VI

[Contents]VIKĀLIDĀSA[Contents]1.The Date of KālidāsaIt is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.[Contents]2.The Three Dramas of KālidāsaTheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29[Contents]3.Kālidāsa’s Dramatic ArtThe order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.[Contents]4.The StyleKālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.[162]‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.[164]‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166][Contents]5.The Language and the MetresIn Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑8iv. 68.↑9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑37Ibid., i. 20.↑38Ibid., vi. 9.↑39Ibid., vii. 19.↑40Ibid., vi. 22.↑41Ibid., vii. 32.↑42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑43Ibid., iv. 68.↑44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑48Ibid., iv. 14.↑49Ibid., v. 19.↑50Ibid., v. 12.↑51Ibid., v. 11.↑52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

[Contents]VIKĀLIDĀSA[Contents]1.The Date of KālidāsaIt is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.[Contents]2.The Three Dramas of KālidāsaTheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29[Contents]3.Kālidāsa’s Dramatic ArtThe order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.[Contents]4.The StyleKālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.[162]‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.[164]‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166][Contents]5.The Language and the MetresIn Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑8iv. 68.↑9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑37Ibid., i. 20.↑38Ibid., vi. 9.↑39Ibid., vii. 19.↑40Ibid., vi. 22.↑41Ibid., vii. 32.↑42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑43Ibid., iv. 68.↑44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑48Ibid., iv. 14.↑49Ibid., v. 19.↑50Ibid., v. 12.↑51Ibid., v. 11.↑52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

[Contents]VIKĀLIDĀSA[Contents]1.The Date of KālidāsaIt is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.[Contents]2.The Three Dramas of KālidāsaTheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29[Contents]3.Kālidāsa’s Dramatic ArtThe order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.[Contents]4.The StyleKālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.[162]‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.[164]‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166][Contents]5.The Language and the MetresIn Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑8iv. 68.↑9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑37Ibid., i. 20.↑38Ibid., vi. 9.↑39Ibid., vii. 19.↑40Ibid., vi. 22.↑41Ibid., vii. 32.↑42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑43Ibid., iv. 68.↑44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑48Ibid., iv. 14.↑49Ibid., v. 19.↑50Ibid., v. 12.↑51Ibid., v. 11.↑52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

VIKĀLIDĀSA

[Contents]1.The Date of KālidāsaIt is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.[Contents]2.The Three Dramas of KālidāsaTheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29[Contents]3.Kālidāsa’s Dramatic ArtThe order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.[Contents]4.The StyleKālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.[162]‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.[164]‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166][Contents]5.The Language and the MetresIn Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]

[Contents]1.The Date of KālidāsaIt is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.

1.The Date of Kālidāsa

It is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.

It is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories1of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not oneprima facieto be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh centuryA.D.As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth centuryA.D.The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.2

The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57B.C.and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,3there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion4that the era of[144]57B.C.was based on a real victory over Hūṇas inA.D.544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller5adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, beforeA.D.544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle6found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,7who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in theRaghuvaṅça8refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.

An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,9who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly afterA.D.450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place beforeA.D.455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,10who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at betweenA.D.480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no[145]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second centuryA.D.if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuriesA.D.11

Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of theMeghadūtaa reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth centuryA.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth centuryA.D.But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is thedouble entendreat all in Kālidāsa’s manner;12such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c.A.D.1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth centuryA.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests thatA.D.400 is as late as he can properly be placed.13

As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more[146]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.14

More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in theVikramorvaçīa proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D.499) on the score that in theRaghuvaṅçahe refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in theVikramorvaçīrefers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in theRaghuvaṅçaand theKumārasambhavato the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms likeuccaand evenjāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior toA.D.350 is indicated by such passages.15

Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuriesA.D.He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription ofA.D.634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D.620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti ofA.D.473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to aboutA.D.413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the[147]nameVikramorvaçī, while theKumārasambhava’stitle may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.16TheMālavikāgnimitrawith its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa 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 was for the time evanescent.

[Contents]2.The Three Dramas of KālidāsaTheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29

2.The Three Dramas of Kālidāsa

TheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29

TheMālavikāgnimitra17is unquestionably the first dramatic work18of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in theVikramorvaçīalso he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in theÇakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.

The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, buten routeto his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked[148]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the[149]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.

Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178B.C.19Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.

TheVikramorvaçī,20by many reckoned as the last work21in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthfulMālavikāgnimitraand the mature perfection of theÇakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he[150]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.

The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction22the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering[151]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.

From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.

The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha inA.D.1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu aboutA.D.1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,23that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX,Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V,Prasannarāghava, Act VI, andMahānāṭaka,[152]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.

TheÇakuntalā24certainly represents the perfection ofKālidāsa’sart, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is[153]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.

Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the[154]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.

A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.25Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel26laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in[155]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi27proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber28contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.29

[Contents]3.Kālidāsa’s Dramatic ArtThe order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.

3.Kālidāsa’s Dramatic Art

The order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.

The order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. TheMālavikāgnimitrais essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;30the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’sstratagemsto secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble[156]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.

In theVikramorvaçīKālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in theṚgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in theÇatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in theMatsya31there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;[157]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.

In theÇakuntalāKālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of theMālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in theVikramorvaçīis paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of theÇakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of theMahābhārata32which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her[158]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,33his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.

The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā[159]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in theVikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.

Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of theÇakuntalāis a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of theVikramorvaçīand in the garden scenes of theMālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of theÇakuntalāalso we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.

The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful[160]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him byDuḥṣanta’shunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.

The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; theMālavikāgnimitracontains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in theVikramorvaçīspectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of theVikramorvaçī.

Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,34the first to translate theÇakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal asÇakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.

[Contents]4.The StyleKālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.[162]‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.[164]‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166]

4.The Style

Kālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.[162]‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.[164]‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166]

Kālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of[161]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of theMṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in theÇakuntalānever leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.

The rhetoricians35extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:

grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥpaçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyamdarbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmāpaçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.

grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥ

paçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyam

darbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmā

paçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.

[162]

‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:36

çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsyaatha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.

çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsya

atha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.

‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:37

asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥsatāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.

asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryamasyām abhilāṣime manaḥ

satāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣuvastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.

‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:38

itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitāmuhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusamepunar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatīmayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.

itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitā

muhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusame

punar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatī

mayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.

‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:39

anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivamkāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?

anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivam

kāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?

‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose[163]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:40

prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥbāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.

prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥ

bāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.

‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:41

çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaivachāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.

çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaiva

chāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.

‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’

There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:42

tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥkam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?

tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥ

kam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?

‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:43

samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathāato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.

samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathā

ato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.

‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:44

idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitamekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.

idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitam

ekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.

[164]

‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole45is permissible:

sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvamasyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.

sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvam

asyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.

‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:46

āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrirnaiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmāmohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānāgan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.

āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrir

naiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmā

mohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānā

gan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.

‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’

TheMālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:47

kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudhammṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.

kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudham

mṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.

‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is[165]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:48

dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratamtan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.

dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratam

tan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.

‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:49

pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥanyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.

pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥ

anyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.

‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:50

preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satīsnānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.

preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satī

snānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.

‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:51

imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarāmbhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.

imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarām

bhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.

‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly:bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ.‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’[166]

[Contents]5.The Language and the MetresIn Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]

5.The Language and the Metres

In Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]

In Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.52The police officers and the fisher in theÇakuntalāuse Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of theVikramorvaçīcould safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.53

Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.

The metres of Kālidāsa show in theMālavikāgnimitraa restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In theVikramorvaçīthe Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while theVasantatilaka(12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In theÇakuntalāthe Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,54Aupacchandasika,55and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; theMālavikāgnimitra[167]and theÇakuntalāshare also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,56Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,57theVikramorvaçīa Mañjubhāṣiṇī.58The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.

Not unnaturally, efforts59have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the playsinter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the orderRaghuvaṅça,Meghadūta,Mālavikāgnimitra,Çakuntalā,Kumārasambhava, andVikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; theMeghadūtahas but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,60and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditativeRaghuvaṅça,61which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before theMeghadūtaand long before theKumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.[168]

1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑8iv. 68.↑9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑37Ibid., i. 20.↑38Ibid., vi. 9.↑39Ibid., vii. 19.↑40Ibid., vi. 22.↑41Ibid., vii. 32.↑42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑43Ibid., iv. 68.↑44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑48Ibid., iv. 14.↑49Ibid., v. 19.↑50Ibid., v. 12.↑51Ibid., v. 11.↑52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑8iv. 68.↑9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑37Ibid., i. 20.↑38Ibid., vi. 9.↑39Ibid., vii. 19.↑40Ibid., vi. 22.↑41Ibid., vii. 32.↑42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑43Ibid., iv. 68.↑44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑48Ibid., iv. 14.↑49Ibid., v. 19.↑50Ibid., v. 12.↑51Ibid., v. 11.↑52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑

1Hillebrandt,Kālidāsa(1921), pp. 7 ff.↑

2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑

2JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.↑

3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑

3e.g.Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.↑

4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑

4JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.↑

5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑

5India(1883), pp. 281 ff.↑

6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑

6JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.↑

7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑

7JBRAS. xix. 39 ff.↑

8iv. 68.↑

8iv. 68.↑

9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑

9Meghadūta(ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he readsVan̄kṣū= Oxus, forSindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar,Vātsyāyana, p. 23.↑

10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑

10JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.↑

11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑

11Huth,Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff.↑

12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑

12Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.↑

13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑

13Keith,Indian Logic, p. 28.↑

14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑

14Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.↑

15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑

15Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.;Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth,op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.↑

16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑

16Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.↑

17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑

17Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.↑

18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑

18That theMeghadūtais younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). TheṚtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of theKumārasambhavaandRaghuvaṅçato the two later dramas is uncertain.↑

19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑

19For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f.↑

20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑

20Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880;E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel,Monatsber.d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.,1875, pp. 609 ff.↑

21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑

21Cf. Huth,op. cit., pp. 63 ff.↑

22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑

22The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā;Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. TheSudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source.↑

23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑

23Jacobi,Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch,Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f.↑

24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑

24Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard,Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884.↑

25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑

25Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore,The Text of the Śakuntalā(1922); Windisch,Sansk. Phil.pp. 344 f.↑

26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑

26De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus(1870);Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā(1875).↑

27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑

27TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p.13 fora condemnation.↑

28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑

28IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler,Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff.↑

29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑

29Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS.↑

30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑

30For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry,Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff.↑

31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑

31xxiv;Viṣṇu, iv. 6;Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner,Ved. Stud.i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder,Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing theSudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of theDivyāvadāna.↑

32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑

32i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński,Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91.↑

33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑

33The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in theMālavikāgnimitrais rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy.↑

34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑

34See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar,Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii.↑

35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑

35See Hari Chand,Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde(1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf.Ekāvalī, p. 52.↑

36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑

36Çakuntalā, i. 15.↑

37Ibid., i. 20.↑

37Ibid., i. 20.↑

38Ibid., vi. 9.↑

38Ibid., vi. 9.↑

39Ibid., vii. 19.↑

39Ibid., vii. 19.↑

40Ibid., vi. 22.↑

40Ibid., vi. 22.↑

41Ibid., vii. 32.↑

41Ibid., vii. 32.↑

42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑

42Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55.↑

43Ibid., iv. 68.↑

43Ibid., iv. 68.↑

44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑

44Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand,Kālidāsa, p. 231.↑

45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑

45Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19.↑

46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑

46Ibid., i. 9. The parallelismis, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English.↑

47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑

47Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2.↑

48Ibid., iv. 14.↑

48Ibid., iv. 14.↑

49Ibid., v. 19.↑

49Ibid., v. 19.↑

50Ibid., v. 12.↑

50Ibid., v. 12.↑

51Ibid., v. 11.↑

51Ibid., v. 11.↑

52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑

52Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in theÇakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt,Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440.↑

53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑

53Cf. Pravarasena’sSetubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv.↑

54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑

54⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —bis.↑

5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑

5516 + 18bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —.↑

56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑

56⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑

57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑

57— ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —.↑

58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑

58⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —.↑

59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑

59Huth,op. cit., Table.↑

60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑

60Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position.↑

61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

61H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa(1920), p. 5), argues thatRaghuvaṅça, ix. 53,shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than theÇakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of theÇakuntalārenders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely ourArthaçāstrais also uncertain.↑

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