A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s3.13

c11.s3.13

‘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