KALIDASA.

Kalidasa. (370-450 AD.)

Sanskrit poet and dramatist, Kalidasa is the greatest Indian writer of any epoch.

The six works identified as genuine are the dramas Abhijñanashakuntala, Vikramorvashi, and Malavikagnimitra; the epic poems Raghuvamsha and Kumarasambhava; and the lyric Meghaduta.

Little is known about Kalidasa's person or his historical relationship. His poems suggest but nowhere declare that he was a priest. His name, literally presumes that he was a Shaivite, though occasionally he eulogizes other gods, notably Vishnu.

A Sinhalese tradition says that he died in Sri Lanka during the reign of Kumaradasa, who ascended the throne in 517. A legend makes Kalidasa one of the "nine gems" at the court of Vikramaditya of Ujjain.

It is certain only that the poet lived sometime between the reign of Agnimitra, the second Shunga king  170 BC, the hero of one of his dramas, and the Aihole inscription of AD 634, which lauds Kalidasa. He is apparently imitated, though not named, in the Mandasor inscription.

An opinion accepted by many is that Kalidasa was associated with Chandra Gupta II who reigned c. 380-c. 415. The most convincing but most conjectural rationale for relating Kalidasa to the brilliant Gupta dynasty is simply the character of his work, which appears as both the perfect reflection and the most thorough statement of the cultural values of that serene and sophisticated aristocracy.

Tradition has associated many works with the poet; criticism identifies six as genuine and one more as likely "Rtusamhara," perhaps a youthful work. Attempts to trace Kalidasa's poetic and intellectual development through these works are frustrated by the impersonality that is characteristic of classical Sanskrit literature. His works are judged by the tradition as realization of literary qualities inherent in the Sanskrit language and its supporting culture. Kalidasa has become the archetype for Sanskrit literary composition.

In drama, his Abhijñanashakuntala is the most famous and is usually judged the best Indian literary effort of any period. It tells of the seduction  Shakuntala by King Dusyanta, his rejection of the girl and his child, and their subsequent reunion in heaven. The epic myth is important because of the child, for he is Bharata, ancestor of the Indian nation.

Kalidasa remakes the story into a love idyll whose characters represent a pristine aristocratic ideal: the girl, sentimental, selfless, alive to little but the delicacies of nature, and the king, first servant of religious and social law and duties, protector of the social order, resolute hero, yet tender and suffering agonies over his lost love.

As in all of Kalidasa's works, the beauty of nature is depicted with a precise elegance of metaphor that would be difficult to match in any of the world's literature.

The second drama, Vikramorvashi, tells a legend as old as the Veda, though very differently. Its theme is the love of a mortal for a divine maiden; it is well known for the "mad scene" in which the king, grief-stricken, wanders through a lovely forest apostrophizing various flowers and trees as though they were his love. The scene was intended in part to be sung or danced.

The third of Kalidasa's dramas, Malavikagnimitra, is of a different stamp--a harem intrigue, comical and playful, but not less accomplished for lacking any high purpose. The play contains datable references, the historicity of which have been much discussed.

Kalidasa's efforts in kavya are of uniform quality and show two different subtypes, epic and lyric. Examples of the epic are the two long poems Raghuvamsha and Kumarasambhava. The first recounts the legends of the hero Rama's forebears and descendants; the second tells the picaresque story of Shiva's seduction by  Parvati, the conflagration of Kama, and the birth of Kumara, Shiva's son. These stories are mere pretext for the poet to enchain stanzas, each metrically and grammatically complete, redounding with complex and reposeful imagery. Kalidasa's mastery of Sanskrit as a poetic medium is nowhere more marked than in the lyric poem, the "Meghaduta," contains, interspersed in a message from a lover to his absent beloved, an extraordinary series of unexcelled and knowledgeable vignettes, describing the mountains, rivers, and forests of northern India.

The society reflected in Kalidasa's work is that of a courtly aristocracy sure of its dignity and power. Kalidasa has perhaps done more than any other writer to wed the older,  religious tradition, particularly its ritual concern with Sanskrit, to the needs of a new and brilliant secular Hinduism. The fusion, which epitomizes the renaissance of the Gupta period, did not, however, survive its fragile social base; with the disorders following the collapse of the Gupta Empire, Kalidasa became a memory of perfection that neither Sanskrit nor the Indian aristocracy would know again.