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A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c5: Chapter III. Kālidāsa

A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c5

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English

Chapter III. Kālidāsa

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Of Kalidasa's immediate predecessors we know little, and with the doubtful exception of the plays ascribed to Bhasa, we know still less of their works. Yet, it is marvellous that the Kavya attains its climax in him and a state of perfection which is never paralleld in its later history. If Asvaghoṣa prepared the way and created the new poetry and drama, he did not finish the creation ; and the succession failed. In the interval of three or four centuries we know of other kinds of literary effort, but we have little evidence of the type which would explain the finished excellence of Kalidasa's poetry. It must have been a time of movement and productivenes, and the employment of ornate prose and verse in the Gupta inscriptions undoubtedly indicates the flourishing of the Kavya ; but nothing striking or decisive in poetry or drama emerges, or at least survives. What impresses us in Kalidasa's works is their freedom from immaturity, but this freedom must have been the result of prolonged and diverse efforts extending over a stretch of time. In Kalidasa we are introduced at once to something new which no one hit upon before, something perfect which no one achieved, something incomparably great and enduring for all time. His outstanding individual genius certainly accounts for a great deal of this, but it appears in a sudden and towering glory, without being buttressed in its origin by the intelligible gradation of lower eminences. It is, however, the effect also of the tyrannical dominance of a great genius that it not only obscures but often wipes out by its vast and strong effulgence the lesser lights which surround it or herald its approach.

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Of the predecessors of whom Kalidasa himself speaks, or of the contemporaries mentioned by legends, we have very little information. There are also a few poets who have been confused, identified or associated with Kalidasa; they may have been contemporaries or immediate successors. Most of these, however, are mere names, and very scanty and insignificant works have been ascribed to them by older tradition or by more modern guess-work. Of these, the only sustained work is that of Pravarasena whose date is unknown, but who may have reigned in Kashmir in the 5th century A.D.¹ He wrote the *Setu-bandha* or *Rāvaṇa-vadha*,² in fifteen cantos, but if it is in Prakrit, it is obviously modelled on the highly artificial Sanskrit Kavya. The anthologies,³ however, assign to him three Sanskrit stanzas, but they are hardly remarkable. Kahlaṇa (ii-16) mentions Candraka or Candaka as a composer of dramas under Tuñjina of Kashmir; but of him and his work nothing is known, excepting small fragments preserved by Śrīvara in his *Subhāṣitāvali*; and the identity of this dramatist with the Buddhist grammarian Candragomin, who also composed a drama (now preserved in Tibetan and entitled Lokananda) is extremely hypothetical. Of Mātṛgupta, who is said to have been Pravarasena's predecessor on the throne of Kashmir, and who may or may not be identical with dramaturgist Mātṛguptācārya,⁴ nothing remains except two stanzas contextually attributed by the Kashmirian Kahlaṇa in his *Rāja-taraṅgiṇī* (iii. 181, 252),¹ and one by another Kashmirian, Kṣemendra, in his *Aucitya-vicāra-carcā* (ad 22). Mātṛgupta, himself a poet, is said to have patronised Meṇṭha or Bhartṛmeṇṭha,² whose *Hayagrīva-vadha* elicited royal praise and reward. The first stanza of this work, in Śloka, is quoted by Kṣemendra,³ as well as by some commentators and anthologists,⁴ but it is obviously too inadequate to give an idea of the much lauded lost poem. Tradition associates Kālidāsa also with Ghaṭakarpara and Vetālabhaṭṭa. It has been suggested⁵ that Ghaṭakarpara may be placed even earlier than Kālidāsa; but the laboured composition of twenty-four stanzas,⁶ which passes under his name, hardly deserves much notice. It reverses the motif of the *Megha-dūta* by making a love-lorn woman, in the rainy season, send a message to her lover, and aims chiefly at displaying skill in the verbal trick of repeated syllables, known as Yamaka, exclusively using, however, only one variety of it, namely, the terminal. It employs a variety of metres,⁷ but shows little poetic talent. Nor is there much gain if we accept the attribution to this poet of the *Nīti-sāra*¹ which is simpler in diction but which is merely a random collection of twenty-one moralising stanzas, also composed in a variety of metres.² Of the latter type is also the *Nīti-pradīpa*³ of sixteen stanzas, which is ascribed to Vetalabhaṭṭa; but some of the verses of this shorter collection are indeed fine specimens of gnomic poetry, which has been much assiduously cultivated in Sanskrit.⁴

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¹ See Peterson in *Sbhv*, pp. 60-61. But Stein in his translation of the *Rāja-taraṅgiṇī*, i, pp. 66, 84 f., would place Pravarasena II as late as the second half of the 6th century. The ascription of the *Kauntaleśvara-dautya* to Kālidāsa by Kṣemendra and Bhoja is used to show that Pravarasena, as the Vākāṭaka ruler of Kuntala, was a contemporary of Kālidāsa, but it is only an unfounded conjecture.

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² Ed. S. Goldschmidt, with German trs. (and word index by P. Goldschmidt), Strassburg and London 1880, 1884; ed. Sivadatta and K. P. Parab, with Skt. comm. of Rāmadāsa, NSP, Bombay 1895.

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³ *Kvs.* introd., pp. 54-55.

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⁴ S. K. De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, i, p. 32; fragments of this writer have been collected from citations in later works published by T. R. Chintamani in the *Journal of Oriental Research*, Madras, II (1928), pp. 118-28.

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¹ These are also given as Mātṛgupta's in *Sbhv*, nos. 3181 and 2550. It is curious that the first stanza is assigned to Karpaṭika by Kṣemndra (*Aucitya-vicāra ad* 15).

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² Kalhaṇa, iii. 125 f, 260-62. The word *meṇṭha* means an elephant-driver, and this meaning is referred to in a complimentary verse in *Sml* (4.61). The poet is sometimes called Hastipaka. Maṅkhaka (ii. 53) places Meṇṭha as a poet in the same rank with Bhāravi, Subandhu, and Bāṇa; Śivasvāmin (xx. 47) equals him with Kālidāsa and Daṇḍin; while Rājaśekhara thinks that Vālmīki re-incarnated as Meṇṭha!

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³ *Suvṛtta-tilaka ad* iii. 16. The poem is also mentioned in Kuntaka's *Vakrokti-jīvita* (ed. S. K. De, Calcutta 1928, p. 243), and in the *Nāṭya-darpaṇa* of Rāmacandra and Guṇacandra (ed. GOS, Baroda 1929, p. 174).

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⁴ Peterson, *op. cit.*, pp. 92-94. Small fragments are preserved in Śrīvara's *Subhāṣitavali*, nos. 203-204.

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⁵ H. Jacobi, *Das Rāmāyaṇa*, p. 125 note. Jacobi relies mainly on the wager offered by the poet at the close that he would carry water in a broken pitcher for any one who would surpass him in the weaving of Yamakas; but the poem may have been anonymous, and the author's name itself may have had a fictitious origin from the wager itself. The figure Yamaka, though deprected by Ānandavardhana, is old, being comprehended by Bharata, and need not of itself prove a late date for the poem.

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⁶ Ed. Haeberlin in Kāvya-saṁgraha, p. 120 f., which is reprinted by Jivananda Vidyasagar in his Kāvya saṁgraha, I, Calcutta 1886, p. 357-66; ed. with a Skt. comm. by G. M. Dursch, Berlin 1828, with German verse trs.

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⁷ Sundarī, Vasantatilaka, Aupacchandasika, Rathoddhatā, Puṣpitagrā, Upajāti and Drutavilambita, among which Rathoddhatā predominates.

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¹ Ed. Haeberlin, *op. cit.*, p. 504 f.; Jivananda, *op. cit.*, pp. 374-80.

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² Upajāti, Śārdūlavikrīḍita, Bhujaṅgaprayāta, Śloka, Vaṁśasthavila, Vasantatilaka, Mandākrāntā, the Śloka predominating. Some of the stanzas are fine, but they recur in other works and collections.

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³ Ed. Haeberlin, *op. cit.*, p. 526 f.; Jivananda, *op. cit.*, pp. 366-72. The metres used are, Upajāti, Vasantatilaka, Śārdūlavikrīḍita, Drutavilambita, Vaṁśasthavila, Mandākrāntā and Śloka.

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⁴ Śaṅku is also regarded as a contemporary of Kālidāsa. He cannot be indentical with Śaṅkuka, whom Kalhaṇa mentions as the author of the *Bhuvanābhyudaya*, a poem now lost; for he belongs to the time Ajitāpīḍa of Kashmir (about 813-16 A.D.); *see* S. K. De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, i, p. 38. Śaṅkuka is also cited in the Anthologies, in one of which he is called son of Mayūra; *see* Peterson in *Sbhv*, p. 127 and G· P. Quackenbos, *Poems of Mayūra*, pp. 50-52. Perhaps to this Śaṅkuka, cited as Amātya Śaṅkuka, is also attributed a drama, entitled *Citrotpalālambitaka Prakaraṇa*, from which a passage is quoted in the *Nāṭyadarpaṇa* of Rāmacandra and Guṇacandra (p. 86).

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The doubtful poems of Kālidāsa, which comprise some twenty works form an interesting subject, but no serious or complete study has yet been made of them. Some of them, such as the elaborate Yamaka-kāvya, called the *Nalodaya*⁵ in four cantos, and the slight *Rākṣasa-kāvya*⁶ in some twenty stanzas, are now definitely known to be wrongly ascribed; but it is possible that some of the Kālidāsa Apocrypha belongs to his contemporaries and followers. A more serious claim for Kālidāsa's authorship is made for the *Ṛtu-saṃhāra*¹ as a youthful production of the poet. It has been contested, however, that the poem may be young, but not with the youth of Kālidāsa. The Indian tradition on the question is uncertain; for while it is popularly ascribed, Mallinātha, who comments on the other three poems of Kālidāsa, ignores it;² and the artistic conscience of Sanskrit rhetoricians did not accept it, as did the other three poems, for purposes of illustration of their rules; nor is any citation from it found in the early anthologies.³ The argument that the poem is an instance of Kālidāsa's juvenilia⁴ and is, therefore, not taken into account by commentators, anthologists and rhetoricians, ignores niceties of style, and forgets that the poem does not bear the obvious stigmata of the novice.⁵ The Indian literary sense never thought it fit to preserve immaturities. The work is hardly immature in the sense that it lacks craftsmanship for its, descriptions are properly mannered and conventional, even if they show some freshness of observation and feeling for nature; its peculiarities and weaknesses are such as show inferior literary talent, and not a mere primitive or undeveloped sense of style.¹ It has been urged that Vatsabhaṭṭi in his Mandasor inscription borrows expressions and exploits two stanzas of the *Ṛtu-saṃhāra*. The indebtedness is much exaggerated,² but even if it is accepted, it only shows the antiquity of the poem, and not Kalidasa's authorship. If echoes of Kalidasa's phrases and ideas are traceable (e.g. ii. 10), they are sporadic and indicative of imitation, for there is nowhere any suggestion of Kālidāsa as a whole.³ The poem is, of course, not altogether devoid of merit; otherwise there would not have been so much controversy. It is not a bare description, in six cantos, of the details of the six Indian seasons, nor even a *Shepherd's Calender*, but a highly cultured picture of the seasons viewed through the eyes of a lover. In a sense it has the same motif as is seen in the first part of the *Megha-dūta*; but the treatment is different, and there is no community of character between the two poems. It strings together rather conventional pictures of kissing clouds, embracing creepers, the wildly rushing streams and other tokens of metaphorical amorousness in nature, as well as the effect and significance of the different seasons for the lover. It shows flashes of effective phrasing, an easy flow of verse and sense of rhythm, and a diction free from elaborate complications, but the rather stereotyped descriptions lack richness of content and they are not blended sufficiently with human feeling.

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⁵ Ed. with the Subodhinī comm. of the Maithila Prajñākara-miśra, and with introd., notes and trs. in Latin by F. Benary, Berlin 1830; ed. Jagannath Sukla, with the same comm., Calcutta 1870; also ed. W. Yates, with metrical Engl. trs., Calcutta 1844. Pischel (*ZDMG*, LVI, p. 626) adduces reasons for ascribing its authorship to Ravideva, son of Nārāyaṇa and author probably also of the *Rākṣasa-kāvya*. With this view R. G. Bhandarkar (*Report, 1883-84*, p. 16) agrees. Ravideva's date is unknown, but Peterson (*JBRAS*, XVII, 1887, p. 69, note, corrected in *Three Reports*, 1887, p. 20 f.) states that a commentary on the *Nalodaya* is dated in Saṁvat 1664=1608 A.D. But A. R. Ramanatha Ayyar (*JRAS*, 1925, p. 263) holds that the the author of the *Nalodaya* was a Kerala poet, named Vāsudeva, son of Ravi, who lived in the court of Kulaśekhara and his successor Rāma in the first half of the 9th century (?), and wrote also another Yamaka-kāvya, *Yudhiṣṭhira-vijay* (ed. NSP, Bombay 1897) and an unpublished alliterative poem called *Tripura-dahana*: *see* below under ch. vi.

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⁶ Ed. A. Hoefer in *Sanskrit Lesebuch*, Berlin 1849; ed. K.P. Parab, NSP, Bombay 1890, 1900; also in Jivananda, *op. cit.*, III, pp. 343-53; trs. by F. Belloni-Filippi in *GSAI*, XIX, 1906, p. 83 f. It is sometimes called Buddhivinoda or Vidvadvinoda Kāvya, a text of which is published by D. R. Mankad in *IHQ*, XIII, 1936, p. 692 f.; see S. K. De in *IHQ*, XIV, pp. 172-76. There is a poet named Rākṣasa or Rākṣasa Paṇḍita, cited respectively in *Skm* (i. 90. 5) and *ŚP* (nos. 3810-11), although the stanzas in the anthologies are not taken from the poem. P. K. Gode (*Journal of Indian Hist.*, XIX, 1940, pp. 312-19) puts the lower limit of the date of the *Rākṣasa-kāvya* at 1000 A.D. on the strength of the date 1159 A.D. of a Jaina commentary on it.

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¹ Ed. W. Jones, Calcutta, 1792 (reproduced in fasc. by H. Kreyenborg Hannover 1924); ed. with a Latin and German metrical trs. by P. von Bohlen, Leipzig 1840; ed. W. L. Pansikar, with the comm. of Maṇirāma, NSP, Bombay, 6th ed. 1922 (1st ed. 1906).

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² Mallinātha at the outset of his commentary on *Raghu°*, speaks of only three Kāvyas of Kālidāsa on which he himself comments.

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³ Excepting four stanzas in *Sbhv*, of which nos. 1674, 1908 (=*Ṛts* vi. 16, 19) are assigned expressly to Kālidāsa, and nos- 1703, 1704 (=*Ṛts* i. 13, 20) are cited with *kayor api*. But on the composite text of this anthology, which renders its testimony doubtful, see S. K. De in *JRAS*, 1927, pp. 109-10.

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⁴ Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, Breslau 1921, p. 66 f.; Keith in *JRAS*, 1912, pp. 1066-70, *JRAS*, 1913, pp 410-12, *HSL*, pp. 82-84; J. Nobel in *ZDMG*. LXVI, 1912, pp. 275-82, LXXIII, 1919, p. 194 f. and *JRAS*, 1913, pp. 401-10; Harichand Sastri, *L'Art poétique de l'Inde* (Paris 1917), pp. 240-42.

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⁵ E. H. Johnston, introd. to *Buddha-carita*, p. lxxxi.

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¹ This would rather rule out the suggestion that inasmuch as it shares some of Aśvaghoṣa's weaknesses, it is a half-way house between Aśvaghoṣa and Kālidāsa.

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² Cf. G. R. Nandargikar, *Kumāradāsa*, Poona 1908, p. xxvi, note.

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³ Very pertinently Keith calls attention to Kālidāsa's picture of spring in *Kumāra°* iii and *Raghu°* ix, and of summer in *Raghu°* xvi (to which scattered passages from the dramas can also be added); but the conclusion he draws that they respectively show the developed and undeveloped style of the *same* poet is a matter of personal preference rather than of literary judgment.

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Unlike later Sanskrit poets, who are often confident self-puffers, Kalidasa expresses modesty and speaks little of himself. The current Indian anecdotes about him are extremely stupid, and show that no clear memory remained of him. He is one of the great poets who live and reveal themselves only in their works. His date, and even approximate time, is at worst uncertain, at best conjectural. His works have been ransacked for clues, but not very successfully ; but since they bear general testimony to a period of culture, ease and prosperity, they have been associated with the various great moments of the Gupta power and glory. The hypotheses and controversies on the subject need not occupy us here,¹ for none of the theories are final, and without further and more definite material, no convincing conclusion is attainable. Let it suffice to say that since Kalidasa is mentioned as a poet of great reputation in the Aihole inscription of 634 A.D., and since he probably knows Aśvaghoṣa's works and shows a much more developed form and sense of style (a position which, however, has not gone unchallenged),² the limits of his time are broadly fixed between the 2nd and the 6th century A.D. Since his works reveal the author as a man of culture and urbanity, a leisured artist probably enjoying, as the legends say, royal patronage under a Vikramāditya,¹ it is not unnatural to associate him with Candragupta II (cir. 380-413 A.D.), who had the style of Vikramāditya, and whose times were those of properity and power. The various arguments, literary and historical, by which the position is reached, are not invulnerable when they are taken in detail, but their cumulative effect cannot be ignored. We neither know, nor shall perhaps ever know, if any of the brilliant conjectures is correct, but in the present state of our knowledge, it would not be altogether unjustifiable to place him roughly at 400 A.D. It is not unimportant to know that Kalidasa shared the glorious and varied living and learning of a great time; but he might not have done this, and yet be the foremost poet of Sanskrit literature. That he had a wide acquaintance with the life and scenes of many parts of India, but had a partiality for Ujjayinī, may be granted; but it would perhaps be hazardous, and even unnecessary, to connect him with any particular geographical setting or historical environment.

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¹ The literature on the subject, which is discussed threadbare without yielding any definite result, is bulky and still growing. The various views, however, will be found in the following : G. Huth, *Die Zeit des Kālidāsa* (diss.), Berlin 1890 ; B. Liebich, *Das Datum des Candragomin's und Kālidāsa's*, Breslau 1903, p. 28, and in *Indogerm. Forschungen*, XXXI, 1912-13, p. 198 f. ; A. Gawronski, *The Digvijaya of Raghu*, Krakau 1914-15 ; Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, Breslau 1921 ; Pathak in *JBRAS*, XIX, 1895, pp. 35-43 and introd. to *Megha-dūta* ; Keith in *JRAS*, 1901, p. 578, 1905, p. 575, 1909, p. 433, *Ind. Office Cat.*, Vol. 2, pt. ii, p. 1201, *SD*, p. 143 f. ; also references cited in Winternitz, *HIL*, III, p. 40 f. W. F. Thomas, in *JRAS*, 1918, pp. 118-22, makes an attempt to revive the Dinnāga legend.

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² See Nandargikar, introd. to *Raghu* ; Kshetresh Chattopadhyay in *Allahabad Univ. Studies*, II, p. 80, f. ; K. G. Sankar in *IHQ*, I, p. 312 f. To argue that Aśvaghoṣa is later than Kālidāsa is to presume, without sufficient reason, a retrogressive phase in literary evolution.

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¹ S. P. Pandit (Preface to *Raghu*) admits this, but believes that there is nothing in Kālidāsa's works that renders untenable the tradition which assigns him to the age of the Vikramādity of the Saṁhvat era, *i.e.*, to the first century B.C. The view has been developed in some recent writings, but arguments are hardly conclusive.

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Kalidasa's works are not only singularly devoid of all direct personal reference, but they hardly show his poetic genious growing and settling itself in a gradual grasp of power. Very few poets have shown a greater lack of ordered development. Each of his works, including his dramas, has its distinctive characteristics in matter and manner, it is hardly a question of younger or older, better or worse, but of difference of character and quality, of conception and execution. All efforts,² therefore, to arrive at a relative chronology of his writings have not proved very successful, and it is not necessary to indulge in pure guess-work and express a dogmatic opinion.

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² Huth attempts to ascertain a relative chronology on the basis of metres, but Kā idāsa is too finished a metrist to render any conclusion probable on metrical evidence alone; see Keith's effective criticism in *SD*, p. 167. That *Kumāra* and *Megha* are both redolent of love and youth and *Raghu* is mature and meditative, is not a criterion of sufficiently decisive character. The dramas also differ in quality and character of workmanship, but is pure conjecture to infer from this fact their earliness or lateness. Similar remarks apply to the elaborate attempt of R. D. Karmarkar in *Proc. Second Orient. Conference*, Calcutta 1923, pp. 239-47. It must be said that the theories are plausible; but their very divergence from one another shows that the question is incapable of exact determination.

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The *Kumāra-saṁbhava*¹ is regarded as one of Kalidasa's early works, but it is in its own way as admirably conceived and expressed as his other poems. To the extent to which it has survived, it does not, however, complete its theme,—a defect which it shares with the *Raghu-vaṁśa*, also apparently left incomplete. The genuineness of the first seven cantos of the *Kumāra-saṁbhava* is beyond doubt; but it brings the narrative down to the marriage of Śiva and Pārvatī, and the promise of the title, regarding the birth of the Kumāra, is not fulfilled. Probably canto viii is also genuine; along with the first seven cantos, it is commented upon by Mallinātha and Aruṇagiri, and is known to writers on Poetics, who somewhat squeamishly censure its taste in depicting the love-sports of adored deities;² it also possesses Kalidasa's characteristic style and diction. The same remarks, however, do not apply to the rest of the poem (ix-xvii) as we have it now. These cantos probably form a supplement¹ composed by some later zealous admirer, who not only insists upon the birth of Kumāra but also brings out the motive of his birth by describing his victory over the demon Tāraka. It is unbelievable that Kālidāsa abruptly left off his work; possibly he brought it to a proper conclusion; but it is idle to speculate as to why the first seven or eight cantos only survived. The fact remains that the authenticity of the present sequel has not been proved.

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¹ Ed. A. F. Stenzler, with Latin trs. (i-vii, London 1838); ed. T. Ganapati Sastri, with comm. of Aruṇagiri and Nārāyaṇa (i-viii), Trivandrum Skt. Ser. 1913-14. cantos viii-xvii first published in *Pandit* Old Series, I-II, by Vitthala Sastri, 1866. Also ed. N. B. Parvanikar, K. P. Parab and W. L. Pansikar, with comm. of Mallinātha (i-viii) and Sītārāma (ix-xvii), NSP, 5th ed., Bombay 1908 (10th ed. 1927)); ed. with comm. of Mallinātha, Cāritravardhana and Sītārāma, Gujrati Printing Press, Bombay 1898. Eng. trs. by R. T. H. Griffith, 2nd ed., London 1879. It has been translated into many other languages, and edited many times in India—The NSP ed. contains in an Appendix Mallinātha's comm. on canto-viii, which is accepted as genuine in some South Indian manuscripts and editions (see *India Office Cat*, vii, p. 1419, no. 3764).

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² For a summary of the opinions, see Harichand Sastri, *Kālidāsa et l'Art poétique de l'Inde*, Paris 1917, p. 235 f.

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¹ Jacobi in *Verhandl. d. V Orient. Kongress*, Berlin 1881, II. 2, pp. 133-56; Weber in *ZDMG*, XXVII, p. 174 f. and in *Ind. Streifen*, III, pp. 217 f. 211 f. The arguments turn chiefly on the silence of the commentators and rhetoricians, and on grammatical and stylistic evidence, which need not be summarised here. Although the intrinsic evidence of taste, style and treatment is at best an unsafe guide, no student of Sanskrit literature, alive to literary niceties, will deny the obvious inferiority of the supplement. The extreme rarity of MSS for these additional cantos is also significant; and we know nothing about their source, nor about the source of the commentary of Sītārāma on them (the only notice of a MS occurring in R. L. Mitra, *Notices*, x, no. 3289, p. 38). It must, however, be admitted that, though an inferior production, the sequel is not devoid of merit; and there are echoes in it not only from Kālidāsa's works but also lines and phrases which remind one of later great Kāvya-poets. The only citation from it in later writings is the one found in Ujjvaladatta's commentary on the *Uṇādi-sūtra* (ed. T. Aufrecht, Bonn 1859, *ad* iv. 66, p. 106), where the passage *ravaḥ pragalbhāhata-bherī-saṁbhavaḥ* is given as a quotation with *iti Kumāraḥ* (and not *Kumāre*). It occurs as a variant of *Kumāra°* xiv. 32*a* in the NSP edition; but it is said to occur also in Kumāradāsa's *Jānakī haraṇa*, which work, however, is cited by Ujjvaladatta (iii. 73) by its own name and not by the name of its author. If this is a genuine quotation from the sequel, then the sequal must have been added at a fairly early time, at least before the 14th century A.D., unless it is shown that the passage in question is a quotation from Kumāradāsa and an appropriation by the author of the sequel. The question is re-opened by S. P. Bhattacharya in *Proceedings of the Fifth Orient. Conf.*, Vol. I, pp. 43-44.

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Nevertheless, apart from the promise of the title, these genuine cantos present a finished and unified picture in itself. The theme is truly a daring one in aspiring to encompass the love of the highest deities; but, unlike the later Greek poets to whom the Homeric inspiration was lost, the Sanskrit poets never regard their deities as playthings of fancy. Apart from any devotional significance which may be found, but which Kālidāsa, as poet never emphasised, the theme was a living reality to him as well as to his audience; and its poetic possibilities must have appealed to his imagination. We do not know exactly from what source¹ Kalidasa derived his material, but we can infer from his treatment of the Śakuntala legend, that he must have entirely rehandled and reshaped what he derived. The new mythology had life, warmth and colour, and brought the gods nearer to human life and emotion. The magnificent figure of the divine ascetic, scorning love but ultimately yielding to its humanising influence, the myth of his temptation leading to the destruction of Kama as the emblem of human desire, the story of Uma's resolve to win by renunciation what her beauty and love could not achieve by their seduction, and the pretty fancy of the coming back of her lover, not in his ascetic pride but in playful benignity,—this poetic, but neither moralistic nor euhemeristic, working up of a scanty Purāṇic myth in a finished form is perhaps all his own. If there is a serious purpose behind the poem, it is merged in its total effect. It is, on the other hand, not bare story-telling or recounting of a myth; it is the careful work of a poet, whose feeling, art and imagination invest his pictures with a charming vividness, which is at once finely spiritual and intensely human. His poetic powers are best revealed in his delineation of Śiva's temptation in canto iii, where the mighty effect of the few swift words, describing the tragic annihilation of the pretty love-god by the terrible god of destruction, is not marred by a single word of elaboration, but produces infinite suggestiveness by its extreme brevity and almost perfect fusion of sound and sense. A fine example also of Kalidasa's charming fancy and gentle humour is to be found in the picture of the young hermit appearing in Uma's hermitage and his depreciation of Śiva, which evokes an angry but firm rebuke from Uma, leading on to the hermit's revealing himself as the god of her desire.

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¹ The story is told in *Mahābhārata*, iii. 225 (Bombaby ed.) and *Rāmāyaṇa*, i. 37 It is known to Aśvaghoṣa in some form, *Buddha-carita*, i. 88, xiii. 16

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The theme of the *Raghu-vaṃśa*¹ is much more diversified and extensive, and gives fuller scope to Kalidāsa's artistic imagination. The work has a greater height of aim and range of delivery, but has no known predecessor. It is rather a gallery of pictures than a unified poem; and yet out of these pictures, which put the uncertain mass of old narratives and traditions into a vivid poetical form, Kalidāsa succeeds in evolving one of the finest specimens of the Indian Mahākāvya, which exhibits both the diversity and plenitude of his powers.² Out of its nineteen cantos there is none that does not present some pleasing picture, none that does not possess an interest of its own; and there is throughout this long poem a fairly uniform excellence of style and expression. There is hardly anything rugged or unpolished anywhere in Kalidāsa, and his works must have been responsible for setting the high standard of formal finish which grew out of all proportion in later poetry. But he never sacrifices, as later poets often do, the intrinsic interest of the narrative to a mere elaboration of the outward form. There is invariably a fine sense of equipoise and an astonishing certainty of touch and taste. In the *Raghu-vaṃśa*, Kalidāsa goes back to early legends for a theme, but it is doubtful if he seriously wishes to reproduce its spirit or write a *Heldengedicht*. The quality of the poem, however, is more important than its fidelity to the roughness of heroic times in which the scene is laid. Assuming that what he gives us is only a glorified picture of his own times, the vital question is whether he has painted excellent individuals or mere abstractions. Perhaps Kalidāsa is prone to depicting blameless regal characters, in whom a little blameworthiness had better been blended; but if they are meant to be ideal they are yet clearly distinguished as individuals; and, granting the environment, they are far from ethereal or unnatural. Kalidasa introduces us to an old-world legend and to an atmosphere strange to us with its romantic charm; but beneath all that is brilliant and marvellous, he is always real without being a realist.

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¹ Ed. A. F. Stenzler, with a Latin trs., London 1832; ed. with the comm. Mallinātha by S. P. Pandit, Bombay Skt. Ser., 3 vols., 1869-74, and by G. R. Nandargikar, with English trs., 3rd revised ed., Bombay 1897; ed. with comm. of Aruṇagiri and Nārāyaṇa (i-vi), Mangalodaya Press, Trichur, *no date*. Often edited and translated in parts or as a whole.

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² The Indian opinion considers the *Raghu-vaṃśa* to be Kālidāsa's greatest poem, so that he is often cited as the *Raghukāra par excellence*. Its popularity is attested by the fact that about forty commentaries on this poem are known.

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The earlier part of the *Raghu-vaṃśa* accords well with its title, and the figure of Raghu dominates, being supported by the episodes of his father Dilīpa and his son Aja; but in the latter part Rāma is the central figure, similarly heralded by the story of Daśaratha and followed by that of Kuśa. There is thus a unity of design, but the entire poem is marked by a singularly varied handling of a series of themes. We are introduced in first canto to the vows and austerities of the childless Dilīpa and his queen Sudakṣiṇā in tending Vasiṣṭha's sacred cow and submitting to her test, followed by the birth of Raghu as a heavenly boon. Then we have the spirited narrative of young Raghu's fight with Indra in defence of his father's sacrificial horse, his accession, his triumphant progress as a conqueror, and his generosity which threatened to impoverish him,—all of which, especially his Digvijaya, is described with picturesque brevity, force and skill. The next three cantos (vi-viii) are devoted to the more tender story of Aja and his winning of the princess Indumatī at the stately ceremonial of Svayaṃvara, followed, after a brief interval of triumph and happiness, by her accidental death, which leaves Aja disconsolate and broken-hearted. The story of his son Daśaratha's unfortunate hunt, which follows, becomes the prelude to the much greater narrative of the joys and sorrows of Rāma.

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In the gallery of brilliant kings which Kalidasa has painted, his picture of Rāma is undoubtedly the best; for here we have realities of character which evoke his powers to the utmost. He did not obviously wish to rival Valmiki on his own ground, but wisely chooses to treat the story in his own way. While Kalidasa devotes one canto of nearly a hundred stanzas to the romantic possibilities of Rāma’s youthful career, he next accomplishes the very difficult task of giving, in a single canto of not much greater length, a marvellously rapid but picturesque condensation, in Vālmīki’s Śloka metre, of the almost entire *Rāmāyaṇa* up to the end of Rāma’s victory over Rāvaṇa and winning back of Sītā. But the real pathos of the story of Rāma’s exile, strife and suffering is reserved for treatment in the next canto, in which, returning from Laṅkā, Rāma is made to describe to Sītā, with the recollective tenderness of a loving heart, the various scenes of their past joys and sorrows over which they pass in their aerial journey. The episode is a poetical study of reminiscent love, in which sorrow remembered becomes bliss, but it serves to bring out Rāma’s great love for Sītā better than mere narration or description,—a theme which is varied by the pictures of the memory of love, in the presence of suffering, depicted in the *Megha-dūta*, and in the two lamentations, in different situations, of Aja and Rati. Rāma’s passionate clinging to the melancholy, but sweet, memories of the past prepares us for the next canto on Sītā’s exile, and heightens by contrast the grief of the separation, which comes with a still more cruel blow at the climax of their happiness. Kālidāsa’s picture of this later history of Rāma, more heroic in its silent suffering than the earlier, has been rightly praised for revealing the poet’s power of pathos at its best, a power which never exaggerates but compresses the infinite pity of the situation in just a few words. The story of Rāma’s son, Kuśa, which follows, sinks in interest ; but it has a remarkably poetic description of Kuśa’s dream, in which his forsaken capital city, Ayodhyā, appears in the guise of a forlorn woman and reproaches him for her fallen state. After this, two more cantos (xviii-xix) are added, but the motive of the addition is not clear. They contain some interesting pictures, especially that of Agnivarṇa at the end, and their authenticity is not questioned; but they present a somewhat colourless account of a series of unknown and shadowy kings. We shall never know whether Kālidāsa intended to bring the narrative down to his own times and connect his own royal patron with the dynasty of Raghu; but the poem comes to an end rather abruptly in the form in which we have it.¹ It will be seen from this brief sketch that the theme is not one, but many; but even if the work has no real unity, its large variety of subjects is knit together by the powers of colour, form and music of a marvellous poetic imagination. Objects. scenes, characters, emotions, incidents, thoughts—all are transmuted and placed in an eternising frame and setting of poetry.

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¹ The last voluptuous king Agnivarṇa meets with a premature death; but he is not childless; one of the queens with a posthumous child is said to have succeeded. The Purāṇas speak at least of twenty-seven kings who came after Agnivarṇa, and ther is no reason why the poem should end here suddenly, but not naturally (see S. P. Pandit, Preface, P. 15 f. Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, p. 42 f.). It has been uged that the poet's object is to suggest a moral on the inglorious end of a glorious line by depicting the depth to which the descendants of the mighty Raghu sink in a debauched king like Agnivarṇa, who cannot tear himself from the caresses of his women and who, when his loyal subjects and ministers want to have a sight of him, puts out his bare feet through the window for them to worship! Even admitting this as a not unnatural conclusion of the poem, the abrupt ending iş still inexplicable.—C. Kunhan Raja (*Annals of Orient. Research*, Univ. of Madras, Vol. V, pt. 2, pp. 17-40) even ventures to question the authenticity of the entire second half of the *Raghu*, starting with the story of Daśaratha; but his reasons are not convincing.

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The *Megha-dūta*,² loosely called a lyric or an elegy, is a much smaller monody of a little over a hundred stanzas³ in the stately and melodious Mandākrāntā metre; but it is no less characteristic of the vitality and versatility of Kalidasa's poetic powers. The theme is simple enough in describing the severance and yearnings of an imaginary Yakṣa from his beloved through a curse; but the selection of the friendly cloud as the bearer of the Yakṣa's message from Rāmagiri to Alakā is a novel, and somewhat unreal, device,¹ for which the almost demented condition of the sorrowful Yakṣa is offered as an apology by the poet himself. It is perhaps a highly poetical, but not an unnatural, personification, when one bears in mind the noble mass of Indian monsoon clouds, which seem almost instinct with life when they travel from southern tropical sky to the snows of the Himalayas; but the unreality of the poem does not end there. It has been urged that the temporary character of a very brief separation and the absolute certainty of reunion make the display of grief unmanly and its pathos unreal. Perhaps the sense of irrevocable loss would have made the motif more effective; the trivial setting gives an appearance of sentimentality to the real sentiment of the poem. The device of a curse, again, in bringing about the separation—a motif which is repeated in another form in the *Abhijñāna-śakuntala*—is also criticised; for the breach here is caused not by psychological complications, so dear to modern times. But the predominantly fanciful character of Sanskrit poetry recognises not only this as a legitimate means, but even departure on a journey,—on business as we should say to-day; and even homesickness brings a flood of tears to the eyes of grown-up men and women!

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² The editions, as well as translations in various languages, are numerous. The earliest editions are those of H. H. Wilson (116 stanzas) with metrical Eng. trs.. Calcutta 1813 (2nd ed. 1843); of J. Gildemeister, Bonn 1841; of A. F. Stenzler, Breslau 1874. The chief Indian and European editions with different commentaries are: With Vallabhadeva's comm., ed. E. Hultzsch, London 1911; with Mallinātha's comm., ed. K. P. Parab, NSP, 4th ed., Bombay 1881, G. R. Nandargikar, Bombay 1894, and K. B. Pathak, Poona 1894 (2nd ed. 1916) (both with Eng. trs.); with Dakṣiṇāvartanātha's comm., ed. T. Ganapati Sastri, Trivandrum 1919; with Pūrṇa-sarasvatī's comm., ed. K. V. Krishnamachariar, Śrīvāṇī-Vilāsa Press Srirangam 1909; with comm. of Mallinātha and Cāritravardhana, ed. Narayana Sastri Khiste, Chowkhamba Skt. Ser., Benares 1931. English trs. by Col. Jacob, Poona 1870. For an appreciation, see H. Oldenberg, *op. cit.*, p. 217 f. The popularity and currency of the work are shown by the existence of some fifty commentaries.

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³ The great popularity of the poem paid the penalty of interpolations, and the total number of stanzas vary in different versions, thus; as preserved in Jinasena's Pārśvābhyudaya (latter part of the 8th century) 120, Vallabhadeva (10th century) 111, Dakṣiṇāvartanātha (c. 1200) 110, Mallinātha (14th century), 121, Pūrṇasarasvatī 110, Tibetan version 117, Pānabokke (Ceylonese version) 118. A concordance is given in Hultzsch, as well as a list of spurious stanzas.—On text-criticism, see introd. to eds. of Stenzler, Pathak and Hultzsh; J. Hertel's review of Hultzsch's ed. in *Götting. Gelehrte Anzeigen*, 1912: Macdonell in *JRAS*, 1913, p. 176 f.; Harichand, *op. cit.*, p. 238 f.; Herman Beckh, *Ein Beitrag zur Textkritik von Kālidāsa's Meghadūta* (Diss), Berlin 1907 (chiefly on the Tibetan version). A Sinhalese paraphrase with Eng. trs. published by the T. B. P'anabokke, Colombo 1883.

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¹ Bhāmaha (i. 42) actually considers this to be a defect. The idea of sending message may have been suggested by the embassy of Hanūmat in the *Rāmāyaṇa* (cf. st. 104, Pathak's ed.), or of the Swan in the story of Nala in the *Mahābhārata*. Cf. also Kāmavilāpa Jātaka (no. 297), where a crow is sent as a messenger by a man in danger to his wife. But the treatment is Kālidāsa's own.

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It is, however, not necessary to exaggerate the artistic insufficiency of the device; for, the attitude is different, but not the sense of sorrow. If we leave aside the setting, the poem gives a true and poignant picture of the sorrow of parted lovers, and in this lies its real pathos. It is true that the poem is invested with a highly imaginative atmosphere; it speaks of a dremland of fancy, its characters are semi-divine beings, and its imagery is accordingly adapted; but all this does not negate its very human and genuine expression of the erotic sentiment. Its vividness of touch has led poeple even to imagine that it gives a poetic form to the poet's own personal experience; but of this, one can never be sure. There is little of subjectivity in its finished artistic execution, and the lyric mood does not predominate; but the unmistakable warmth of its rich and earnest feeling, expressed through the melody and dignity of its happily fitting metre, redeems the banality of the theme and makes the poem almost lyrical in its effect. The feeling, however, is not isolated, but blended picturesquely with a great deal of descriptive matter. Its intensity of recollective tenderness is set in the midst of the Indian rainy season, than which, as Rabindranath rightly remarks, nothing is more appropriate for an atmosphere of loneliness and longing; it is placed also in the midst of splendid natural scenery which enhances its poignant appeal. The description of external nature in the first half of the poem is heightened throughout by an intimate association with human feeling, while the picture of the lover's sorrowing heart in the second half is skilfully framed in the surrounding beauty of nature. A large number of attempts¹ were made in later times to imitate the poem, but the *Megha-dūta* still remains unsurpassed as a masterpiece of its kind, not for its matter, nor for its description, but purely for its poetry.

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¹ On the Dūta-kāvyas, see Chintaharan Chakravarti in *IHQ*, III, pp. 273-97.

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Kalidasa's deep-rooted fame as a poet somewhat obscures his merit as a dramatist; but prodigal of gifts nature had been to him, and his achievement in the drama is no less striking. In the judgment of many, his *Abhijñāna-śakuntala* remains his greatest work; at the very least, it is considered to be the full-blown flower of his genius. Whatever value the judgment may possess, it implies that in this work we have a unique alliance of his poetic and dramatic gifts, which are indeed not contradictory but complementary; and this fact should be recognised in passing from his poems to his plays. His poems give some evidence of skilful handling of dramatic moments and situations; but his poetic gifts invest his dramas with an imaginative quality which prevents them from being mere practical productions of stage-craft. It is not implied that his dramas do not possess the requisite qualities of a stage-play, for his *Śakuntalā* has been often successfully staged; but this is not the only, much less the chief, point of view from which his dramatic works are to be judged. Plays often fail, not for want of dramatic power or stage-qualities, but for want of poetry; they are often too prosaic. It is very seldom that both the dramatic and poetic qualities are united in the same author. As a dramatist Kālidāsa succeeds, mainly by his poetic power, in two respects: he is a master of poetic emotion which he can skilfully harmonise with character and action, and he has the poetic sense of balance and restraint which a dramatist must show if he would win success.

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It is significant that in the choice of theme, character and situation, Kālidāsa follows the essentially poetic bent of his genius. Love in its different aspects and situations is the dominant theme of all his three plays, care-free love in the setting of a courtly intrigue, impetous love as a romantic and undisciplined passion leading to madness, and youthful love, at first heedless but gradually purified by suffering. In the lyrical and narrative poem the passionate feeling is often an end in itself, elegant but isolated; in the drama, there is a progressive deepening of the emotional exprience as a factor of larger life. It therefore, affords the poet, as a dramatist, an opportunity of depicting its subtle moods and fancies in varied circumstances, its infinite range and intensity in closeness to common realities. His mastery of humour and pathos, his wisdom and humanity, come into play;

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and his great love of life and sense of tears in mortal things inform his pictures with all the warmth and colour of a vivid poetic imagination.

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The *Mālavikāgnimitra*¹ is often taken to be one of Kālidāsa's youthful productions, but there is no adequate reason for thinking that it is his first dramatic work. The modesty shown in the Prologue² repeats itself in those of his other two dramas, and the immaturity which critics have seen in it is more a question of personal opinion than a real fact; for it resolves itself into a difference of form and theme, rather than any real deficiency of power.³ The *Mālavikā* is not a love-drama of the type of the *Svapna-vāsavadattā*, to which it has a superficial resemblance, but which possesses a far more serious interest. It is a light-hearted comedy of court-life in five acts, in which love is a pretty game, and in which the hero need not be of heroic proportion, nor the heroine anything but a charming and attractive maiden. The pity of the situation, no doubt, arises from the fact that the game of sentimental philandering is often played at the expense of others who are not in it, but that is only an inevitable incident of the game. The motif of the progress of a courtly love-intrigue through hindrances to royal desire for a lowly maiden and its denouement in the ultimate discovery of her status as a princess was perhaps not as banal in Kālidāsa's time¹ as we are wont to think; but the real question is how the theme is handled. Neither Agnimitra nor Mālavikā may appear impressive, but they are appropriate to the atmosphere. The former is a care-free and courteous gentleman, on whom the burden of kingly responsibility sits but lightly, who is no longer young but no less ardent, who is an ideal Dakṣiṇa Nāyaka possessing a great capacity for falling in and out of love; while the latter is a faintly drawn ingénue with nothing but good looks and willingness to be loved by the incorrigible king-lover. The Viduṣaka is a more lively character, who takes a greater part in the development of the plot in this play than in the other dramas of Kālidāsa. The interest of the theme is enhanced by the complications of the passionate impetuousity and jelousy of the young discarded queen Irāvatī, which is finely shown off against the pathetic dignity and magnanimity of the elderly chief queen Dhāriṇī. Perhaps the tone and tenor of the play did not permit a more serious development of this aspect of the plot, but it should not be regarded as deficiency. The characterisation is sharp and clear, and the expression polished, elegant and even dainty. The wit and elaborate compliments, the toying and trifling with the tender passion, the sentimentalities and absence of deep feeling are in perfect keeping with the outlook of the gay circle, which is not used to any profounder view of life.² One need not wonder, therefore, that while war is in progress in the kingdom, the royal household is astir with the amorous escapades of the somewhat elderly, but youthfully inclined, king. Gallantry is undoubtedly the keynote of the play, and its joys and sorrows should not be reckoned at a higher level. Judged by its own standard, there is nothing immature, clumsy or turgid in the drama. If Kālidāsa did not actually originate the type, he must have so stamped it with the impress of his genius that it was, as the dramas of Harṣa and Rājaśekhara show, adopted as one of the appealing modes of dramatic expression and became banalised in course of time.

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¹ Ed. F. Bollenson, Leipzig 1879; ed. S. P. Pandit, with comm. of Kāṭayavema (c. 1400 A.D.), Bombay Sansk. Ser., 2nd ed., 1889, and by K. P. Parab, NSP, Bombay 1915. Trs. into English by C. H. Tawney, Calcutta 1875 and London 1891; into German by Weber, Berlin 1856; into French by V. Henry Paris 1889. On Text criticism see C. Cappeller, *Observationes ad Kālidāsae Mālavikāgnimitram* (Diss.), Regimonti 1868; F. Haag, *Zur Textkritik und Erklärung von Kālidāsas Mālavikāgnimitra*, Frauenfeld 1872; Bollensen in *ZDMG*, XIII, 1859, p. 480 f.; Weber in *ibid.*, XIV, 1860, p. 261 f., Jackson in *JAOS*, XX, p. 343 f. (Time analysis). For fuller bibliography see Sten Konow, *op. cit.*, p. 63.

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² If the work is called *nava*, with a reference to far-famed predecessors, the same word is used to designate his *Abhijñāna-śakuntala*, which also modestly seeks the satisfaction of the learned as a final test; and his *Vikramorvaśīya* is spoken of in the same way in the Prologue as *apūrva*, with reference to former poets (*pūrva kavi*). In a sense, all plays are *nava* and *apūrva*, and no valid inference is possible from such descriptions.

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³ Wilson's unfounded doubt about the authorship of the play led to its comparative neglect, but Weber and S. P. Pandit effectively set the doubts at rest. For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry, *Les Littératures de l'Inde*, p. 305 f.

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¹ The source of the story is not known, but it is clear thnt Kālidāsa owes nothing to the Purāṇic stories. As st. 2 shows, accounts of Agnimitra were probably current and available to the poet.

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² K. R. Pisharoti in *Journal of the Annamalai Univ.*, II, no. 2, p, 193 f., is inclined to take the play as a veiled satire on some royal family of the time, if not on Agnimitra himself, and would think that the weakness of the opening scene is deliberate.

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In the *Vikramorvaśīya*,¹ on the other hand, there is a decided weakness in general treatment. The romantic story of the love of the mortal king Purūravas and the divine nymph Urvaśī is old, the earliest version occuring in the *Ṛgveda* x. 95; but the passion and pathos, as well as the logically tragic ending, of the ancient legend² is changed, in five acts, into an unconvincing story of semi-courtly life with a weak denouement of domestic union and felicity, brought about by the intervention of a magic stone and the grace of Indra. The fierce-souled spouse, *la belle dame sans merci* of the Ṛgveda, is transformed into a passionate but selfish woman, an elevated type of the heavenly courtesan, and later on, into a happy and obedient wife. The modifying hand of folk-tale and comedy of courtly life is obvious; and some strange incidents and situations, like the first scene located in the air, is introduced; but accepting Kālidāsa's story as it is, there is no deficiency in characterisation and expression. If the figures are strange and romantic, they are still transcripts from universal nature. Even when the type does not appeal, the character lives. The brave and chivalrous Purūravas is sentimental, but as his madness shows, he is not the mere trifler of a princely amorist like Agnimitra; while the jealous queen Auśīnarī is not a repetition of Irāvatī or Dhāriṇī. Although in the fifth act, the opportunity is missed of a tragic conflict of emotion between the joy of Purūravas in finding his son and his sorrow at the loss of Urvaśī resulting from the very sight of the child, there is yet a skilful delineation of Kālidāsa's favourite motif of the recognition of the unknown son and the psychological climax of presenting the offspring as the crown of wedded love. There are also features in the drama which are exceptional in the whole range of Sanskrit literature, and make it rise above the decorum of courtly environment. The fourth act on the madness of Purūravas is unique in this sense. The scene is hardly dramatic and has no action, but it reaches an almost lyric height in depicting the tumultuous ardour of undisciplined passion. It is a fantasy in soliloquy, in which the demented royal lover, as he wanders through the woods in search of his beloved, demands tidings of his fugitive love from the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar and the antelope; he deems the cloud, with its rainbow, to be a demon who has borne his beauteous bride away; he searches the yielding soil softened by showers, which may perchance, if she had passed that way, have retained the delicate impression of her gait, and may show some vestige of the red tincture of her dyed feet. The whole scene is melodramatically conceived; and if the Prakrit verses are genuine,¹ they are apparently meant to be sung behind the scenes. The stanzas are changed with exuberance of emotion and play of fancy, but we have nothing else which appeals in the drama but the isolation of individual passion. The inevitable tragedy of such a love is obvious; and it is a pity that the play is continued after the natural tragic climax is reached, even at the cost of lowering the heroine from her divine estate and making Indra break his word!

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