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A History of Sanskrit Literature c11: IV. Kālidāsa and the Guptas

A History of Sanskrit Literature c11

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English

Contents

IV. Kālidāsa and the Guptas

1. The Guptas and the Brahmin Revival

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UTTER obscurity attends the decline of the power of the followers of Kaniṣka in India,¹ but it is certain that in A.D. 320 Candragupta founded, as a result of a matrimonial alliance with a Licchavi princess, a dynasty with head-quarters at Pāṭaliputra, which under his son, Samudragupta (*c.* A.D. 330–75), stood out as the paramount power in northern India, while his grandson, Candragupta II, completed its success by overthrowing the Kṣatrapas and adding Mālwa, Gujarāt, and Kāṭhiāwār to the empire. His son and successor, Kumāragupta (A.D. 413–55), seems to have reigned in unbroken prosperity, and Skandagupta, his son, shortly after his reign began, won a decided success over the Hūṇa invaders who were advancing from the north-west and menacing India. But between A.D. 465 and 470 the Hūṇa advance seems to have become irresistible, and at any rate after the death of Skandagupta about 480 the greatness of the empire was irretrievably departed, though the dynasty continued to rule sadly diminished dominions for several generations. By 499 Toramāṇa, leader of the Hūṇas, was established as ruler of Mālwā, while his successor, Mihiragula, had his capital at Siālkōṭ in the Panjāb. The expulsion of the Huns seems to have been the result about 528 of a victory won by Yaçodharman, a ruler of central India, and the Gupta Bālāditya of Magadha, but the records are curiously unsatisfactory. At any rate Mihiragula retreated to Kashmir, where he won an unenviable reputation,² and shortly after 550 the Turks conquered the Hun kingdom on the Oxus.

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¹ Smith, EHI. chaps. x and xi; Bhandarkar, *Early History of India*, pp. 47 ff.

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² To him is ascribed the ruin of Gandhāra and its art; Foucher, *L'Art Gréco-Bouddhique*, ii. 588 ff.

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There can be no doubt that the Gupta empire signified a distinct revival of Brahmanism and a reassertion of Indian nationality as opposed to the somewhat cosmopolitan Kushan régime, under which Buddhism was decidedly in chief favour, though Brahmanism and Jainism must have been widespread. The art of the period is of a high order, reflecting a national spirit reacting to the impulse of Greek inspiration,¹ although the architecture of the period has largely disappeared, owing doubtless to the appalling destruction wrought by the Mahomedan invaders of north India. The sculpture, however, exhibits an unusual beauty of figure, dignity of pose, and restraint and refinement of treatment in detail. The coinage, often of merit, shows clear traces of intercourse with the Roman world, also attested by records of missions to Rome and Constantinople in 361 and 530. Mathematics, astronomy, and astrology flourished, taking new life under Greek influence, as is abundantly established by the *Pañcasiddhāntikā* of Varāhamihira (*c.* 550) and by the works of Āryabhaṭa (born 476). Relations with China were maintained by visits of Buddhists from and to India. Fa-hien (401–10) gives us a most favourable picture of India under Candragupta II. There was freedom of movement throughout mid-India; justice was dispensed with mercy, fines being normally inflicted, capital punishment being disused, and mutilation restricted to rebels or brigands; the revenues of the crown were derived mainly from land, and the royal officers and servants received regular salaries. Among Buddhists at least—and they still were very numerous—the rule of refraining from animal food or taking life was widely observed, and in many places butchers’ shops and distilleries were unknown. What is of special interest is that he alone records a very significant proof of the revival of Brahmanism; the Caṇḍālas or outcasts were obliged to live apart, and, when they approached a town or bazaar, to strike a piece of wood as a warning of their presence, in order that others might avoid pollution by contact with them. The emperors were clearly devotees of Viṣṇu and attached to the Bhāgavata faith, but religious toleration was still the order of the day, and the signs of the decadence of Buddhism were concealed from Fa-hien’s eyes. Nor is this surprising, for it is probable that Samudragupta himself was a friend of Vasubandhu when that Buddhist sage attended his father’s court.² Samudragupta, however, was careful to assert his devotion to Brahmanical ideals; thus he renewed the ancient horse sacrifice as a sign of his paramount sway, and Kumāragupta appears to have followed his example. The centre of Gupta power, originally fixed at Pāṭaliputra, seems clearly to have shifted during the reign of Candragupta II to Ujjayinī, doubtless in order to secure the steadfast adherence to the empire of the newly acquired lands.

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¹ Foucher, ii. 756 ff.

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² Cf. Vāmana’s evidence; Smith, EHI. pp. 346 ff.

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That such princes should favour poetry and fine arts was inevitable. Samudragupta was proud of his skill with the lute, and a coin depicts him playing that instrument. But a more secure support for his claims is afforded by the assertions of the panegyrist Hariṣeṇa (*c.* 350), who assures us that his patron had a poetic style which was worth study and wrote poems which increased the poet's spiritual treasure, and again that his title of king of poets, Kavirāja, was well grounded through his composition of many poems deserving imitation by others. He delighted also in the society of the earnest students of literature, was interested in the explanation and defence of holy scripture, and devoted to music. Moreover, he won fame by removing the discrepancy between the poet's art and riches, doubtless his chief merit in the eyes of many of his flatterers. Of his great son Candragupta we know that he adopted the title Vikramāditya, reminiscent of the legendary Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī, and it is certainly plausible to suggest that the fame of Vikramāditya as the patron of poets, attested in the late and in itself worthless legend of the Nine Jewels,¹ was due to the literary distinction of Candragupta's court. The list of Jewels runs Dhanvantari, Kṣapaṇaka, Amarasiṁha, Çaṅku, Vetāla Bhaṭṭa, Ghaṭakarpara, Kālidāsa, Varāhamihira, and Vararuci. Of these Dhanvantari, as the author of a medical glossary, is older than Amarasiṁha, who also used Kālidāsa; the fourth and fifth are mere names; Varāhamihira definitely lived in the sixth century, and the dates of Kṣapaṇaka as a lexicographer and of Vararuci are unknown. But we have a distinct corroboration of the idea of Candragupta as a patron of poets in the fact that his minister of external affairs, Vīrasena Kautsa Çāba, was interested in poetry. Probably the succeeding emperors manifested equal concern in poetry.

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¹ Weber, ZDMG. xxii. 708 ff.; Zachariae, *Die indischen Wörterbücher*, pp. 18 ff.; Fleet, IA. xxx. 3 f.

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Nor is there any doubt that the drama must have flourished under their patronage; indeed it has been suggested that Candragupta's epithet *rūpakṛtin* denotes maker of plays, which would make the king a predecessor of Harṣa as a dramatist; the accuracy of the rendering is not, however, beyond cavil. What, however, is certain is that Sanskrit was essentially the language of the court and of learned men; even Buddhists such as Vasubandhu and Asaṅga resorted to it as a matter of course as the means of securing a respectful hearing for their doctrines. The disputes between the rival schools were probably friendly enough; the Sāṁkhya philosophy as expounded in the *Kārikā* of Īçvarakṛṣṇa seems to have been the object of special attack by Vasubandhu, and Samudragupta's interest in these matters may have been aroused by that teacher.

2. Hariṣeṇa and Vatsabhaṭṭi

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Fortune has enabled us to obtain an interesting insight into the poetry of the Gupta epoch by the preservation of two Praçastis, separated by about a century in time, the panegyric of Samudragupta inscribed on a pillar at Allahabad and composed by Hariṣeṇa, perhaps in 345,¹ and Vatsabhaṭṭi's inscription in the temple of the sun at Mandasor, written in 473–4. These inscriptions alone would suffice to prove abundantly the existence of a developed Kāvya poetry during the whole period of the Gupta power, and in the first case we actually find a poet of distinct power, though he was foreign minister and general of the king.

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¹ Cf. Gawroński, *Festschrift Windisch*, pp. 170 ff.; *The Digvijaya of Raghu* (1915); Bühler, *Die indischen Inschriften* (1890); Smith, EHI. pp. 298 ff.

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Hariṣeṇa's poem bears expressly the title Kāvya, though it consists both of prose and verse. Its structure is similar to the delineation of kings adopted in the prose romances of Subandhu and Bāṇa, in which all is crowded into a single long sentence, made up of relative clauses and adjectives and appositions heaped upon one another. In this case the whole poem is one sentence, including first eight stanzas of poetry, then a long prose sentence, and finally a concluding stanza. The thought is no less complex than the form, for the poet's ingenuity has been equal to the effort to connect the pillar with the emperor's fame. That, as usual in the Kāvya, is personified as feminine and is regarded as having embraced the whole world so that no more room for it remains on earth. It passes therefore by the way of the pillar up to the abode of the gods. There it appears as the Ganges, and, pure as that stream, it overflows on heaven, atmosphere, and earth. The metre is no less elaborate than the thought; of seven verses preserved there are four metres, Sragdharā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Mandākrāntā, and Pṛthvī. The style is markedly and undeniably of the Vaidarbha or southern manner; the verse eschews long compounds while the prose delights in them, one having no less than 120 syllables, though it is but fair to say that on the whole they are not difficult to understand. Of figures of sound alliteration is used, but sparingly; metaphors are most used of the figures of sense, rarely similes and *double entendres* as in Samudragupta's epithet *sādhvasādhūdayapralayahetupuruṣasyācintyasya*, ‘a hero unfathomable, the cause of the elevation of the good and the destruction of the bad (and thus a counterpart of the unfathomable absolute, which is the cause of the origin and the destruction of the world, and in which good and bad have their being)’. But Hariṣeṇa spares us much of this; he shows his skill rather by new turns of ingenious thought, and by the care with which his long compounds are relieved by the interposition of short words to give the reciter time to recover breath and the hearer to understand the sense, and by the cunning arrangement of words in the compounds themselves in order to produce the maximum of metrical effect. His choice of words and care in their arrangement are no less seen in his verses, of which one certainly has the right to be ranked as among the most perfect effects of Indian miniature word pictures, the description of the scene when before his rivals and the court Candragupta in his old age designated Samudragupta as his successor:

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*āryo hīty upaguhya bhāvapiçunair utkarṇitai romabhiḥ*
*sabhyeṣūcchvasiteṣu tulyakulajamlanānanodvīkṣitaḥ*
*snehavyālulitena bāṣpaguruṇā tattvekṣiṇā cakṣuṣā*
*yaḥ pitrābhihito nirīkṣya nikhilām pāhy evam urvīm iti.*

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‘“He is noble”, with these words he embraced him, tremors of joy betraying his emotion; he gazed on him with tear-filled eyes, following his every movement, and weighing his worth—the courtiers sighed in relief and gloomy were the faces of his kinsfolk—and said to him, “ Do thou protect all this earth ”.’

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Very different is the work of Vatsabhaṭṭi,¹ no minister of an emperor but a humble local poet, glad to earn a fee by writing for the guild of silk-weavers of a provincial town. What is interesting in him is his testimony to the prevalence of the Kāvya in his time; the adjective *pūrvā*, above, is used as sufficient description of his poem, the missing *praçasti*, eulogy, being so naturally supplied by those familiar with current verse. He asserts that his work was done with effort or care (*yatnena*), and there is every evidence of the truth. In obedience to the laws of poetics he inserts in his forty-four stanzas descriptions both of Lāṭa and of the town Daçapura, of the seasons, winter and spring, and shows by the use of twelve metres his skill in versification, though the effect is marred by his inability to bring off his results without free use of the weak caesura. His style is the eastern or Gauḍa, as is clearly proved by his love of long compounds in verse, and by the way in which in one stanza he has fitted the sound of the verses to the altering sentiment, advancing from soft harmonious sounds in describing the gentleness of his hero to discords when proclaiming him *dviṭdṛptapakṣakṣapaṇaikadakṣaḥ*, ‘peerless in destroying the proud hosts of the foe’. His alliterations, similes, and metaphors all are of types abundant in the Kāvya, but his skill is small, and his poem is disfigured by tautologies as in *tulyopamānāni*, the use of verse-fillers or needless particles as in *tatas tu*, or prefixes as in *abhivibhāti*, or words as in *samudrānta*, while *spṛçanniva* for the necessary neuter and *nyavasanta* are offences against grammar. But his panegyric is invaluable testimony to the widespread cultivation of Sanskrit poetry and it helps definitely to aid us in determining the date of India’s greatest poet.

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¹ Bühler, *Die indischen Inschriften*, pp. 31 ff.

3. Kālidāsa’s Life

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We know nothing whatever of value from later sources regarding the life and character of Kālidāsa.² Anecdotes are told asserting that he was originally extremely stupid, and won skill in poetry by the favour of Kālī, an obvious deduction from his name, slave of Kālī. He is alleged also to have shown remarkable skill in the ready manufacture of verses to order, either to describe a given situation or to complete an imperfect stanza, and a more circumstantial legend¹ tells of his murder in Ceylon while a guest of King Kumāradāsa at the hands of a greedy hetaira. There is not the slightest ground to accept the suggestion, still less to find in it an indication of date, Kālidāsa's visit to Ceylon on this view being due to the Hun inroads. His own poems, on the other hand, and especially the description of Raghu's conquests, prove him intimately acquainted with many Indian scenes, the sandal of Kashmir, the pearl fisheries of the Tāmraparṇī, the deodars of the Himālayas, the betel and coco-palms of Kaliṅga, the sand of the Indus, but it would be hazardous to claim for him any part in the great expedition of Samudragupta when he won his right to perform the horse sacrifice as a sign of his paramount power in India.

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² On his date see Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Keith, *Sanskrit Drama*, pp. 143 ff.; Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa* (1921). S. Ray (POCP. 1919, i, p. lix) held him to be Agnimitra’s court poet (*c.* 150 B. C.), but K. G. Sankar (IHQ. i. 309 ff.) puts him between 75 and 25 B. C.

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¹ Geiger, *Lit. und Sprache der Singhalesen*, pp. 3 ff.; Rhys-Davids, JRAS. 1888 pp. 148 ff.; Bendall, p. 440; Nandargikar, *Kumāradāsa*, pp. v ff.; Vidyabhusana, POCP. 1919, i, p. clxxii.

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Nonetheless it is difficult to dissociate Kālidāsa from the great moments of the Gupta power. He was later than Açvaghoṣa and than the dramatist Bhāsa; he knew Greek terms, as his use of *jāmitra* proves, the Prākrit of his dramas is decidedly later than Açvaghoṣa's and Bhāsa's, and he cannot be put before the Gupta age. His complete acceptance of the Brahmanical system, the sense of sharing in a world of prosperity and power, the mention of the horse sacrifice in the *Mālavikāgnimitra*, Raghu's conquests in the *Raghuvaṁça*, seem best explicable as the outcome of the enjoyment of the protection of a great Gupta ruler, and we must remember that Candragupta II had the style of Vikramāditya, with whose name tradition consistently connects Kālidāsa. Nor is it absurd to see in the title *Kumārasambhava* a hint at the young Kumāragupta, the heir apparent, or even in *Vikramorvaçī* an allusion to the title Vikramāditya. It has been attempted to refer Kālidāsa to the sixth century by making the Vikramāditya of tradition the Yaçodharman² who defeated the Huns, but this theory is no longer in repute. More favour¹ has been shown to the view that Kālidāsa lived under Kumāragupta and Skandagupta, mainly on the score that Mallinātha and Dakṣiṇāvartanātha ascribe to him in v. 14 of the *Meghadūta* a *double entendre* referring to Dinnāga, the Buddhist logician, as a hostile critic, and that his own reference to the Hūṇas and the river Vaṅkṣū in the *Raghuvaṁça* alludes to the time when these warriors were still in the Oxus valley just before their defeat by Skandagupta. The first argument is invalidated by the grave improbability of the tasteless reference in the *Meghadūta* and by the fact that, even if it were real, Dinnāga's date need not be later than 400. The second imputes to Kālidāsa a desire to achieve historic realism quite out of keeping with his poetic aim, and irreconcilable with his mention of the Greeks as on the north-west frontier as well as the Pārasīkas, Kāmbojas and Hūṇas.² That Kālidāsa lived to see the Hūṇa victories is most implausible, while his evident affection for Ujjayinī suggests that he spent much of his time there under Candragupta's favour.

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² Hoernle, JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.

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¹ Gawroński, *The Digvijaya of Raghu*, pp. 1 ff.; Smith, EHI. p. 321, n. 1.

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² The term found in the epic was perhaps first used of the Hiung-nu of the 2nd cent. B. C.

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This conclusion is strongly supported by evidence culled from Vatsabhaṭṭi. Two of his verses run:

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*calatpatākāny abalāsanāthāny: atyarthaçuklāny adhikonnātāni*
*taḍillatācitrasitābhrakūṭa-: tulyopamānāni gṛhāṇi yatra.*
*Kailāsatuṅgaçikharapratimāni cānyāny: ābhānti dīrghavalabhīni savedikāni*
*gāndharvaçabdamukharāṇi niviṣṭacitra-: karmāṇi lolakadalīvanaçobhitāni.*

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'The houses there, dazzling white and towering high, with their waving banners and tender maidens, are rivals of the cloud-pinnacles, snow-white, but stained by the lightning-creeper. Yet others match Kailāsa's lofty peaks, with their long balconies and seats of stone, as they resound with music, are decked with pictures, and are adorned with groves of waving plantains.'

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These stanzas can hardly be deemed other than an attempt to improve on v. 65 of the *Meghadūta*:

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*vidyutvantaṁ lalitavanitāḥ sendracāpaṁ sacitrāḥ*
*saṁgītāya prahatamurajāḥ snigdhagambhīraghoṣam*
*antastoyaṁ maṇimayabhuvas tuṅgam abhramlihāgrāḥ*
*prāsādās tvāṁ tulayitum alaṁ yatra tais tair viśeṣaiḥ.*

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‘There the palaces can vie with thee at every point: their fair maidens rival thy lightning, their paintings thy rainbow, their drums beaten in concert thy lovely deep thundering, their jewelled floors thy water, their peaks that touch the sky thy height.’ To suppose that Kālidāsa knew these clumsy verses of an obscure poetaster and turned them into the simple elegance of his verse is absurd; to hold that a local poet appropriated and tried to improve on a verse of the great poet of Ujjayinī is natural and simple, and, if confirmation were needed, it is supplied by the fact¹ that v. 31 of the inscription deals similarly with vv. 2 and 3 of Canto v of the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*. Kālidāsa then lived before A. D. 472, and probably at a considerable distance, so that to place him about A. D. 400 seems completely justified.²

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¹ Kielhorn, GN. 1890, pp. 251 ff.

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² On the later emperors, see R. C. Majumdar, JPASB. 1921, pp. 249 ff.

4. The Ṛtusaṁhāra

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The opinion of India which makes the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*, cycle of the seasons, a youthful work of Kālidāsa, has recently³ been assailed on many grounds. Thus it has been complained that the poem lacks Kālidāsa’s ethical quality, that it is too simple and uniform, too easy to understand. The obvious reply is that there is all the difference between the youth and the maturity of a poet, that there is as much discrepancy between the youthful work of Virgil, Ovid, Tennyson, or Goethe, and the poems of their manhood as between Kālidāsa’s primitiae and the rest of his work. Nor is it the slightest use to argue that Sanskrit poets differed from other poets since they were essentially learned and artificial; the poets mentioned are precisely of the analogous type, men who worked steadily at their art until at their prime they could create structures which make their youthful attempts seem childish folly. In point of fact the *Ṛtusaṁhāra* is far from unworthy of Kālidāsa, and, if the poem were denied him, his reputation would suffer real loss. The contention that Mallinātha commented on the other three of his poems but not on this is met effectively by the consideration that its simplicity rendered it poor game for the very learned commentator to deal with. The fact that the writers on poetics do not cite from the poem has an obvious explanation in the same fact; these authors never exhibit the slightest trace of liking what is simple, and they could find in the later poems abundant material to use as illustration. More deplorable still are some of the æsthetical arguments adduced; complaint is made that the poet begins with the summer, whereas the spring was the usual beginning of the year, forgetting that Kālidāsa was not composing an almanac or writing a *Shepheard’s Calendar*. Again, heat or its derivatives (*tap*) is found seven times in Canto i, as if this did not accord with summer, as does eagerness (*samutsukatva*) with the rains and longing (*utkaṇṭh*) with autumn. The poet is censured for asserting that the swans excel maidens in beauty of gait and the branches rob their arms of loveliness; later, he was not guilty of such discourtesy. He mixes a metaphor in speaking of clouds as having the lightning as creeper; as we have seen, Vatsabhaṭṭi borrows the phrase, and exploits two other verses of the poem, proving its antiquity and rendering most probable its authorship. It is objected that he uses here only the construction *ā mūlataḥ*, in lieu of the ablative, though equally once only in the *Kumārasambhava* he has *āmekhalam*; the freshness and liveliness of the seven verbal forms (ii. 19) is unparalleled and, therefore, not by Kālidāsa. Even the lack of developed use of figures of speech is adduced against him, and the use of *saṁhāra* in the title has been questioned as unique. Poets happily do not feel themselves bound to be parrots.¹

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³ Walter, *Indica*, iii. 6 ff.; Nobel, ZDMG. lxvi. 275 ff.; JRAS. 1913, pp. 401 ff.; Hari Chand, *Kālidāsa*, pp. 240 ff. *Contra* Keith, JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff.; Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, pp. 66 ff. Kielhorn, Bühler, Hultzsch, Macdonell, von Schroeder, among others, accept Kālidāsa’s authorship; often ed., e. g. Gajendragadkar, 1916.

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¹ His developed style is seen in his pictures of spring (*Kumāras.* iii; *Ragh.* ix), and summer (*Ragh.* xvi).

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The poem is far from a mere description of the seasons in their outward aspect, though Kālidāsa exhibits delicate observation and that loving sympathy with nature which seems innate in Indian poets. Throughout he insists on the relation of the diverse moods of the year to the loves of man and maiden or husband and wife. Though the days of summer are a burden, the nights are the more delightful, when the moon is bright and coolness refreshes the earth; at midnight the young delight in song and dance and wine; the moon in jealousy of youthful love retires in sorrow. The rainy season comes in kingly guise, the clouds the elephants which bear him, the lightning his standard, the thunder his drum. The emotion of love is awakened by the sight of the clouds which bend down to kiss the peaks of the mountains. Autumn comes like a young bride, clad in a garment of sugar cane, girdled with ripening rice, and with face of lotus blooms. Winter’s cold makes all the more welcome, all the more close and tender, the embraces of lovers. In the cool season the nights are cold, the moon shines chill, the lovers close the window of their chamber, wrap themselves warmly in their garments, and enjoy every moment of the still feeble rays of the sun, or rest beside the fire. But spring brings to them and to all nature new life and joy; we see now why the poet begins with summer; it enables him to end with the season in which young love, in harmony with the birth of a new year, is made perfect. The poem in every line reveals youth; the lack of the ethic touch¹ is in perfect accord with the outlook of the young, and though Kālidāsa was to write much finer poetry, he was also to lose that perfect lucidity which is one of the charms of the poem to modern taste, even if it did not appeal to writers on poetics.

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¹ Stenzler, ZDMG. xliv. 33, n. 3.

5. The Meghadūta

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In distinction to the *Ṛtusaṃhāra* the *Meghadūta*² is unquestionably a work of Kālidāsa’s maturity; the mere fact that he adopts for it and maintains throughout with only occasional harshness a metre so elaborate as the Mandākrāntā is conclusive proof that he was no novice, though we may admit the possibility that he desired by this metrical *tour de force* to establish his capacity once and for all, and to exhibit himself as a great poet. Suggestions for the subject-matter may have been taken from the *Rāmāyaṇa*,¹ where Rāma’s deep longing for his lost Sītā offers an obvious prototype for the Yakṣa’s sorrow for the wife from whom he is severed, and the description of the rainy season in iv. 28 has some points of similarity. But the idea is carried out with marked originality and beauty. A Yakṣa banished for a year by Çiva his master, because of failure of duty, is reminded by the approach of the rainy season of his wife, lamenting him in their abode at Alakā, and begs a passing cloud to bear to his beloved the news of his welfare and the assurance of his devotion. From Rāmagiri, his place of exile, the cloud is bidden go, in the company of the cranes and the royal swans *en route* for Lake Mānasa, to the region of Māla and to mount Āmrakūṭa. Thereafter it is to seek the Daçārṇa country with its city of Vidiçā, and then must drink the waters of the Vetravatī before proceeding to visit Ujjayinī, after crossing the Nirvindhyā and the Sindhu. The shrine of Mahākāla must be visited, the Carmaṇvatī crossed, and the holy Brahmāvarta after passing Daçapura; there the cloud will visit the field of Kurukṣetra, the scene of Arjuna’s great deeds, and drink the water of the Sarasvatī, for which Balarāma, who fought not for love of his kin, abandoned his beloved wine. Thence it must go to where the Ganges descends from the Himālaya near mount Kanakhala, and then to Kailāsa, passing through the gap of mount Krauñca which Paraçurāma made as a path to the south. Then the water of lake Mānasa will refresh the cloud, and on the top of the mountain is Alakā where the beloved of the Yakṣa dwells. The delights of the divine city are fully depicted, and the poet then describes to the cloud the home he is to seek out; it can be seen from afar off through its archway; in the garden is a coral tree, its mistress’s pet, and a flight of emerald steps leads to a well in which golden lotuses grow, and the swans, delighted, think no more even of their beloved Mānasa. There is the beloved, sorrowful, and blighted by separation, emaciated, seeking by many a device to while away the long days until her husband’s return. Gently she is to be wakened from her slumber by the cloud, which is to give her a message of tender love from her husband, and an assurance of his faith and certainty of reunion.

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² Ed. E. Hultzsch, London, 1911 (with Vallabhadeva’s comm.); ed. and trans. Pathak, Poona, 1916; ed. TSS. 54, 1919.

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¹ There is in the *Kāmavilāpa Jātaka* (ii. 443) a very distant parallel.

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At first sight the effect of the poem seems to be marred by an element of unreality in the longing of the Yakṣa, whose separation is but temporary and who as an attendant of Çiva cannot in truth fear either death or even injury for his beloved from his absence. The message would have read very differently had it been sent, as in Schiller’s *Maria Stuart*, by a helpless captive awaiting in resignation or despair an ineluctable doom. But to understand the poem aright we must remember that the poet doubtless felt that it was, as later writers expressly allege, the duty of the poet to suggest rather than to say outright; the loves of the two immortals is a symbol of human love; perhaps¹ Kālidāsa had some experience of his own which the poem indicates, for the vivid colours in which he describes the Yakṣa’s abode seem to be drawn from real life. Certainty is wholly unattainable, but in any event it is difficult to praise too highly either the brilliance of the description of the cloud’s progress or the pathos of the picture of the wife sorrowful and alone. Indian criticism has ranked it highest among Kālidāsa’s poems for brevity of expression, richness of content, and power to elicit sentiment, and the praise is not undeserved.

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¹ Bhau Dāji, *Lit. Rem.*, pp. 50 f.

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Popularity has had the penalty of many interpolations of the text. There is a remarkable mass of evidence available; in the eighth century Jinasena, applying the art of Samasyāpūraṇa, worked the whole of the text of 120 verses as he knew it into an account of the life of the Jaina saint Pārçvanātha;² it exists in a Tibetan³ version in the Tanjur, and in a Sinhalese rendering; many stanzas are quoted in works on poetics; it was repeatedly⁴ imitated from the *Pavanadūta* of Dhoī in the twelfth century onwards; we have from that century and later many commentaries, including that of Vallabhadeva,¹ who gives 111 verses, of Dakṣiṇāvartanātha (*c.* 1200), who has 110, and of Mallinātha,² who has 118.

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² Pathak’s ed. (1916) rests on this. A *Nemidūta* of Vikrama in 125 verses ends each with a line from a rather interpolated text.

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³ H. Beckh, *Ein Beitrag zur Textkritik des Kālidāsas Meghadūta* (1907); G. Huth, SBA. 1895, pp. 268 ff., 281 ff.; date 13th cent.

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⁴ Aufrecht, ZDMG. liv. 616, mentions other imitations; cf. IHQ. iii. 273 ff.

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¹ Hultzsch places him in the 10th cent., but see Pathak's ed., pp. xiv ff. He knew Bilhaṇa and Hemacandra, but is cited in 1140 A.D.

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² This famous commentator, who also explained the epics of Kālidāsa, Bhāravi, Bhaṭṭi, and Māgha, and Vidyādhara's *Ekāvalī* (see ed., pp. xxiv ff.) lived *c.* 1400. A comm. on the *Nalodaya* is given, *Madras Catal.*, xx. 7923.

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Inevitably many other lyric poems were ascribed to Kālidāsa, including two of some merit, the *Ghaṭakarpara* and the *Çṛṅgāratilaka*, but there is no real probability of proving them his.

6. The Kumārasambhava

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High as Indian opinion ranks the *Meghadūta*, which won also the commendation of Goethe,³ to modern taste the *Kumārasambhava*⁴ appeals more deeply by reason of its richer variety, the brilliance of its fancy, and the greater warmth of its feeling. The *Meghadūta* has, with reason, been ascribed the merit of approaching more closely than any other Indian poem to the rank of an elegy; the *Kumārasambhava* varies from the loveliness of the spring and the delights of married love to the utter desolation induced by the death of the beloved. The subject is unquestionably a daring one, the events which bring about the marriage of the highest god Çiva to Umā and the birth of Skanda, the war god, and Ānandavardhana⁵ tells us that there were critics who deemed it wrong to depict the amour of two deities. Still less permissible does the subject naturally appear to modern taste, unless we realize that as in the *Meghadūta* we must see the poet's power of suggestion; the wedlock of Çiva and Umā is no mere sport, no episode of light love such as that of Zeus with Danae or many another. From this union springs a power destined to perform the slaying of the demon Tāraka, who menaces the world with destruction; moreover, their nuptials and their love serve as the prototype for human marriage and human love, and sanctify with divine precedent the forces which make the home and carry on the race of men.

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³ Cf. von Schroeder, *Indiens Lit. und Cultur*, p. 548.

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⁴ Ed. NSP. 1906; i–viii, TSS. 1913–14; i–vii, trans. R. H. Griffith, London, 1879.

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⁵ iii. 6, p. 137. Mammaṭa disagrees.

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The poem begins with a brilliant piece of description of the Himālaya, the abode of Çiva. Kālidāsa, unlike many a classical and even modern poet, had no hatred of mountains; his fancy makes them the dwelling of merry sprites who play in their caves, round which eddy the clouds, affording welcome screens for the maidens when they undress; the wind, wet with the drops of the streams of the Ganges as it descends from heaven, beats on the trunks of the deodars, and bends the peacock feathers, the scanty dress of the gnomes who chase the antelope. In marked contrast to this innocent frolic sits Çiva, sunk in deepest meditation, and on him with other maidens waits Umā, born of the mountain god himself, plucking flowers to offer to him, and fetching water and grass for his service. Canto ii shows us the gods in deep distress, for a demon Tāraka has arisen to menace them, and Brahman himself can afford no aid, for he has accorded him his protection, and even a poison tree cannot be cut down, if one has reared it oneself. Only Çiva can aid, Çiva who surpasses Brahman and Viṣṇu in glory, and, if Umā can win him, from them will spring a deliverer. Indra then seeks the aid of Kāma, god of love, to win Çiva’s heart for Umā. The next Canto shows Kāma ready and willing to effect the end desired if Spring will be his comrade as well as his dear wife Rati. There follows a brilliant picture of the new life and love awakened in nature by the advent of Spring with Kāma, but the sight of Çiva seated still as a flame when no wind blows, a cloud without rain, daunts even Kāma’s heart and he quails. But Umā with her friends appears, and Çiva is begged to hearken to their devotions; he feels himself strangely moved, and glancing sees Kāma on the point of discharging at him his deadly arrow. One fiery glance from the god’s eye reduces him to ashes. Then follows (iv) a brilliant and touchingly pathetic picture of the lament of Rati for her dead husband; she will not accept the consolation urged on her by Spring; instead she bids him heap the pyre so that she may follow him in death. But her fatal purpose is stayed by a voice from on high, which assures her of reunion with her beloved when Çiva shall have relented and taken Umā to spouse. In sorrowful hope Rati continues her life.

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The first throw has failed and Umā is bitterly disappointed, bitterly ashamed. She determines, despite all protests, to perform asceticism until she wins her desire; in summer she exposes herself to the appalling heat and smoke of four fires, in winter lies in icy water, in the rains sleeps on the naked rock. As she is engaged in these acts a hermit appears before her and questions her; from her sighs he learns that she loves, and from her maids who that lover is. He proceeds to depict in appalling colours the god of her desire, but she fiercely and bitterly rebukes his attacks; delighted he reveals himself as Çiva incarnate (v). All now is ripe for the wedding, but Kālidāsa detains us with a gay picture of the solemn scenes which lead up to it. The Seven Seers themselves with Arundhatī come as wooers from Çiva to seek the maiden’s hand; she stands, eyes downcast, counting the leaves on the lotus in her hand, at her father’s side, while his eyes wander to the face of his consort, for in matters affecting their daughters householders are wont to obey their wives’ desires (vi). The wedding follows, described, doubtless from the model of imperial ceremonies, with rich abundance of detail; the mother, in her excitement between joy and sorrow, cannot see to place correctly the painted mark on her daughter’s forehead, and misplaces the woollen marriage thread which the nurse, more calm and practical, sets aright.

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With this ends the poem in many manuscripts; others add ten cantos. Of these Canto viii describes, according to the principles of the Kāmaçāstra, the joys of the wedded pair; doubtless such frankness is abhorrent to western taste, but the doubts of its genuineness which have been expressed are clearly groundless; it seems certainly¹ to have been known to Bhāravi, to Kumāradāsa, and to Māgha, and quotations from it occur in the writers on poetics. Nor in poetic skill is it in the least inferior to Kālidāsa’s work. The case² is other with the following cantos. They tell of Agni’s approach, first in dove shape, then in his proper person, to Çiva as he prolongs for centuries the joys of dalliance, begging his aid. From the seed of Çiva, cast in the Ganges and shared by the six Kṛttikās, Pleiades, Kumāra is miraculously born, and grows up delighting his parents by his childish play. But the gods are in terror, the city of the gods is dismayed through Tāraka; Indra comes to demand help; Çiva grants his prayer and assigns Kumāra to the task. The great host of Tāraka is described in Canto xiv, then the portents which warn him not to war (xv). Blinded by pride he refuses, bids his young opponent go back to his father and mother rather than fight, assails him with his whirlwinds and magic fire, until pierced to the heart he falls dead. The poem thus goes far beyond the birth of Kumāra as its title promises, and the inferiority of the new cantos is obvious on every ground. The metre is carelessly handled; in five cases caesura is neglected at the end of the first and third verses of the Çloka, a negligence quite foreign to Kālidāsa; the same carelessness is seen six times in Upajāti stanzas, where too weak caesuras—at the end of a compound, not of a word—are used far more often than by Kālidāsa. In order to manage his metres the poet has to resort to versefillers, abhorred of really good writers; *su* is repeatedly thus used, as well as *sadyaḥ* and *alam*; the constant use of periphrasis is doubtless due to the same cause: the writer expends much ingenuity in coining new designations for his characters, and is so fond of the superfluous *anta* at the end of compounds—which we have seen in Vatsabhaṭṭi—that Jacobi has conjectured that he was a Marāṭha, in view of the Marāṭhī locative *ānt*. In the later manner is the free use of prepositional compounds and the impersonal passive with subject in the instrumental; the former use just appears in Kālidāsa, the latter is common from Bhāravi onwards. Moreover, save occasionally, as in the battle scene, the poetical value of the cantos is small, and in confirmation of the internal evidence it may be added that neither commentators nor writers on poetics cite them nor are imitations found in later poets.

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¹ See Walter, *Indica*, iii. 21, 25 f., who suggests use of viii. 63 in *Vikramorvaçī*, iii. 6.

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² Jacobi, OC. V. ii, 2. 133 ff. i–viii are used in the *Çaṅkarasaṁhitā* of the *Skanda Purāṇa*, but it in ix–xvii; Weber, ZDMG. xxvii. 179 ff., 190 ff.; *Pandit*, iii. 19 ff., 85 ff.

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Of Kālidāsa's model for his poem we know nothing, but we can trace in it the influence of Vālmīki. In the *Rāmāyaṇa*¹ we have a brilliant picture of the contrast of the beauty of spring in the Kiṣkindhā forest as contrasted with the ceaseless sorrow of Rāma, bereft of Sītā, nor can we doubt that this has influenced Kālidāsa to draw the wonderful picture of Spring's advent and the revival of the youth and life of the world. There is a parallel too for Rati's despair¹; when Vālin falls Tārā addresses him with words not less sincere because they bear the stamp of the classic style: 'Why dost thus speak no more to thy beloved? Arise and share this fair couch with me; the best of men lie not, as thou, on the ground. Too dear dost thou hold, o lord, the earth even in death, since me thou dost leave alone and her hast clasped in thine embrace. Ended our days of joy together in the fair forest; sunken am I in a deep sea of sorrow, without joy, without sustenance, since thus hast departed. Hard my heart that it can see thee stretched on the ground and yet not break from sorrow.' Hints too for the demon Tāraka are clearly taken from the description of Rāvaṇa in the *Rāmāyaṇa*.² There are doubtless reminders here and there of Açvaghoṣa,³ as in the description of the actions⁴ of the women of the city on the advent of Çiva and Pārvatī, which has a prototype in the description in the *Buddhacarita*⁵ of the entrance of the prince, and which is taken up again in the description in the *Raghuvaṇça*⁶ of the entry of Aja and Indumatī.

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¹ iv. 1.

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¹ iv. 23; cf. vi. 111 (of Rāvaṇa).

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² Cf. also *Rām.* vi. 124. 45 with xiii. 36.

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³ Cf. Walter, *Indica*, iii. 11 ff.

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⁴ vii. 56-69.

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⁵ iii. 13-24.

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⁶ vii. 5-16.

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The problem why the poem was never finished by its author remains insoluble. The loss of the last pages of a solitary manuscript may be the explanation, but it is far more likely that the poet, deterred either by contemporary criticism of his treatment of the divine pair, or by the feeling that the legend of the birth with its strangeness and miracles was not a true theme for poetry, abandoned the purpose and left his work unfinished. It can hardly be claimed that death intervened, for there can be no doubt that the *Raghuvaṇça* is a later work. This shows itself both in the graver tone, in the references to the Yoga philosophy and the less personal conception of the universe as compared with the magnification of Çiva in the *Kumārasambhava*, and in the growing pedantry seen in the use of similes derived from grammar, of which we have only modest suggestions in the *Kumārasambhava*.⁷ Thus Rāma's army follows him to serve his purpose as the prefix *adhi* is followed by the root *i* to make the word *adhyayana*; Sugrīva is put in Vālin's place as king as a substitute replaces the root, and husband and wife are theme and suffix. Moreover, in the constant parallels between the two poems, as in the description of the marriage rites, the priority seems to belong to the *Kumārasambhava*; it is curious that Kālidāsa shows a distinct love of using the same metre for the same theme; thus in both we have the Çloka used in prayers,¹ death is described in the Viyoginī,² a ruined state in the Upajāti.³

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⁷ ii. 27; vii. 69; *Raghuvaṇça*, xii. 58; xi. 56; i. 1; xv. 7, 9.

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¹ *Kum.* ii. 4-16; *Ragh.* x. 16-32.

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² *Kum.* iv; *Ragh.* vii.

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³ *Kum.* xiii; *Ragh.* xvi.

7. The Raghuvaṁça

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Though inferior in some slight degree to the *Kumārasambhava*, the *Raghuvañça* may rightly be ranked as the finest Indian specimen of the Mahākāvya as defined by writers on poetics. Daṇḍin⁴ lays down that the subject should be taken from old narratives or traditions, not therefore invented; the hero should be noble and clever; there should be descriptions of towns, oceans, mountains, seasons, the rising and setting of the sun and the moon, sport in parks or the sea, drinking, love-feasts, separations, marriages, the production of a son, meeting of councils, embassies, campaigns, battles, and the triumph of the hero, though his rival's merits may be exalted. It should not be too compressed, and it should be replete with sentiments (*rasa*) and the emotions which underlie them (*bhāva*). It should have effective transitions (*sandhi*), an allusion to the five stages of action recognized by the writers on drama, by which from its opening the movement advances after a halt to the central moment, pauses, and reaches the *dénouement*. The metres must be charming, and each Canto, which should not be too long, should end with a change of metre. The poem should begin with a prayer, paying homage or in addition invoking a blessing, or an indication of the subject-matter. It should promote the ends of Dharma, conduct, Artha, worldly success, Mokṣa, final release, and Kāma, love.

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⁴ i. 23 ff.

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The *Raghuvaṇça*¹ is true to the type, for the central figure is Rāma, though in accord with the title the poem first sketches the history of the dynasty of the sun-born kings, descendants of the Ikṣvāku whose name occurs in the *Ṛgveda*, and whose family is renowned in the epic and the Purāṇas. This wide theme gives the poet full space to exercise his power of description; war and the coronation of a king, the choosing of her mate by a young princess at a Svayaṁvara, the marriage rite, the loss of a darling life and the grief of the bereaved husband, town and country, the seasons, the incidents of a great Digvijaya, the triumphal progress of a king who seeks to conquer the earth, all form occasions for the poet's skill. The poem carries us at once into an atmosphere strange to us; Dilīpa is king but childless; he learns that by chance when returning from a visit to Indra he has failed to show reverence to his sacred cow, who has cursed him; to make amends he determines to follow in worship the movements of her daughter, Nandinī, on earth; dutifully he carries out his vow, saves her from a lion by offering his own body in exchange, and Nandinī accords him the wish of his heart. Soon the father gazes, with eyes as still as lotus blossoms shielded from the wind, on the lovely face of his son, his heart overflows as the sea at the sight of the moon. The young Raghu waxes fast, is given the rank of Crown Prince and bidden guard the horse that must wander for a year before his father can perform the sacred horse sacrifice; the steed disappears, but with Nandinī's aid Raghu's eyes are opened until he can see where in the east Indra has taken the horse. Vainly he strives against the god, but pleased by his valour he accords him every wish save the return of the horse, and the gallant youth demands that his father shall have the full fruit of the sacrifice. The offering performed, Dilīpa gives to his son the white parasol, emblem of sovereignty, and, true to his family's rule, retires to the life of an ascetic in the forest (i-iii). Canto iv recounts the knightly adventures of Raghu as conqueror of India; he advances against the Suhmas, defeats the princes of Bengal, and erects pillars of victory on the islands of the Ganges; neither the elephants nor the arrow hail of Kaliṅga stay his course, Mahendra yields, the Kāverī is crossed, the south invaded, the Pāṇḍyas pay tribute of pearls. Thence the hero bends his path north, through the Malaya and Dardura hills, the sea of his host covers the long slopes of the Sahya mountain, the dust of the army clings to the hair of the ladies of Kerala, the Muralā river, the Trikūṭa hill witness his fame. Thence by land, as a pious king, not by the polluting sea, he advances against the Persians and the Yavanas, Greeks; the dust of the conflict hides the warring hosts whose presence is revealed by the twang of their bows alone, the bearded foemen cover thick the ground, those who escape death cast off their helms in token of submission; the victors wearied slake their thirst with wine. Next Raghu bids his steeds roll in the Indus—a variant has Oxus—sands, overthrows Hūṇas and Kāmbojas; the winds of the Himālaya set the reeds hymning his victories. The mountain folk feel his power, fire flashes from the mountain-sides beneath the rain of spears and arrows, and the folk of the Utsavas lose for ever their joy in festivals (*utsava*). The Lauhityā is crossed, Prāgjyotiṣa subdued, and Kāmarūpa yields tribute of wild elephants.

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¹ Ed. S. P. Pandit, BSS. 1869-74; Nandargikar, Bombay, 1897; trans. Walter, Munich, 1914.

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In this spirited and martial narrative we may justly see the reflex in the poet’s mind of Samudragupta’s great conquests,¹ and with customary skill the subject changes in Canto v to a very different theme. Raghu’s generosity impoverishes him; when a Brahmin Kautsa begs him to aid him to meet the vast demands of his teacher, he resolves to storm the treasure-house of Kubera, god of wealth, but a rain of gold saves him from impiety. The Brahmin’s gratitude secures him a son, Aja, who soon equals his father. Bidden to take part in the Svayaṁvara, at which the sister of a kingly neighbour will choose her mate, he sets forth; on the way he boldly attacks a monstrous wild elephant, which under his stroke changes to a Gandharva, condemned by a curse to wear this shape until released by the blow of an Ikṣvākuid’s arrow, who gives him in reward a magic weapon. Canto vi presents us with a brilliant picture of the Svayaṁvara; the princess, with her companion Sunandā beside her, passes by prince after prince as they stand eager before her;

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¹ This fact renders it far more probable that his Açvamedha is that present to Kālidāsa’s mind than that of Kumāragupta, of whom we have no record of great military achievements.

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none please her, one is a dicer, therefore bad as a man; in vain Sunandā presses on her Aṅga's lord; he has all merits, but tastes vary. In revenge she bids Indumatī pass on, when she notes that her heart is won by Aja, but the maiden lays shame aside, and accords to him the coronal which marks him as her spouse. The marriage ceremony is performed, the young pair set out home, but the shamed princes have planned revenge, and resolved to take away by force the princess. Aja wages fierce battle with them, in the end the Gandharva's gift prevails, and he takes from his foes their honour, though he spares their lives (vii). His reign is fortunate; while Raghu as a hermit tames the senses, Aja destroys the foes of his realm, and, when Raghu dies, he pays him all the honours of a Yogin's funeral. But a fatal misfortune awaits him; a garland from the sky blown by the wind falls on Indumatī's breast and slays her, though in truth for her death means release from her mortal bondage imposed on her, in reality an Apsaras, through a curse. No consolation is this thought to Aja; in vain is he reminded of the folly of mourning for the dead who are burnt by the tears of the living; in vain every consolation regarding the shortness of life and the duty of kings is urged on him; broken-hearted, he dies and Dasharatha reigns in his place. Of him Canto ix has no concrete facts to tell us, until after a brilliant description of spring we are told of the fatal hunt, when, after displaying equal prowess and pity, Dasharatha in pursuit of an elephant mortally wounds a Brahmin boy; he bears the dying youth to his aged parents, and hears the curse of a like doom. In Canto x we leave the realities of life to learn of the magic incarnation of Viṣṇu in the sons born to Dasharatha; in xi Rāma's youth, his visit to Viçvāmitra's hermitage where he slays the demon Tāḍakā, his journey to Janaka's court, where he wins at the Svayaṁvara the hand of Sītā, and his overthrow of Paraçurāma, who recognizes in him the godhead, are rapidly recounted. The banishment of Rāma by Kaikeyī's device, the life of Rāma and Sītā in the forest, her capture by Rāvaṇa, the search for Laṅkā,¹ the crossing of the ocean with the monkey horde, and the great battle between Rāma and Rāvaṇa, described in vivid colours, bring us to Canto xii in which Kālidāsa's descriptive powers find congenial subject-matter in describing the sights of India as seen from the aerial car on which Rāma and Sītā return to Ayodhyā.

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