the rams during night.
Pururavas jumped naked out of his bed to pursue
them. They then flashed a lightning and revealed
him to Urvasis view. Urvasi thereupon flew away
to heaven. Pururavas wandered all over the land
in search of her. He found her sporting with other
heavenly nymphs in a lake in Kumkshdra. She
 HIB PERIOD, PBRS05IALITT AND POBTBT 249

agreed to return to Kim and consoled him by going to

him once every year. She bore him six sons Ayus,
DKiman, Amavasu, Visvavasu, Satayu, and Srutayu.
The Icing wanted to have her company always and
was disconsolate when she went away to heavem
The Gandharoas gave him a brazier containing fire
so that he may perform sacrifices and get the desired
boon. He placed it on the ground and went in
search of Urvasi. When he returned without finding
her he found two trees, a Sami tree and an asvatiha
tree, in the spot. He took a branch from each and
rubbed them together and produced fire. With such
fire he performed many sacrifices and attained to the
rank of a Gandharva and was blessed with Urvasi s
company for ever. In the Matsyapurana we find
a version which was the one that evidently appealed
moSc to Kalidasa. It is Staled in it that Dharma,
Aiiha, and Kama once appeared before Pururavas
and asked him to State who was the highest. He
.awarded the palm to Dharma. Artha thereupon
pronounced a curse on him that he should fall
through avarice. Kama cursed him and said that
he should become separated from his bride Urvasi
and wander in the foreft of Kumara in the slopes of
the Gandhamadana mountain in a mood of dislrac-
 250 KALIDASA

tioR at his separation from KIs beloved bride.

Pururavas had already rescued Urvasi from the
demon Kcsi and won her heart. One day when
Urvasi was peisonating Lakshmi in the sage
Bharata*s drama in heaven describing Lakshmi>
svayamvara (self-choosing of her lord), she was so
engrossed with the thought of her lover that she for¬
got her part. Bharata cursed her. She was then
reAored to Pururavas and bore him eight sons viz.
Ayus, Dhritayu, Aswayu Dhanayu, Dhriliman,
Vasu, Divijata, and Satayu. The :ftory as narrated
in the Brihatkalha is slightly different. Urvasi and
Pururavas fell in love with each other in heaven.
Once while Rambha danced in heaven the king
laughed at an error made by her. Tumburu, the
teacher of the art of dance in heaven, cursed him to
be separated from Urvasi. The king then propiliat"
ed God Vishnu at Badarikasrama and regained
Urvasi.

Professor Wilson says that the play mu^ have

preceded the Puranas for “had it been subsequently
Composed) the poet would either spontaneously or
m deference to sacred authority have adhered more
closely, to the Puranic legend'’. This seems to me
 HIS PBRIOD, PBRSOXALITT AND POETRY 251

to be an erroneous view. Kalidasa allowed himself

the privQegc of suiting and shaping his materials so
as to bring out his ideals of life and love and satisfy
his keen sense of art. This is preeminently seen in
Saktiniala, where he has modified and enriched the
story as found in the Mahabhafata. Would it be
right to say that he lived anterior to the Bharata !
Even very recent poets have taken liberties even
with such a story as that of Valmikls Ramayana.
The success of poetic license is its own excuse and
justification. As has been well said : sni?
sisnqf^! (the poet is the free creator of his own
universe of art).

It was by touching up and transforming old

materials with consummate art that Kalidasa, like
Shakespeare, achieved his highest dramatic effetSs.
Mr. Ryder thinks that Kalidasa has ruined a splendid
tragic story. This again is due to the occidental
passion for violent effects. Mr. Ryder is also wrong
in thinking that the original story was tragic at all.
By introducing Queen Ausinari he brought into the
play an element of staid sober-tinted human love as
a foil to the divine romance that took the heart of
Pururavas by storm. The introduction of the story
 252 Kalidasa.

about Urvasi uttering the name Pururavas instead of

Purushottama during the staging o( a play in heaven
and about the curse of BKarala and the favour shown
by Indra facilitates the development of the moitf of
the drama. Indra’s first direction was that Urvasi
should return to heaven as soon as the king saw his
son by her. This story gives an air of greater
naturalness and loveliness to the story than the story
about the rams and the Icing in undress. It also
shows by an unsaid and subtle suggediveness that
lovers young dream finds its consummabon as well
as the close of its dawned and youthful flush when
a child comes to link the lovers with the world and
with life behind and beyond and the generations
each with each. At the same time the final decree
of Indra enabled Pururavas to retain the society of
his beloved and gave his love a new plenitude and
amplitude of bliss. There are many points common
to this play and to Sakuntala. In both the heroes
belong to the lunar race ; the heroines in both have
a divine element in them ; in both the hero and the
heroine love at first sight; we see also a sage*8 curse
and a ring episode and in both we see heroic offsp¬
ring brought up in a hermitage and restored to the
throne. Mr. £. B. Cowell says well in his intro-
 HIS PBRIOO, TBRSONALITT AND PORTRT 253’

du<5tion to his translation of the play. *'i''ikoramor'

oasiya is a drama by the same elegant hand that
wrote Sakuntala—tradition and internal evidence
alike bearing witness to the identity of authorship. In
each we see the same exquisite polish of style, the
same light touch in painting scenery and charader, and
yet the dramas are “like in difference,” and each has
the separate personality, as well as the mutual like¬
ness, which characterise the twin offspring of the
same creating mind.” The ilory as developed in
the play runs as follows:—King Pururavas, when
returning to the earth from the solar orb where he
had gone to make obeisance to the Sun-God, rescued
Urvasi and her companion Chitralekha from the
demon Kesin and reftored them to the other celestial
nymphs (Apsaras). Pururavas and Urvasi fell deeply
in love with each other. Queen Ausinari suspected
and later discovered this fad and upbrmded the
king in a violent way. During the performance of a
drama entitled the marriage of Lakshmi written by
Sarasvati and exhibited on the dage by the sage
Bharata, Urvasi who personated Lakshmi when
asked whom she loved replied “Pururavas” instead
of “Purusholtama”. Thereupon the sage cursed
her to fall from heaven to the earth. Indra how-
 254 KALIDASA

ever modified the curse and directed her to live with

Pururavas till he saw his son by her. The Queen
Ausinari worshipped God Chandra (the moon) and
sought the king's favour and gave her consent to his
marrying Urvasi. Urvasi, who, herself unseen, saw
this scene, revealed herself and requited the king's
passionate love. After some time she unwittingly
entered a grove sacred to God Subramania in the
Gandhamadana hill and was transformed into a
creeper. The king maddened by her loss goes
through (he forest hither and thither asking all objects,
animate and inanimate, there to give him tidings of
his beloved. This occurs in the fourth Act and is
one of the many occasions wherein Kalidasa exhibits
the supremacy of his art. It contains matchless music
and poetry. The king s wild rambling fancies and
broken utterances excite our compassion. The king
gets a jewel called SangamaniyOt and with that
jewel in his hand he embraces a creeper to which
he feels irresistibly attracted. At once the creeper
becomes Urvasi and he is reunited to her. Both
then return to the capital and live in joy. One
day a vulture carries away the jewel but falls pierced
an arrow. The arrow is brought to the king
who finds in it the inscription Ayus, son of
 fllJS r£«l01>, PBHSONAI.ITT AM> P0BTB7 255

Pururavas. Immediately afterwards a female ascetic

with whom Urvasi had left the boy brings the boy
to the the kings audience-hall. The king is over¬
joyed but his joy is turned to grief when he learns
that the coming of his beloved son means the going
of his beloved queen. At that moment Narada
comes from Indra with the news that Indra has
decreed that Urvasi is to live with the king all through
life. The king becomes overjoyed and inilals the
prince as the Yuoaraja (heir-apparent). The play
thus closes amidft general rejoicing.

Professor H. H. Wilson has remarked about

the play : *'Both persons and events are subject to
an awful control, whose interference invests them
with a dignity superior to their natural level. Fate
is the ruling principle of the narrative; and the
monarach and the nymph, and the sovereign of the
gods himself, are portrayed as subject to the inscru¬
table and inevitable decrees of destiny'*. It is not
fate, in the sense of a blind self-active power,
that is the presiding deity of life, according to
the Hindu view of Kfe. It is rather to the Grace
of God acting according to Law and dispensing the
appropriate fruit of Karma which itself is a resultant
 KALtDASA
256
of action and desire. It was the jewel which came
from the lotus feet of Goddess Parvati which effected
the rcunioaiof the separated and disconsolate lovers.
I shall discuss Indian dramatic ideals and methods
and motifs elsewhere in this work. Prof. Wilson
says well further : “The chief charm of this piece is
its poetry. The story, the situations, the characters,
are all highly imaginative and nothing can surpass
the beauty and justice of many of the thoughts.

In the play as well as elsewhere in his works

the chief inspiration has always come to Kalidasa
from Valmiki who was not only the Adikooi (the
oldest poeO but was also par excellence the poet’s
poet. The main moti/of the matchless fourth Act
of the play was taken from Valmiki’s description of
Rama’s wandering in the forest after his separation
(fom Sita. Kalidasa who was a consummate dramatist
knew well how to select the most telling incidents and
ideas and combine them into a dramatic whole. He
knew that a dramatic situation implies intensity and
concentration. The result is a play of great charm
which combines both dramatic power and literary
beauty.

yikramorvasiya was evidently midway bet>

 HIS PBRIOD, PBMONALITT AND POHTRT 257

ween Malavikagnimitra and Sakwtala in point of

time^nay, in point of skill and perfection as well.
There is evidently some artistic design and fore-
thought in his selecting two great kings of the lunar
race (Chandra i^amsa) as the heroes of his two
greatest plays. He had already devoted a great epic
poem to the kings of the solar race and had meant
that poem to be a warning forefinger to India. More
about this later on. In these plays he glorified
India's kings of the lunar race and sought to inspire
India with a vision of her birth and her mission as
a self-unified ruler of the earth {Chaluranta
Mahisapatni, to use a great phrase which occurs
in Sal^untala). There is also a significance in
the meeting of the human and the divino" ele¬
ments of life in the love motif in the two plays^
In yikramoroasiya the heroine is a denizen of the
world of Gods. The heroine in Sakuntala is more
humanised and is described as the child of Irans—
cendentai austerity and transcendental beauty and
charm. In both plays chivalry is the feeder of love, -
though the interlinking of souls by youth and love¬
liness by the process of elective affinity is the origin
of love. In both the plays we find introduced and
described at the end a noble boy who is at once a
E. I. 17.
258 KAL70A8A

iullilmenl and a promise. In both the plays we

find the characteristic and peculiar Indian idea of the
interplay of the human and the superhuman elements.
in this play we do not find the same perfection
oi( skill in dramatic construction as in Sckuntala.
Kalidasa had greater freedom of characterisation
of) a perfect woman in Sakuniala than in this
play, because there he had to describe a young and
iniMcent and high-souled forest maiden whereat
htf e the heroine is an elderly (though ever^youthful)
experienced demi-goddess who was carried away
by a tempestuous passion for a mortal lover.
Further, in the delineation of Dushyanta the poet^
has revealed also other royal and noble and loveable
trails of character viz., his love of hts people, his
sympathy, his mercy, and his high and innate mental
purity and moral rectitude. Professor Wilson says :
**The subject of each is taken from heroic mythology,
and a royal demigod and a nymph of more than homan
mould are the hero and the heroine of either; there
is the same vivacity of description and tenderness, of
feeling in both, the. like delicate be auty in the
thoughts and extreme elegance in the style. U may bo .1

difficult to decide to,which the palm belongs but tbe

slo^ o£ ^ present p)^ is pe^hsis iQcre skilful^

.Cl .1 .1
 HIS PKRIOl), PieitSONALITT AND POETRY 259

woven and the events rise out of each other more ^

naturally than in Sakuntala, while^on the other handi ^
there is no one personage in it so interesting as the
heroine of that drama.*'

Out of the characters in the play, the chief

figures are of course Pururaoas and Uroasi. Mr.
Ryder calls him “a mere conventional hero.** But
this is due to a mere prejudice. In the play Puru-
ravas is frequently called a Rajarishi (royal sage).
He is chivalrous and fearless and noble in soul and ^
is honoured by his people as well as by Indra in
heaven. He has also the loveable virtue of humility
•and attributes his victory to the grace of Indra.
<Act I Verses 6 & 17). Chitraratha says well
about him (and impliedly about heroism generally);

His tender solicitude (Dakshinya) in regard to

Queen Ausinari in spite of his infatuation for Urvasi
is another attractive trait. He says in Act li:

^ H W fpiR; 1|
His instinctive love for his son is also admirably
delineated in the play (see Act V Verses 9 and 10).
But the chief trait of the hero which is described and
260 KALCOASA

developed in the play — like thal of Romeo in Romeo

and Juliet - is his poetic soul >vhich is remarkably
sensitive to beauty and to love which arc the Moon
and the Sun of the sky of a poet's soul. He says
that the Moon God or the God of love alone could
have created such peerless beauty as that of Urvasi
(Act 1 Verse 10). Even in his madness the flashes
of his poetic mind play li^^htnint; on the dark cloud
of his grief caused by his separation from his beloved.
On regaining her he exclaims that his physical and
his spiritual being have been thrilled by reunion.

His appreciation of the beauty of nature is equally

acute. He describes the beauty of Spring as shining
like the beauty of a woman at the junction point of
girlhood and womanhood (Act II Verse 7). He
describes the Moon as going into the conjunction
with the Sun for enabling the performance of pious
rites of sacrifice on the holy occasion, as the giver of
nectar to the Gods, as the illuminer of eyes failing in
darkness, and as the crest-gem of God Siva. (Act
111 Verse 7). He has not the self-restraint and
composure of Dushyanta but his loss of balance is
due to his excessive love and excites our sympathy^
 BIS PERIOD, PBKSONAUTT AND POBTBr 261

Of the other male characters we need mention

only prince Ayus, who is full of heroism and who has
an instinctive filial affection and reverence for the
king and the Vidushaica who occupies a less promi'
Rent position in this play and in Sakuntala than in
Malavikagniiuitra but who is full of humour and
witty criticism of life. The Vidushaka is described
as bursting with the royal secret. He describes
heaven as being an uninteresting place as there is
nothing to eat or drink there and as beings live there
like fish with unwinking eyes. He has a keen love
of natural beauty and describes the moonrise thus:

Of the female characters we may dismiss with

a few words Queen Ausinari and Chitralekha. The
Queen is at first angry with the king on account of
his love for Urvasi. But very soon she repents and
seeks to win his forgiveness and gives him leave to
seek his heart’s desire because she finds her truest
happiness in and through his happiness. Even
Urvasi praises her magnanimity of soul and says that
^he is as noble in soul as Indra’s Queen*
 262 KALIDASA

WH I ST
9f<hr ii

Chttralekha caiis her Mahanubhava (one of true nobi'

fity of sotd). The king in spite of his overmastering
passion foi Urvasi has a true and tender affection
'for his'queen. Urvasi says of him that he is a
Prfpakolatra. I do not agree with the view that
he was insincere in his profession of love for Queen
Ausinari. Urvasi's high regard for her is apparent
from her asking Prince Ayus to bow to her and giet
her blessing. She tells him that the Queen is his
lyaiha i^Qia (elder mother).

Chitralekha is admirably described throughout

the play. She is like i^ak^laoaliko in Malaviko"
gnimilra and Priyam'vada in Sa^t/nfa^o. She
has wit and scintillating s^ieech and is deeply atta>
ched to her friend. When asked by the king where
Urvasi was, she replies: “The lightning is seen
only after the cloud is seen first.” When Urvali
says that her necklace was caught by a creeper and
iuks her to rUease it, she, knowing that it was a
ruse to steal another look at tbe king replies: “Yob
are inextricably '6fu|giKt7^ I c^ot fdease you.**
 H18 PERIOD, PBR80KAHTT ASD POBTBT 263

She knov/s ail secret and valuable vidyas (idences)

and says; fE^TTstfft I

The donunatmg figure is ol course Urvasi.

Ryder says: "*Urvasi is too much ol a nymph to be
a woman, and too much oi a woman to be a
nymph/* This is of course very antithetical stfrfd
clever but it is not true. Urvasi is the incarntite
spirit of beauty and love and youth and delight.
She is the soul of the soul, the Epipschydidfi,
She can be best described in Shelley's words, lie-
cause Kalidasa is at once the Shelley and the Shake¬
speare of India. *

*'Art thou not void of guile.

A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and musi^* liKe
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A s&
Which moves not in (he moving Heavens albtid?
A smile sfi^id dark frovvns? A gentle tone
'Afliid rtfde voiceis? A beloved light? ^
a SoKfude, a Rdil^c, a Delict? ■’* ’
A Lute whkK thoise who 1^ has fau^t Yo pltiy
' Make mui4: on, to sobfhe the roughest dsfy
And lull'fond grief asleep? A buried tretii<it^>
 26A KALIDASA

A cradle of young thoughts of wbgless plea¬

sure?”

In the case of an ordinary human heroine the

poet could describe lovely and loveable human cha¬
racteristics and feelings but this could not be done
(io the case of an /Ipsarns. But he could describe
m regard to the latter splendour of form, divine
thrills of bliss, and actions in heaven and mid-air
and earth. She is of the upper regions-a being of
buoyancy and brightness and bliss. Urvasi knows no
^aw but love. She says: JtT I

This links the immortal to the mortal and humanises

her divinity. She even parts with her child to ensure
her slay with the king. Her love for her Apsaras
friends is another lovely human trail in her. She
is of immortal youth and loveliness. The king calls
her (the lovely one among the divine beings)
,.and (the lady of eternal youth). I cannot
do better than quote here two wonderful stanzas
and set them side by side with Tagore's wonderful
poem on Urvasi. , The king tells Urvasi to take
)um home on a new rain-cloud as an aerial car,
having the flashing lightnings as its standard and
rdocorated with the rainbow as a lovely painting.
 HIS PBRIOD, TEBSOHALITT AND POBTHT 265

^3nJT^

Equally, nay even more, beautiful is (he descrip¬

tion of the dancing seas and the clouded skies.
What a setting for a play about Urvasi !

i « Wllf m :
vwT^is.a®wifiiTg5rfi4H(H5 I

(The Sea with its cloud-hued limbs dances

.attractively with uplifted arms in the shape of billows
raised by the eastern gales. His chiming anklets
consist of Hamsa and Chakravaka birds and saffron-
coloured conch-shells. He is wearing a garland of
dark lotuses in the form of sea-monsters. The
waves dashing on the shore form the rhythmical
beating of time. The season of new rain’-clouds
envelops the universe everywhere).
266 KALIDISA

Tagore’s great poem ruos as follows:—

*‘Likc some slemless flower, blooming in iby self,

when didst thou blossom Uryasi?
That primal spring, thou didst arise from the
yeast of Ocean,
In thy right hand nectar, venom in thy left
The swelling mighty Sea like a serpent tamed
with spells.
Drooping his thousand towering hoods,
Fall at thy feet I
While as the Kunda blossom, a naked beauty
adored by the Gods,
Thou stamless One. *

Wast thou never bud, never maiden of tender

0 eternally youthful Urvasi! [years,.
Sitting alone, under whose dark roof.
Didst thou know childhood s play toying with
gems and pearls?
At whose side, in some chamber lit with the
flashing of gems,
Lulled by the chant of the sea^waves, didd
- thou sleep on coral bed,
A smile on thy pure face? ; ;; -? . «;>
HIS PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POBTBY ’267

That moment when thou awakedst into the

universe, thou wast framed of youth
In full blown beauty?

From age to age thou hast been the world s-

beloved, O surpassed in loveliness, Urvasi!
Breaking their meditation, sages lay at thy feet
the fruits of their penance;
Smitten with thy glance, the three worlds
grown restless with youth;
The blinded winds blow thine intoxicating •
fragrance around;
Like the black bee honey-drunken, the infatua-
ted poet wanders with greedy heart,
Lifting chants of wild Jubilationl
While thou.thou goest with jingling
anklets and waving skirts.
Restless as lightning!

In the assembly of Gods, when thou danccsl

in etstacy of Joy,
O Swaying Wave, Urvasi!
The company of billows in mid-oceaii swell
and dutcfc, beat 6n beat;
In the crests of the com the skirts of Earth
tremble;
 KALIDASA

From thy necklace stars (all ofi in the sky;

Suddenly in the breast of man the heart forgets
itself.
The blood dances!
Suddenly in the horizon thy zone bursts as
under;
Ah, Wild in abandonment!

She will not return, she will not return! That

Moon of Glory has set
She has made her home on the mountain of
setting, Lass Urvast!
Therefore today, on earth, with the joyous
breath of Springs-I }
Mingles the long-drawn sigh of some ^eternal
seperation,
On the night of Full Moon, when the world
brims with laughter,
Memory, from somewhere far away, pipes a
flute that brings unrest,
The tears gush out!
Yet in that weeping of the spirit Hope awakes
and lives.
Ah, Unfettered One!” >
 HIS PRKIOD, PBRSONaLITY AND POETBf 269

Mr. A. B. Keith says with a sioguiar laclc of

taste about Urvasi: “Her magic power to watch
her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation
is as unnatural as the singular laclc of maternal affec¬
tion which induces her to abandon forthwith her
child rather than lose her husband; her love is
selfish} she forgets her duly and respect to the
Gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is
the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy.”
This critique altogether misses the point of Kalidasa's
conception and characterisation of Urvasi. The
poet describes a denizen of the world of gods, a
being who is quintessential beauty and is dominated
by quintessential love. She has magic powers
which heighten the effedt of the scene when she
overhears the king's declaration of love of herself
while she herself is unseen. Her excessive love for
her husband which would become fruitless if her
husband saw their child led to her placing her child
in charge of her friend. We may well take it that
she met her child often and watched with love his
growth and his upbringing. The other alleged defedts
are all phases of her excessive and passionate love,
and we can never understand her character unless
we remember the elemental passion of her nature.
 270 KALIDASA

Equally ineffedlual and unacceptable is Mr.

Keith’s remarks about the denoument. “ The
minor charaifters are handled with comparative lack
of success; the incident of the boy Ayus is forced;
and the ending of the drama ineffedtive and flat.’’
On the other hand it seems to me that the tempes¬
tuous passion of the human king towards the celes¬
tial damsel takes on a human aspedt and comes
nearer to our minds and hearts in the fifth Act.
Passion is linked to the graces and sandtities of
domestic and national life, and the benedidtions of
Indra and Narada introduce the element of divine
approval which alone makes passion a purifying and
uplifting force. Only then does passion which is
born of mere love of beauty become a life-giviDg
foi'ce (the name of the child Ayus hints this well).
Only then does the human king Pururavas attain
true godlikeness by the unselfish and tranquil bliss of
his atfedion into which passion has become sublima¬
ted and transmuted and transfigured, and only then
■a gracious humanness descends on the divine Urvasi.
 CHAPTER XIV.

Sakuntala.

is tht greate^l of ICa)idasa*s plays, il was

about it that Goethe uttered the evcr-memora-
He poem ol appreciation :

"Would'st thou the young year’s blossoms and

the fruits of its decline.
And all by which the soul is charmed, enrap*
tured, fed 7
Would’a thou the earth and heaven itself in
one sole name combine 7
I name thee, O Sakuntala, and all at once is
said”,
Thk single ilanza describes what one world-
poet felt about another and sums up admirably the
real glories of the play. Sir Monier-Williams says:
No composition of Kalidasa displays more richness
of his poetical genius, exuberance of his imagina-
272 KALIDASA

bon, the warmth and play of his fancy, his pro¬

found knowledge of the human heart, his delicate
appreciation of its mo^ refined and tender emotions,
his familiarity with the workings and counter-work¬
ings of its conflidling feelings,—in short more entitles
him to rank as the Shakespeare of India**. Alexander
Von Humboldt says; ** Kalidasa, the celebrated
author of the Sakuntala, is a masterly dcscriber of
the influences which Nature exercises upon the minds
of lovers. Tenderness in the expression of feeling,
and richness of creative fancy, have assigned to him
his lofty place among the poets of all nations*’. The
drama of Sakuntala has always been regarded as one
of the greater glories of the world. It has been
selected by competent authorities as one of the
world’s one hundred be^ hooks. In India it has
been always admired as the moit beautiful reveladon
of dramatic genius. In literature there muit be
three elements present if it is to be a noble thing of
beauty and of joy. If true work of art mu^ have
individuality and mu^ be revelatory of personality ;
it mu^ be full of racial colour and temperament; and
it muA realise and reveal the universal elements in
life. Judged in the light of this great truth of art,
Sakoniala reveals the delicate fancy and chaAe and
 HIS PKRIOO, PERSONAUTT AND POKTRT 2)^3

creative imagination of the poet; it is Indian to the

core; and it presents those universal elements of love
and grief in separation and joy in reunion which are
of the very stuff of human life.

The Indian literature is full of sanity, serenity,

romantic idealism and spiritual vision. The Indian
drama mirrors life in its fulness. It is romantic and
not classical in its aim and appeal and achievenoent.
It presents life in all its variety —full of shadow and
of sunshine, of ^orm, and of peace. It has a glorious
and gorgeous setting amidst the sweetest splendours
and symphonies of Nature. These traits are more
abundantly present in Sakuntala than in any other
drama In the Elast or in the West. In it there is the
further Inner and heavenly beauty of the soul which
is invincible in its innocence and purity and devotion.

if we compare the story of Sakuntala^in the

Adi parva of the Mahabharata with the story as
handled and expressed in the great play of Kalidasa,
w'e see at once how, like Shakespeare, he filled
the rifts in the ore with pure gold. The story
occurs in Padma Purana also. But in it we find
the same version as in Kalidasa's play. In the
Mahabharata story the king meets Sakuntala in per-

X. I. 18.
 274 KALIDASA

son ancj she narrates the story o( her birth to him.

The king proposes marriage to her and she consents
but stipulates that their son should rule the king-
dom alter him. He agrees to it and marries her in
the GanJharoa form. A son is born to her and
grows up in the hermitage. The sage Kanva then
sends her and her son to the king. The king re^
cognises her but disowns her in open durbar. She
departs in anger. Then an aerial voice announces
her truth and her purity. The king then brings her
back and tells her that he disowned her lest his sub¬
jects should suspect the truth ol the marriage and
the legitimacy of their son and awaited the declara¬
tion of her truth and purity by a divine voice. He
finally accepts her and instals her son Bharata as khe
Ymtaraja (the heir-apparent to the throne).

This story has got the advantage of dlrectneae

but ethical and aesthetic refinement tells us that Kaln
dasa*s Kandliog of the story not only shows the pen
of a great dramatist having a keen eye to effe(flive
dramatic situations but shows also a wonderful
sense of poetic justice and aesthetic fttness. He has
successfully lifted Dushyanta into the rank of a
great Nayaka (hero) has furnished a new keyto the
 HIS PERIOD, PERSONA LITY AND POETRY 275

story, has given Sakuntala a new and radiant setting

and enhanced her glory outdistancing even that oi
Miranda, has probed the depths of the ambrosia|
ocean of love, and has given as the heavenly trea^
sure of new and rich inner experiences.

In the very lirit act, the flower garden scene, by

introducing Sakuntala in the midft of her two bosom-
friends, Kalidasa gives the natural and human set^
ting enhancing the beauty of her frame and sou)
which was to entrance and enrapture the pleasure-
satiated imperial nature of king Dushyanta. The
curse of the sage Durvasa and the episode of the
ring free the king s name from all stain and enable
the poet to describe the pathetic scenes of separation,
remorse and reunion. At the same time they intro¬
duce that psychological link by which the present
is linked to the past, by which effetft is linked to
cause, and by which human life is linked to the life
divine. Mr. Ryder says well that this device is
a divine cloud that envelops the drama, in no way
obscuring human passion, but rather giving to human
pasaons an unwonted largeness and universality. **
Equally masterly as a stroke of genius is the device
of the sending of Sakuntala to the king before her
 276 KALiruSA

child is born, This is in harmony with (he delicacy

and the idealisation characteristic of Kalidasa's
dramatic treatment of the plot. Equally remarkable
is the scene of the taking of Sakuntala by Menaka
to heaven. If the poet had sent Sakuntala back to
Kaava's asrama, he could not have impressed us
with a sense of the pathos of the situation and of the
purgation of Sakuntala's soul through suffering so
that her too ready amorousness might be expiated
and her love might grow in sureetness and strength
while preserving its softness. Her loss of her old
home and her old father and her old friends and
companions including her beloved creeper Vana-
jyotsna and her still more beloved fawn make her
grief all the more full of desolation. The heavenly
harmony of the lira four Acts has been stilled by the
tempest of aridenl sorrow. What but a mother-
heart can soothe her? What but heaven can recom¬
pense for the pains of earth? We can no more restore
her to Kanva 8 Asrama than restore a plucked
flower to the stem whereon it grew. The flower
of her nature grew in calmness and sweetness and
purity, unfading like the unfading flowers of heaven,
till the purified king reattained the dower of her
heavenlier love. The initial reference in the play to
 HIS PBRIOD, rERSONALITT AND EOETBT 277

Kanva $ going lo Somatirtha (which prepares our

mind for the coming curse), the narration of the
story of Sakunlala*s birth by Anasuya instead of by
herself, the story about the watering of the trees, the
delicate description of Sakuntala’s love in all its
fortunes, the aerial fl^hl to lndra*s heaven, the ^tory
as to BlKirata's amulet, the relinking of the king
and Sakuntala through the boy Bharata, and the
blessings of the sage Maricha add the crowning
touches of sweetness and loveliness to the beautiful
itory.

Thus Kalidasa s divine magic of poesy has

justified the king, lifted Sakuntala to the height of
such dr/ine figures as Sila and Savitri and Dama<
yanti, elevated love from the physical plane to the
plane of the soul, and introduced those elements of
life and glow and variety without which a dranna
would be but a narrative through the medium of
dialogue—something like one of Landor*s Imaginary
ConotnaiUms.

In the play the itory runs as follows:~ORe day

king Dushyanta went ahunting. When he was about
to kill some fawns in a forest, he heard the voice of
some hermits praying him not to do so. He accor*
 278 KALIDASA

dmgly withdrew hi$ arrow. At their request he

went into the hermitage of the sage FCanva there to
receive hospitality. There he saw along with her
(riends Anasuya and Priyamvada the divinely beau>
tifal Saktinfa/a who was the child ol Visvamitra
and Menaha but had been abandoned in the forest
and was brt’ought up by the sage Kanva. He and
Sakuntala (ell deeply in love with each other. He
learnt from her friends the ^ory of her birth.

The sages in the forest requested him to itay

for some time there and protect them. But at the
same time his mother sent word to him to return to
the capital as she had to celebrale a vowi He then
sant his companion Madhavya, the vidushaka (jester)^
!• the capital to represent him as his mother had
brought up both of them like brothers. He stayed
behind in the hermitage as the hermits had sought
his protection and as he could not tear himself away^
from Sakuntala*s presence.

When some time later he went into the forest

to find some relief from the grief of his love-tom
state, he saw Sakuntala lying down fanned by hef
-frieods. At their persuasion she told them, with
bashful unwillingness, about her love. They persaa-
 ais PSBIOD, FBBSOKALITT AVD POEXBT 279

dcd her to write a love-letter in a lotus leaF. The

king then revealed himself and his passion and pro'
mised to her friends that he would marry her accor-
ding to the Gandharva form of marriage and make
her his supreme queen. Thus the two passionate
lovers became husband and wife. The king then de*
parted to his capital giving Sakuntala his royal signet*
ring and saying that he would, within as many days as
the number of letters of his name in the ring, send
his state officials to bring her to his capital in Aate
with the pomp and ceremony due to a queen. The
love scene in the third Act is four times as large in
the Kashmir and Bengali recensions as it is in the
South Indian text.

Then followed the curse of Durvasas which

shattered in a moment this fair palace of love. He
came to Kanva’s hermitage, and finding himself neglec'
ted by Sakuntala who was then in a mood of abs*
traction lost in her thoughts of her absent lord, cur^
s^d her saying that as she forgot him her lord would
forget her. Her friends who were absent cuHing
flowers heard his strident words. Priyamvada ran up
to him and fell at his feet and prayed for forgive¬
ness. He relented and said that the Idng would
 280 KALIDASA

I’emember if Sakuntala should show some memorial

ornament (Abhijnana abharana) to him. Priyam-
vada felt consoled as Sakuntala had the royal signet-
ring given to her by the king.

Meantime the sage fCanva returned from his

pilgrimage and was glad to learn from a heavenly
voice about Sakuntala’s wedding. Though he loved
her dearly he resolved to send her to her lord’s man¬
sion and directed two of his disciples, Sarngarava and
Saradvata. to take her there. The forest deities
gave beautiful jewels and raiments to deck her like
the day. The sage fCanva gave her wholesome
and righteous words of counsel to guide her in her
new exalted sphere of life. She went round the
holy altar and took leave of all including her beloved
friends and fawn and creeper and her revered and
beloved father and went with her guides to the
palace of the king.

But the curse of Durvasas had clouded the

long’s memory. Sakuntala loit the ring when she
Wathed at Sachiteertham on her way to the palace.
At the interview the king disowned her as he was a
righteous king and could not aceept as wife a mar-
rtfid. woman whom he could racaJi .to hh mind
 HIS PBBJOD, PKESOSTALITY AND POETBY 281

as wedded by him. Her guides told her that they

could not take her back to the pure hermitage as
her place was in her husband's home whether he
would accept her or not. Denied by both she cried
out (or refuge, and Menaka bore her aloft to heaven.

In the meantime a fisherman found the ring in the

domach of a fish caught by him. The king's police
officials caught him and look the ring to the king.
This scene is full of broad farce and rollicking hu^
mour. At once the king’s memory became clear
and free from the cloud of the curse. He upbraid'
ed himself for his heartless cruelty to his beloved
and was distracted with grief. He spent all his
time in hopeless love of her and in painting her
form and talking about her beauty and her virtue.
Sanumati, a heavenly nymph, had been requested
by Menaka to know the Aatc of the king's mind io
regard to Sakuntala. She bore the happy news to
heaven.

Meantime Indra had sent his charioteer Matali

to bring the king to aid him aganiit demons. Ta
Biake the king shake off his lethargy, Matali seized
Medhavyaand threatened to kill him. Stung to action
the king seized his bow to kill Matali with an arrow
 282 KALIDASA

Matali then revealed himsell and his purpose. He

said *'A lighted faggot if it is shalcen begins to
blaze; and a serpent if angered lifts its crewed hood
to itrike. Even so an affront re^ores to a man his
potency of souP. He then took him to heaven
where victorious arms routed the demons. When
returoing after accepting the honour shown to him by
Indra, they descended on the Hemakuta mountain.
There the king met Bharala, his child by Sakuntala
and was reunited to his beloved and both accepted
with joy the blessings of the holy sage Maricha and
returned to their land and lived in happiness.

As I am describing elsewhere Kalidasa $ skilf

as a dramatic and other aspects of his poetic great'
ness, 1 shall not go into these features in this chap-
ter. 1 may however point out that this drama,
more than the other two plays, shows his greatest
powers at thek very zenith. Not only do we find
therein his characteristic excellences—his naturalness
and simplicity of expression, his golden felicity of
Ityle, his heavenly melody of verse, his lore of na*
ture at her lovelier, his creative imagination, his won¬
derful power of delineating sentiment and character,
and his intimate knowledge of the human heart
 HI« ?BR10D) PERBONALITT AND POBTRT 285

we find therein some other great and wonderfuJ

features as well. One of these is admirably brought
out by Rabindranath Tagore. He says:'* This
ancient poet of India refuses to acknowledge paS'
sion as the supreme glory of love; he proclaims
goodness as the final goal of love*'. He says further
IQ hk essay on 5ai^un/afa, Ils inner m^aningx “In
Goethe's words Sak^niala blends together the
young year's blossoms and the fruits of its maturity;
it combines heaven and earth in one.Goethe
says expressly that Sakuritala contains the history
of a development—the development of flower into-
fruit, of earth into heaven, of matter into spirit". He
says that Saktinlala elevates **love from the sphere
of moral beauty". He says again: "With matchless
art Kalidasa has placed his heroine at the meeting^
point of action and calmness, of Nature and Law,
of river and ocean, as it were . In
this drama Kalidasa has extinguished the volcanic
fire of tumultuous passion by means of the tears of
the penitent heart. Truly in Sakunfala there is
•ne Paradise Lost and another Paradise Regained".
He says further: "In her earlier foreft home Sakun-
tala had her awakenment of life in the reillcssness
 2d4 KALIDASA

of her youth. Id the later hermitage she attained

the fulfilment of her life’\

Sakiintala is one of the highest peaks of In>

dian racial acheivement not only because it has given
a perfect form and expression to the Indian ideal of
love. It has given an equally perfect form to the
Indian ideals of social and political life as well. It
.depicts a ilate of society where the elements of socie<
ty act in unison and concert. The individual is
shown in right relation to the family; the family is
shown in right relation to the italei and the social
life is shown in right relation to the super-social life.
The supremacy of tbe ethical life is asserted and
vindicated throughout the play. Further, as I shall
show later on, Kalidasa hints at the suzerainty of a
united India when the forces of renunciation and
righteous enjoyment are well-balanced and combined,
when the capital and the foreA know to resped and
benefit by each other, and when a great incarnation
of the racial life conceived in a hermitage and born
in heaven and trained by a sage is vouchsafed to the
land.

The play has given a perfect expression to the

passion of India (or the life diyiae. There is not a
 HIS PBRIOD, PKRSONALITY AND POETRY 28J

single trace of religious narrowness or bigotry or

sectarianism in the play. But we find in it asceti¬
cism in a mood of sympathy to life; we find sages
who could feel for the world; and we find a cons¬
ciousness of the guidance of the destinies of men by
a God of love. Further, we find descriptions of
the Almighty in terms which are noble and uplifting
and free from all taint of sectarian narrowness. The
play begins in the peace of one hermitage and ends
in the peace of another hermitage. It is the voice
of resurgent and renascent and triumphant and uni¬
ted and synthetic Hinduism as a world-religion.
We find in it the authentic expression of the great
Indian ideal of Santi (peace and love) protected by
righteous power.

1 now proceed to deal with the characters in

the play. Dushyanta was a Dharmic (righteous) soul.
In him KaKdasa symbolises the highest qualities of
Aryan manhood. When in spite of his love of the
chase be hears the voice of the sages to desift from the
hunt, he at once obeys the voice of Dharma (righteous¬
ness), He accepts the dictum that a Icings power
should be used only to help the distressed and never
to punish the innocent. When he learns that he has
 i66 KAUDASA

come to Kanva*s hermitage, he yearns to heed the

call of Dharma and bow to the sage and get his
blessings and to make himself pure by entering the
hermitage which is a home of holiness. He says

He leaves his followers behind and goes on foot

into the hermitage lest they should diAurb the peace
and sanctity of the forest retreat. He enters in plain
robes leaving aside the pomp and splendour of royal
pageantry. When he sees Sakuntala, his conscience
pure and trained in Dharma or righteousness, whis-
pers to him that she is born in a line which is fit to
hlend with his royal line. He says:

^ fc ii
He is the very soul of righteousness and truth and
honour. When he hears the call of the sages for
protection and the call of his mother to attend a
domestic ceremony, he unhesitatingly obeys the
call of public Dharma (duty). His love-making to
Sakuntala has got the noble reticences and delicacies
of a pure soul. Later on when the sages tent by
Kanva take Sakuntala to him he sends his preceptor
 HIS FBBIOD) PEBSOHALITT AND POBtBT 287

to reccire them and Ke receives them in the Agni-

griha. In the last Act when he learns that he was
in the holy sage Maricha*8 hermitage, he resolvas to
receive his blessings and aceepts his benediction with
becoming reverence.

1 have stressed first Kalidasa's delineation ol

Dushyanta as the ideal man because this gives the
key to his pourtrayal of Dushyanta as an ideal man
of culture, as an ideal lover, and as an ideal ruler.
Thus Dushyanta's dommant trait as an ideal man
b his Dharmic (righteous) nature. He is the
very soul of honour. His dignity and self-restraint
and self-control are equally remarkable traits of his
character. As Syala says in the play he is a
(i.e. having innate dignity of soul). He
preserves his self-command and dignity of bearing
in the face of Sarngarava's taunts. Only on one
occasion oiz, when he sees the ring and remembers
Sakuntala and his ill-treatment of her, his self-control
vanishes before the onset of a paroxysm of grief.
He has a rare gift of the power of self-examination.
He says in Act VI verse 26: “1 am not able t#
know my own feelings day afta* day. How can
I know by what way each of my subjects goes>**
288 RALIDARA

His humility is remarkable. Alter conquering the

Asuras by his prowess, he attributes his success to
Indra's grace. He says:

(Though I have carried out Indra*3 orders, yet the

exalted honour shown by him makes me fee! that I
have not rendered any meritorious service). He
says also

(If servants succeed in great undertakings, know

that that is due to their masters* gracious regard
for them).

He has further a vivid realisation of the divinity

that shapes our ends and says:

(The outlets of decreed events will open themselves

out everywhere). His chivalry and courtesy are
equally noteworthy. He could not brook to stt
Sakontala doing menial work and undertakes to
 Hlfi PERIOD* PSRS0NALIT7 AND POBTRT

water the trees on her behaU. He says about her

and her friends that they are of equal youth and
loveliness, though SakunUla k peerless aimong wo¬
men.

His sympathy extends even to the dumb creation.

He asks his servant to attend to tl; horses by bath**
ing them during the interval of his visit to the Her*
outage. In the hermitage he tenderly gives water
to a fawn and Sakuntala recalls it to his mind with
fond recollection. He is besides an ideal man n
his personal graces.

He is always aodve and is a master of weapons oi

war and he is strong though slender and handsome
in physical build.

Vf I

Adid says about him:

sn^r%: i
Though he is attacked to hunting yet he is not ex-
s, s. Id.
 290 KACIDA8A

cessively and inordinately load of it. He mb at

any moment turn away from it to art, to pleasure or
to the higher cares of the flate. In short, right¬
eousness, self-control, dignity, chivalry, aud heroism
are the great traits of his character. It has been well
said: "Dushyanta with his royal dignity, his heroic
strength, his boundless benevolence, his never-failing
courtsey, his rigid self-restraint, his impartiality, and
his affectionate disposition is one of the sublimest
virions that ever appeared before the eye of fancy,
and the portrait presented to us by the great Indian
dramatist is surpassingly grand and sublime.** He
is also rightly proud of his noble and exalted lineage.

^ etc.. I. 21 ; ^

He is thus an ideal man in every respect.

If such is the beautiful picture of Dushyanta as
an ideal man. even more attractive is Kalidasa*s
picture of Dushyanta as an ideal man of culture.
Mr. Ryder says that there is in him ** a shade too
much of the meditative to suit our ideal of more
alert and ready manhood.** But it is the combina¬
tion of meditation and action, of vigour and gracious-
Bcss that form our ideal of manhood whiah is not
 HIS PBIIOH, PSXSONALlTY AND POBTRT 291

less alert and ready than other ideals o^ manhood

bat is more humane and divine than them. The
king*s keen observation of nature k noteworthy.
True culture is equally at home in the Venlni of
nature as in the realm of art. His descriptioB of the
deer and the horse show his minute observation of
animal life. His description of the hermitage and
its beauties and its peculiar features shows equally
his keen and attentive and observant eye. He is
unsophisticated by town life or soveriegnty and is
able to realise the superiority of true loveliness in
sylvan scenes and without ardhcial aids to loveliness.
His keen sense of the beautiful and the sublime is
another chief glory of a man of true culture. In
ordinary natures habit and familiarity wear away the
edge of perception and the zest in life. He says:

(What does not set off the beauty of true loveliness

of form ?). It is from his mouth that we hear
those wonderful stanzas (Act I verse 20 and Act
V verse 21) which 1 regard as [the 'suir^s of the
entire world s literature on /Esthetics and which 1
shall discuss later on in this work. He is a keen
lover of the fine arts. loves and appreciates
 292T2 ■-*
«KALID4ftA

b«autiful music and says about Hamsapadika s song:

I Though he is an expert m the
art of line and colour, yet his soul so keenly alive to
beauty could and did forbid ail art and all joy ia life
when he realised that he had loA the qaeen of his soul.
Act VI verse 5 says ^ (he is averse le beau¬
tiful things). I regard^this as the higher sign of true
culture. The king's conversation has throughout
the play that combination of self-restrained yet qui¬
vering imagiaativeness and felicity of phrase and idea
which can be attained only by a soul truly vibrant
and responsive to culture in its highest and noblest
sense, I. At the same lime
he could unbend and see the comic side of life and
play like a child with Madavya.

Dushyanta is as much an ideal lover as he is

an ideal man and ideal man of culture. The fact
that he had other queens should not be laid at his
door as a fault and as a defect. I have already
referred to this matter in my two earlier chapters.
He is tender to his queens but in regard to Sakun-
tala he feels himself transfigured into a new being
altogether. He says that he has only two lights of
his soul and his line i. e., the ocean-girdled earth and
Sakuatala. His Jove for Sakuntala is not the mert
 »I8 PBR18», PBlt«01fXLI<rT AND POETRY 293

animal passion of an Antony satiated with pleasure

though poetic in soul. It does not wreck family and
state. It is at once a fulfilment of individual life,
family life, and racial life. He is pained that his
lineage will he left without JJperpetuation. He
knows the duties and sanctities of married life as
well as ila graces and its pleasures. One of the
pleasing traits in him is his averseness to looking at
the beauty of married women who are the wives
of others. He says: “ Kali¬
dasa expresses the same idea in a well-known stanza
in Raghuvamsa PCVI, 8). This delicacy and self-
restraint are so remarkable that the Pratihari cries
outi

“ «T^ wr|<ifr I ^ W
iftJTf ^ apt 3P>^r \ **

(What a seeker of righteousness is the king I Who

else would hesitate after seeing such a beautiful self-
offered loveliness I). No wonder that the exaltation
of righteous bliss caused by his reunion with Sakuntala
was so great that the poet could not bear to give it
an earthly setting but gave it a heavenly setting on
the eternally beautiful and blisssful* Hemikula hill
which is a meeting place of earth and heaven.
 294 XAZJDABA

King Dushyanta is also an ideal ruler •( men.

He is indeed every inch a king. His portraiture
hy Kalidasa is higher and nobler than that ol the
English kings, even including Henry V, by Shakes¬
peare. Throughout.the play he is referred to as
Rajarishi (saintly king). In the Raghuoamsa it is
said that a kshatriya is so-called because he protects
people from harm. In this play also this ideal of
protection is stressed and emphasised.

In felicitous terms the poet says that the Puru kings

are men of a holy vow, such vow being that of per¬
forming a sacred sacrifice i. c., the protection of
those in distress. The »me ideal as that described
in Tennyson's Idylls of the king i. e. that of one
whose glory was redressing human wrong. **
Throughout the play this is the king’s ruling passion.
In the forest he helps the sages of the hermitage; in
the capital he is daily in the hall of juslic redressing
wrongs; he rushes to the help of Madavya when he
was seized by Matali; and he crowns his life-work
by aiding the gods against the demons. Even dur¬
ing his prostration by grief he asks the ministers to
lend up to him their reports about the administration.
 ViePKRIOa, rBRIOMALITT AND POBTRT 295

“ eic.
His grief made him feel more acutely and sympathc'
tically the grief of the wide, wide world. When
a merchant died without issue and the ministers
reported that his properties might escheat to the
crown, the king ordered the estate to be given to the
posthumous child of the merchant after it was born.
He had it proclaimed that whoever lost his loving
relative would find the king acting the part of such
relative for him, unless there was an element of tin
according to law in doing so. Thus in this instance
and in his rejection of the lovely Sakuntala he shows
himself as a lover of righteousness (Dharma) and a
daspiser of unrighteous wealth and enjoyment At
the same time he enforces obedience to law and
ethics on the part of all just as he obeys them all
himself. Sarngarava says this very well in Act V
verse 10.

Thus the entire kingdom was felt by Dushyanta to

he his household (sWTs ^ He himself
says that ordinary men attain happiness by effort
whereas in the case of kings effort leads to greater
effort. His personal attendants rightly declare
m KALIDASA

about bint that uQmindfuI of persona) pleasure he

wearies himself on account of his people just as a
tree bears the brunt of the solar heat but blesses
with shade those who seek its help, and that the
king controls the evil-minded and decides disputes
and multiplies the protective and productive elements
in life and that hence he is the true kinsman of all.
The king has another noble trait. He is very sen-
sidve to public opinion. On learning from Mari-
cha the true cause of the cloud upon his clear me¬
mory, his first words are that he was glad to be free
from public blame (tfT The poet
has given us another lofty idea about political life
tirz, that it should be in alliance with the highest
elements ef purity and austerity and piety in life
and that only then it would deserve and attain pre¬
stige and power and overlordship over the whole
world.

Next to Dushyanta we find a detailed dclinca-

hen of the great sage Kanva. His love for his adop¬
ted child Sakuntala is one of the most pleasing
traits ef his nature. He is a Kulapati /. c., a sage
who feeds and teaches ten thousand sagos.

4
 HIS PBKIOD, PBUftOKALITT A]!n> POXTST 3Pf

Yet such a great sage who was revered by gods and

men and to whom celestial messages are declared
by aerii! voices and before whose mind all things
are clearly unrolled as declared by the sage Maricha
is full of fond and tender affection for Sakuntala.
Even at the beginning of the play he is described as
having gone to Somatirtha to propitiate the Gods to
avert an evil that was impending in regard toSakun*
tala. It was his benediction that brought to Sakun*
tala the pure love of a pure-hearted king. He re¬
joiced to hear about her love and at once made pre¬
parations to send her to her lord» though it caused
him many pangs to separate from his beloved foster-
child. The fourth Act where we find this scene
depicted is full of beauty and charm and has capd'
vated millions of hearts during untold centuries. A
well-known Sanskrit stanza says:

ICanva's advice to Sakuntala is of a moA sublime

yet practical description. He tells Her that though
he is a forcft-dweller he knows the world well.
 m KALIDASA

His advice shows a mod intimate knowledge of the

human heart and of the duties and refinements of life.
What a beautiful light is thrown on his nature by his
asking Gaulami if there was any other advice to be
given to Sakuntala 1

His pure love was bestowed not only on hk

child Sakuntala but embraced all creation. The
entire hermitage was his body and he was its soul.
Nay, his love embraced the whole of creation.
Even fawns and creepers felt and shared his bene¬
ficent af!e<ftion. Like Prospero in Shakespeare’s
Temped, he dands outside the turmoil of life but is
in touch with it by means of his wise sympathy.
But he is more divine and forgiving and serene than
a hundred Prosperos. He does not curse Dush*
yanla for rejecting Sakuntala, because the whole
panorama of life was clear to his vision.

sr^ ?r5nTf?T: Act VIL

He passes through the drama a blessed and blessing

figure spreading sweetness and serenity everywhere.
The same description applies also to the sage Mari-
eha with whose blessing the play ends.
 ni8 PKRIOD, PERSONALITY AKI) TOEIRT 299

The disciples of Kanva viz.^ Sarngarara and

Saradvata are faintly but clearly drawn. Of the
two, Sarngarava has a passion for the lonely and
asaetic life and dislikes the crowded town and says
that in a town he feels as one would feel if he were
in a house on fire. The poet has chosen kis name
well as it indicates “One having the sound of a
bow.” He is irascible and showers on the king hot
and angry words when the latter rejects Sakuntala.
Saradvata is more cool and collected. He pities
the impure world which is fettered by pleasure aad
whose soul is asleep.

Madavya, the king*s jester, is not so fully drawn

as in Malaoikogfiimitra and is not so full of inge*
nuity and wit and humour. But he is a jolly soul
and adds in a marked degree to the elements of
gaiety in the play.

Last but not least among the male characters

is the boy Bharata. His coming is prophesied
throughout the play and when he comes he takes
all hearts by storm and not only the heart 'of his
distracted father. He is rightly called Sa^va<^a^
mana as he subdues the hearts of all beings. He
is a bright and bold and bleased child. Already the
300 KALtDASA

golden link of SakunL^li and Div’-yanta, heisontkl-

ed by his birth and upbringing and by his qualities
and by his destinies to relink them to each other
after their trials and tribulations in life.

Among the femalt characters Gautami and

Aditi arc but faintly drawn. But the poet has
taken great pains to delineate fully the two friends
and forest-playmates of Sakuntala. I'hey are both
lovely and lovable and playful but each has some
special traits and excellences of her own. Anasuya
excels in tranquillity and ethical feeling. Priyam-
vada excels in sportive charm and quick-witted
sprightliness and gaiety and vivacity and attractive
speech. Their very names suggeft their special
graces. Of the two, Anasuya is the more prac¬
tical and Priyamvada is the more sentimental.
Anasuya is the more diffident whereas Priyamvada
is the more confident. They both love Sakuntala
deeply and she loves them with an ardent and ex¬
ceeding love. Probably she feels the fascinating
charm of Priyamvada more than that of Anasuya,
if it is permissible to imagine degrees in an infinite
tenderness. When bidding her final farewells
Priyamvada*8 name is the last on her lips and she
refers to her as Priyamvadamisra. The dyaa*
 118 PEBlOi), PEE80NALITT Alft> POBTET 301

nic charm of Priyamvadas nature and utterantt

comes out thoughoul the play. WKca Sakuntala
says that Priyamvada had tied her bodice two tight
she asks her to blame not her but her crescent and
rounding maidenhood. When Sakuatala tells her
friends that the Kesara tree beckons to her with
wind-trcmuious leaf-fingers, Priyamvada asks her to
stay near the tree awhile as she was like a golden
creeper. When Sakuntala looks fondly the uona-
jyotsna creeper and the mango tree. Priyamvada
impishly tells her that she was pining for a lover.
When after enquiring about Sakuntala’s birth the king
is in a ^late of mental suspense, it is Priyamvada who.
despite Sakuntala s forbidding forefinger, induces bun
to ask his unspoken question as to whether Sakua¬
tala was to be given in marriage. When Sakuntala
starts to go away, it was she that detained her de¬
manding the discharge of her debt /. c., the watering
of two trees. When she secs the royal signet ring
she quickly and cleverly guesses that Dushyanta
must be the king and says:

1
Again it was she that observed that Dushyanta alsa

f . .
 302 KALIDASA

looked love-lorn. It was she that suggested to

Sakunlala the sending of a love-letter to Dushyanta,
Ft was she that with a meaning look at Anasuya
said that a fawn was seeking its mother and must be
helped to hnd it and thus enabled the lovers to meet.
When Anasuya blames the king’s forgetfulness, it is
Priyamvada that defends him and says that a maa
•f his nobility of presence cannot do wrong.

This beautiful passage recalls Miranda’s noble

words about Ferdinand in Shakespeare's TempcsI.

’’There is nothing ill can dwell in such temple:

If the ill spirit have so fair an house.
Good things will strive to dwell with it."

When Anasuya expresses regret at Sakunlala s

departure. Priyamvada says; ’ Wc shall somehow
dispel our regret. Let her be happy." She tells Sakun-
tala that not only are her friends in grief in view of
her impending departure, but all Nature, animate
and inanimate, in the hermitage is grief-stricken.

fJr?5ir <Tftr%TniTw»irrRt «kt«fr i

 HIR PERIOD, PEBSOSALITY AKD POBTBY 301

(Tfce deer stand with unswallowed grass and

the peacocks stand with neglected dance. Etcd the
creepers shed leaves and seam to shed tears of grief).
On the other hand it is Anasuya that welcomes the
king and replies to the king’s question if their aus*
terities were progressing (arft She replies
that their aufterities bore fruit by the coming of a
noble gueA and asks Sakuatala to go into the hcrini'
lage and bring fruits [etc. for honouring the guest.
The words with which Ishe asks the king who he
was and why he came show her learnedness and
her refinement. It is she that narrates to the king
the story ol Sakuntala’s birth and upbringing. When
bashful Sakunlala tries to go away she tells her that
it was not right to go away without showing due
honour to a guest. When she finds Sakuntala pin¬
ing she tells her: “ We do not know about love.
But we find in you such signs of pining love as we
have heard described in Ilihasas." Again while
Priyamvada merely asks the king to love Sakuntala
and trusts to love to fulfil her dcainy. Anasuya asks
him to treat Sakuntala in a manner that would make
her friend’s hearts rejoice. Later it is she that pro¬
poses that worship should be offered to the deity
who would confer wedded bliss on Sakuntala.
 364 KALIDASA

i
When Durvasas shouts in anger she sends the
clever Priyamvada to pacify him and runs to fetch
gueft-effcrings lo hkn. It is needless to multiply
iaitances. The charadlers are both clearly and
delioately drawn and have the higher attradtivene$s>

To delineate Sakantala*s ch«fa(^io. adequately

the task will occupy a volume by iiself. /^U the
peerless artistic gifts of Kalidasa have been la ashed
on such delineation. I can only indicate a few im¬
portant aspeds here. Sakuntala's heavenly beauty
is sugge^ed and expressed throughout the play.
The king is druck with wonder and love at the very
fird sight and says that her loveliness shone all the
greater from out of her dress of tree-bark rough and
unlovely to behold. The poet has stressed the faifl
that she is the child of a heavenly damsel. The
king says on learning this fa<a: " How can such a
transcendental beauty be born of mortal parentage ?
Such a quivering radiance of beauty cannot arise
from the earth.” To him she seems to be a pcrfe<5l
pi<Aure endowed with life or a dream-creation of the
Creator s perfect mind rather than an ordinary
woman. Her beauty is sweet like a fresh leaf and
 HISFEKIOO) TEBAONALITT AH0 POBTRT 303

flower, glorious like a gem, sweet like new honey;

and pure like heaven. When she goes to him ap¬
parelled like the day in the garments and jewds
given by the forest-gods, the residents of the palciflb
wonder at her radiance The king while averse tft
accepting her is struck by her loveliness and calU ft
natural and appropriate radiance.

Her noble qualities are no less wonderful ihaft

her loveliness of person. She has both strength and
sweetness of nature and her radiance of soul is tiS
less remarkable than her radiance of external love¬
liness. She is unaware of her glory of fortq.
‘‘Though less of beauty, she was beauty’s self” is a
description that can be applied to her with perfect
appropriateness. When she tells her friends that
she is afraid of a cold reception they cry out: “You
depreciate your excellence. Who will shut out
with a cloth the thrilling radiance of the full moonV*
Her innocence and simpheity and absolute trust
win aD bearls. In Shakespeare’s Tempest—which
is in many respects like SaktJntala—we find ah
equally beautiful heroine, Miranda^ Both have
the same grace and delicacy and purity and simpli-
dty and innocence' Both are brought up kd a for¬
est' Both are brought up amidst pure minds and

X. 1. to.
306 KALT^ASA

lovely scenes. Both have a naturalness, a guileless¬

ness, and an artless simplicity that are exceedingly
.attractive. But Kalidasa has invested his heroine
with an even more wonderful charm than that with
which Miranda has been invested by Shakespeare.
He has given her a perfect sage as her guardian
and has also given her two tender girl-campanions
as well. The hermitage is a more charming environ¬
ment than the island* The absence of Caliban and
of an incident like that of Caliban s attempted ravish¬
ment adds to the pure charm of the Indian play.
Kalidasa is enabled by his scenes of Sakuntala s re¬
jection and reunion to show the firmer and finer
elements of her nature. Rabindranath Tagore says:
"Sakunlala’s simplicity is natural, that of Miranda is
unnatural.Sakuntala's simplicity was not
girt round by ignorance, as was the case with Miran-
.^Ja.Miranda*s simplicity was never subjected
to such a fiery ordeal; it never clashed with know¬
ledge of the world.’* This criticism seems to me to
be unjust to Shakespeare and to Miranda. Miran¬
da’s simplicity was as natural and innocent as that of
Sakuntala. It was net ignorant at all as she was
"the pupil of Prospero. It did not undergo any
fiery ordeal but the story did not include any such

.U- .1 .1
 ni8 PERIOD, PERSONALITY AND POBTBT 307

ordeal. I regard Salcuntala and Miranda as equ¬

ally attractive* But Sakuntala combines the charm
of Miranda and Pefdita and the attractiveness of
Imogen and Hermoine.

Thus Sakuntala s portiaiture is of enrapturing

loveliness* The pictures of Sakuntala watering the
•creepers, pouting at the intrusive bee, looking bash¬
fully at the king, pausing to look back at Kioi wilK
sidelong glances and half-averted eyes while preten¬
ding to remove a thcMfn from her foot, writing hw
love letter to the king, chiding his embraces» bidding
farewell to her father and her friends and her ani¬
mate and inanimate playmates, standing at bay in
the durbar hall, flying to heaven locked in her
mother s arms, pining for her lord on the fields of
felicity in heaven and reunited with Kim in bL'ss
through their son are pictures that have become in¬
effaceable treasures of the nab'onal memory. **
Her immediate response to the call of Dush-
yanta*s * love is natural and charming,- She is not a
sophisticated city-child and has no armour of de¬
fence. She is trustful like her loved fawn. At
the same time, being the child of an ascetic and'
brought up in an ascetic’s hermitage, she has moral
strength and elevation and innate dignity and austere
368 KALIDASA

sdf-rcstrainl. It has been well said that her love is,

like a religion, holy, deep and true.

When we compare her with Urvasi and with

Malavika, the poet*s greatness in her delineation l>e-
comes clear all the more. Urvasi is a visitor from
a supernatural sphere where life is all radiance
and youth and pleasure. Malavika is innocent and
pure but is a child of urban, nay, regal life and has
all the accomplishments of culture* Sakuntala is a
child of earth and heaven She is pure and calm
and holy like her hermitage and breathes holiness
and loveliness on the sophisticated face of life.
Dushyanta is lifted by her into a higher region of
fife and love.

Equally beautiful is Her desciiption in the play

as a child of nature. She says that she loves the
trees in the hermitage like her brothers
She calls her beloved creeper Vana-
jyotsna {the moon beam of the forest) as her sister
(«tn She says that when she forgets them
she would be forgetting herself
«n^). She feeb that the trees beckon to Her with
wiod-tremtilous lingeri. The poefs delineation of
the response of tha foroU gods in Act IV is charming
 ai8 PBBIOD, PSSSOKALITT AVB POBTBT 309

to a degree. Her send-off by the matrons o( the her*

milage and by (he sage Kanva is equally chamuDg.
And as she leaves her beloved lawn would not let
her go. Through the cuckoo's voice the trees bid'her
‘God-speed. The fragrant South wind leads the way.
Nowhere else in literature is there such a wooing'or
a winning, or a home-coming of such a bride. When
she asks Kanva when she can come back to the
scenes of her youth, he tells her: “After being ’the
queen of ocean-girdled earth and placing your -^sen
on the foeless universal throne, you shall with your
lord step into this radiant peace again.'*

We can well imagine how pure and precious

was and would have been the love-emotioh of sudh
a nature. Kalidasa has spent even more of Iw
genius on this aspect than on her beauty or her meft-
tal graces or her surroundings. Her love is as ettd* '
den as it is pure. The descriptions of her bashM-
ness in conflict with her longing are very attractive.
Kalidasa's expertaess in describing the physioal
manifestations of love is shown at its best in his des*
eription of Sakun(ala*s love. Her love fetter is
frank and charming in expression. After her lord
goes away she is lost in thoughts of love and is
onawareot the oamn^or the<<iirie'^<libe4iige Dur-
 KAL1DA84
310

vasas. Her love fiiU her entire soul.

It is such a love that is tested in the fierce fire

of grief. In the durbar hall she bears with dignity
the taunts showered on her by the king and by her
male guides. The pure gold of her nature shone
out all the more in that fierce conflagration of
angfy thoughts and words. She pleads her cause-
with skill and power but when she fails she goes out
not with cries or curses but with a quiet and resig¬
ned upbraiding of her ill fortune. W^ho but her
mother could comfort and console her then ?
Then she is taken to heaven by her loving
mother. She there regains her composure but her
heart was left behind with her lord. In describing
her lu separation Kalidasa takes many hints from
his admired exemplar Valmiki. He describes her as.
a word taken from the Ramayana, Ho
says:
II
These words recall the famous stanza in the Rama-
yana.

wtfrvQT n .1
 HIS PBBIOD, PBBSONAXiIir ANP P0B7BT 31T
«

SakuDtala tells her lord that it was her ill-luck that

turoed his love into bitterness. She is grateful to
relenting heaven for her returned happiness. Even
at the last moment her bashfulness and simplicity'
are apparent. When the king asks her to go witb
Kim to get the blessings of the sage Maricha* she says
that she is overpowered by bash fulness to go In the
presence of elders in the company of her lord. Then *
they go to the sage and receive his blessings
for themselves and their son Bharata and their land
which was to be ruled by Bharata and to get its
name from his holy name. We may well imagine ^
how she carried the influence and atmosphere of
hermitage and heaven into the court and made ord-, .
iaary life a holiness and a blessing and a rapture
and a sacrament Rightly does Goethe say:

"Wouldst thou the earth and heaven in one

sole name combine?
i name thee, O Saknnlala, and all at once '

is said.” , ’
- ■{ . Ilf
 CHAPTER XV.

Kalidasa’s Miscellaneous Works.

TTb Kalidasa arc attributed many miscellaneous

works but scholarship has pronounced dearly
5n favour oi only a few of them. It is not necessary
or 'pos^lc to go into the genuineness or otherwise
of'eacK oi these works here. The works are Sruta-
bodha, Sringaradlaka, SringararasashtaVa, Setukav-
ya, Karpuramanjari/'Pashpabanavtlasa, Syamaladfin-
dfldta, Pramottaramala and JyotifViddsharana. Cri¬
tics have differed as to which-of these are to be
finally rejected as not belonging to Kalidasa, but aU
most all of these works hove been doubted by one
c^c another. The Rakshasa Kav}fa and
Naloda^a also are attributed to him. Rajasekhara
in his Kavyamimarasa refers to a work on Poetics
by Kalidasa. Such a work is not now extant.

The Sringaradlaka is attributed to Kalidasa,

We have no means of deciding whether it is his
 ai5 PSBIOD, PBRSOKALITT and pobtet 313

work or not though it is easy on a priori > grounds o(

style and thought to assert or deny in suchia matter.
It contains fine conceits expressed in a graceful style.
One verse compares the body of the beloved to a
tank designed for allaying thefireof theloverVheart
Another asks why her heart alone should be of stone
while all else about her is soft. Another verse in¬
duces her to come into the lover’s house lest at the
time of the eclipse her face be mistaken for the full
moon. Another says that love is the best medicine
for all the ills of life. Another laments that jealous
fate forbids the lover even a vision of sights some¬
what like his beloved: the blue lotus-flower resem¬
bling her eyes is immersed in water and the moon
which is like her face is hidden by clouds aud the
swans whose gait is like hers have flown away.
Another verse asks Rohini (the star-goddess who is
the wife of the Moon-God) to chide her lord who
seeks to look at the beloved and touch her with his
beams. Other verses ask the beloved to return the
rejected kisses and embraces to the lover and to pu¬
nish him with her arrow-glances. We iind also
some verses which are not in good taste. One
verse declares that true moksha (liberation) k not
the attainment of a state beyond gunas and above
3M KAUD&8A

pleasure and pain but the untying o( the tied gar*

ment of a lovely maiden.

aw*iftr7^ I
3 »i«»rJTifwwr5'”i^-
ft «fh?: n
Equally attractive but equally unequal in poetic
intent and achievement is PushpaBanoilasa. Kali¬
dasa's authorship of it also is a subject of doubt* It
refers to Krishna as a lover of the flute and the
chief of all lovers and ^rnw^r:). It pre¬
sents vignettes of many situations of love. 1 may
however refer to two verses which attain a more
than ordinary level of artistic expression of fine feel¬
ing. One verse says that a lover bent on trav^
stopped his trip because he saw a series of unusual
phenomena oiz., the Moon (her face) resting an the
lotus (her hand), pearls (tears) coming out of blue
lotuses (her eyes), paleness overtaking a golden cree¬
per (her body) and the fading of fresh flower-gar¬
lands by the touch of lotus buds (her breasts).

5RrT*ntft I
 HIS PIRIOD PBRSONALtTT AND POETRY 315 *

wrfvm-
*w ^niRW u
Another verse declares that if the beloved singB
the Vina sounds harsh, that if she smiles a sudden-
darkness ^overtakes the moonlight, that in front of
her eyes the blue lotus flower looks faded and that
if the beauty of her body is seen the lightning
loses its glow.

«wr: u.
Nalodaya is a poem in four cantos and d«-
cribes the restoration of Nala to his lost throne-
Kalidasa*s authorship of it does not seem to be true.
It does not contain any of his characteristic traits and
excellences. It tries to show off much skill in com¬
posing verses in numerous and artificial and compli¬
cated metres and introduces end-rhymes and middle-
rhymes, and is in the most unnatural and modem
Kavya style. The epic note which is so finely
pfomincat in the story of Nala is hardly heard amid
 ^16 KALTDASA

the medley of elaborate conceipts and daacriptiens

and tropas. Doctor R. G. BKandarkar has shown
that in some of the manuscripts of the poem
the author k stated to be Ravideva the son of
Narayana. The authenticity of Rakshasakavya,
Setukovya, Karpooramanjari, PrasnoUaramala
and Jyoiirvidabhafana k equally doubtful. They
do not contain his characteristic touches at all.

Srutabodha is a simple manual of metres and

is of no special merit. SringaraTaias}\ia\am is a
small and attrative poem but there is no special
distinction of thought or style in that.

But Syamala-Dandako which is a rhythmkal

prosc'poem on the Goddess Syamala, an aspect of
Devi, is in his richest and happiest vein and is of un¬
doubted and unassailable authenticity. It is one of
the favourite poems of India and the introductory
stanzas have become a cherished possession of
the national mind.

»rs33wwTP*wr«ni i
HIS PBBrOD, PBRSONALlTY AND POKTBT

51HW srn'^BEwai il
 CHAPTER XVI.

Kalidasa's Successors.
^ t is an interesting task to trace the continuous
and evef'growing influence of Kalidasa on his
successors. During the last two thousand years ge*
nerations of poets and of other men have studied his
works with delight and have been influenced by
bira. A well-known Sanskrit stanza says:—

a^cr notuTSRTffr

(Formerly in counting the poets, the little finger

was bent after naming Kalidasa. As no other poet
equal to him has existed, the next Anger which is called
the nameless 'Anamika' was rightly so named.) '
 HIR PEEIOI), PBHSONALITY AND POKTRT 319

fCaIida$a lived at a time when the Sanskrit

language, though it was not spoken widely by large
classes of people, was easily understood if it was
I written and spoken in a simple and natural and idio*
. malic manner. It seems to me that the dramas of
Kalidasian and pre>Kalidasian days were not mere
‘ study-room plays but were enacted with all the re*
' sources of art and were appreciated and admired
by cultured audiences. That was the reason why
the Sanskrit prose therein was so pure and limpid
and graceful. To appeal to the audience it had to
be simple and sweet and attractive in expressioa
and beautiful and striking and original in thought
and so it was. The poetry also aimed at popular
Audy and appreciation and was not written by
a Pandit for forcing the admiration of unwilling
and jealous compeers. But in later times Sanskrit
became less and less of a living tongue though
in respect of the religious life of the land it has
been and is and will be and mud be an eternally
extsing means of dudy and expression. The result
was that prose and verse composition got into the
hands of literary coteries and lod their popular note
and appeal and became conventional, wooden and
dilted and even bizarre and overloaded with un**
 320 KALIDASA

natural conceipts. Hence (he influence of Kalidasa

IS hardly traceable in ialer Sanskrit prose. Even in
later Sanskrit poetry his influence was more in the
realm of ideas than in the region of dyle.

But his influence is clearly seen in one form or

other over his successors. 1 liavc ^ted above what
I consider to be Asvaghosha’s debt to Kalidasa.
King Kumaradasa's Janakiharana is full of echoes
from Kalidasa's poems. A well-known verse says
in regard to his Janakiharana.

*rs:cEn^ i

The innumerable Sandesakoayas down to

Dhoyika's Paoanaduta (I2tK century), Desika’s
Hamsasandesa and even later poenas such as Kokda-
sandesa, Pikasandesa, Manas-Sandesa etc., were
mpcielled on Kalidasa's Meg/iasonc/eso. Bhavabhuti
seems to refer to it in his well-known verse
TsPWIf^ MaJatimadhava. His works
bear many traces of Kalidasa s influence. Kalidasas
Kiimar-mambhava was the source of Bana's line
dram» entitled Parvaiiparinaya. His Ra^u-
nnmso aspired Desika's great poem entitled Yada^
 BJS PSKIOD, PKBSONALITT AND POBTBY 321

oabhyudayam» Hi& Malavikognimiira evidently

inspired the compositiMi of the similar and parallel
I dramas of PatnavaU and Priyadarsikc by Sri Har-
i sha and also Bilhana^s Karnasundati. 1 do not
j think that the theory that the plays of Sri Harsha
I were anterior to Kalidasa's time is correct at all.
I is valuable also as being the
forerunner and inspirer of the few later historical
plays in Sanskrit literature. His P^i^romorvas/j^a
suggested the theme and the ideas for some later
works such as Unmailaraghayfa* Though Sa-
ktiniola was so wonderful and unique and well-
known and popular that no one dared to borrow
ideas and suggestions from it, yet its in6uence has
been of an all-pervasive character. Hie later treat¬
ment of nature and beauty and love has always borne
the impress of Ka!idasa*s genius. The descriptions
of natural beauty and feminine grace by Kalidasa
have fixed the standard *of poetic taste in India. So
far as his descriptions of the amatory passion are
concerned, they have a delicacy and a refinement
and a subtlety, which are supreme in truth and
beauty, and it has always been the aim and object of
later poets to bring out similar ideas in beautiful
 522 KALIDASA

verse without any loss of originality of thought or

utterance*

When vernacular poetry became a thing of

power and beauty in the various vernaculars of India,
the three Sanskrit poets whose influence was most
widely felt by the poets in the vernaculars were
Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa. Kalidasa's works
have been translated before and in recent limes into
the vernaculars of India and have always exercised
a compulsive fascination and have been a source of
inspiration. If any proof were needed as to how
even to-day he is a living force in vernacular poetry,
I need only mention the poesy of Rabindranath
Tagore. I have already referred to Tagore’s great
poem on Urvasi and the obvious inspiration for its
composition. Throughout Tagore's poems we find
Kalidasa's influence as much as the influence of
Upanishadic poetry and the poetry of Vidyapalhi
and Chandidas and Kabir. Tagore s exposirions of
the significance of Kumarasambha'va and 5a^un-
tala, to which I have referred above, are not only
valuable in themselves but are also significanl as
showing the fasdna^pn, excised on Tagore by
tile jfenTus of Kalidaiftf-
 HIS r«R10I>, PBH80NALITY ANU POETHT 323

Last but not least must be mentioned Kali*

dasa s influence on the west. I have already refer¬
red to Goetbe's famous danza on Sakuntala and to
the encomiums of Baron Humboldt and Sir Mo-
nier Williams and Professor Lassen and others
Professor Lassen calls him as *'the brightest dar in
the firmament of Indian poetry". Sylvain Levrs
Lc Theatre Indian contains a just and true and
beautiful description of Kalidasa's greatness and in¬
fluence. When the storm and the dress of the mo¬
dern age are over and the world returns once again
to sweetness and sanity and spirituality, Kalidasa's
influence is bound to become more and more. In
respect of Kim and his genius we may well affirm, in
the words of Swami Vivekananda about the Indian
genius that '^iike the dew that falls unseen but bring
into blossom the fairest of roses, such has been the
contribution of Kalidasa to the world." In short to
quote from two well-known Sanskrit verses, his
poetry is full of sweetness and he is the
gracefulness of the Goddess of poesy
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