Kalidasa - S Radhakrishnan

Part I

Great classics of literature spring from profound depths in human experience. They come to us who live centuries later in vastly different conditions as the voice of our own experience. They release echoes within ourselves of what we never suspected was there. The deeper one goes into one’s own experience, facing destiny, fighting fate, or enjoying love, the more does one’s experience have in common with the experiences of others in climes and ages. The most unique is the most universal. The Dialogues of the Buddha or of Plato, the dramas of Sophocles, the plays of Shakespeare are both national and universal. The more profoundly they are rooted in historical traditions, the more uniquely do they know themselves and elicit powerful responses from others. There is a timeless and spaceless quality about great classics.

Kalidasa is the great representative of India’s spirit, grace and genius. The Indian national consciousness is the base from which his works grow. Kalidasa has absorbed India’s cultural heritage, made it his own, enriched it, given it universal scope and significance. Its spiritual directions, its intellectual amplitude, its artistic expressions, its political forms and economic arrangements, all find utterance in fresh, vital, shining phrases. We find in his works at their best, simple dignity of language, precision of phrase, classical taste, cultivated judgement, intense poetic sensibility and fusion of thought and feeling. In his dramas we find pathos, power, beauty, and great skill in the construction of plot and delineation of character. He is at home in royal courts and on mountain tops, in happy home and forest hermitages. He has a balanced outlook which enables him to deal sympathetically with men of high and low degree, fishermen, courtesans, servants. These great qualities make his works belong to the literature of the world. Humanity recognizes itself in them though they deal with Indian themes. In India, Kalidasa is recognized as the greatest poet and dramatist in Sanskrit literature. While once the poets were being counted Kalidasa as being the first occupied the last finger. But the ring-finger remained true to its name, anamika nameless, since the second to Kalidasa has not yet been found. Tradition associates Kalidasa with King Vikramaditya of Ujjayini who founded the Vikrama era of 57 BC. The change in the name of the hero of Vikramorvasiya from Pururavas to Vikrama lends support to the view that Kalidasa belonged to the court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjayini. Agnimitra who is the hero of the drama Malavikagnimitra was not a well-known monarch to deserve special notice by Kalidasa. He belonged to the second century before Christ and his capital was Vidisa. Kalidasa’s selection of this episode and his reference to Vidisa as the famous capital of a king in Meghaduta suggest that Kalidasa was a contemporary of Agnimitra. It is clear that Kalidasa flourished after Agnimitra (150 BC) and before AD 634, the date of the famous Aihole inscription which refers to Kalidasa as a great poet. If the suggestion that some verses of Mandas or inscription of AD 473 assume knowledge of Kalidasa’s writings is accepted, then his date cannot be later than the end of the fourth century AD. There are similarities between Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita and Kalidasa’s works. If Asvaghosa is the debtor, then Kalidasa was of an earlier date than the first century AD. If Kalidasa is the debtor, then his date would be later than the first century.

(To be continued in August, 2006 issue)

© "Living with a purpose" by Dr. S Radhakrishnan, published by Orient Paperbacks (A Division of Vision Books (P) Limited) 24 Feroze Gandhi Road, Lajpat Nagar III, Kasnmere Gate, New Delhi 110 024. Reprinted with permission.

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