The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.111

c29.111

The Gupta period, taken in a wide sense as extending from about A. D. 300 to 650, and meaning more particularly the fourth and fifth centuries, was a time of exceptional intellectual activity in many fields—a time not unworthy of comparison with the Elizabethan and Stuart period in England.¹ In India all the lesser lights are outshone by the brilliancy of Kālidāsa, as in England all the smaller authors are overshadowed by Shakespeare. But, as the Elizabethan literature would still be rich even if Shakespeare had not written, so, in India, if Kālidāsa's works had not survived, enough of other men's writings would remain to distinguish his age as extraordinarily fertile in literary achievement.