The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.110

c29.110

¹ Kālidāsa shows such intimate knowledge of small rivers and other details in Western Mālwā that in all probability he must have been a native of Mandasor (Dāsapura) or of some place in the immediate neighbourhood, and would thus have been brought into close touch with the court of Ujjain and the active life which centred in that capital (M. M. Haraparshad Shastri in *J. B. & O. R. Soc.*, vol. i, pp. 197–212). The date of Kālidāsa has been the subject during recent years of much discussion, summed up, until November, 1911, by B. Liebich in his paper entitled 'Das Datum des Kālidāsa' (*Indogerm. Forschungen*, Strassburg, Band xxxi (1912), pp. 198–203). Among earlier references are: Macdonell, *Hist. of Sanskrit Liter.* (1900), p. 324, where Kālidāsa is assigned to the beginning of the fifth century; Keith (*J. R. A. S.*, 1909, pp. 433–9) who places the poet in the reign of Chandra-gupta II, though the mention of the Hūnas in *Raghuvamśa* iv makes it difficult to assign that work to a date so early. See *J. R. A. S.*, 1909, pp. 731–9; and *Ind. Ant.*, 1912, p. 265. The theory of Hoernle (*J. R. A. S.*, 1909, p. 112), which places Kālidāsa's activity in the first half of the sixth century, has no defenders, and seems to me to rest upon erroneous premises. It is not unlikely that the early descriptive poems of Kālidāsa, namely, the *Ṛitusamhāra* and the *Meghadūta*, may have been composed before A. D. 413, that is to say, while Chandra-gupta II was on the throne, but I am inclined to regard the reign of Kumāragupta I (413–55) as the time during which the poet's later works were composed, and it seems possible, or even probable, that the whole of his literary career fell within the limits of that reign. It is also possible that he may have continued writing after the accession of Skandagupta. But I have no doubt that he flourished in the fifth century during the time when the Gupta power was at its height. For the order of composition of Kālidāsa's works, see M. M. Haraparshad Shastri in *J. B. O. Res. Soc.*, vol. ii, pp. 179–89.