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A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s8: 8. Kālidāsa's Thought

A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s8

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8. Kālidāsa's Thought

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As Sophokles seems to have found his perfect *milieu* in the Athens of Perikles' happy days, so Kālidāsa appears to us as the embodiment in his poems, as in his dramas, of the Brahmanical ideal of the age of the Guptas, when order had been restored to a troubled earth, foreigners assimilated or reduced, and prosperity broadcast.¹ Ingenuity² has traced in the history of the first five of the rulers in the *Raghuvaṁça* an exemplar of the exploits of the first five of the Gupta kings; granted that Kālidāsa may have known and profited by the literary activity of Hariṣeṇa, which doubtless extended far beyond the one inscription which has come down to us, still we may safely doubt any such parallelism. But Kālidāsa does represent, if we may judge from his poetry, the complete carrying out of the rule of life laid down for a Brahmin or a warrior or clansman. Youth, in this view, is the time for study under a teacher, then follows the period of manhood with its happy wedlock, then in stages that of the hermit whose mind is set on things eternal. The scheme is in many ways perfectly adapted to Indian life; it starves no side of man's life; four aims of existence are recognized by Kālidāsa himself, who finds them embodied in the sons of Dilīpa, themselves reflexes of Viṣṇu himself. They are duty, governing man's whole life; the pursuit of wealth and of love, the occupations of his manhood; and release, the fruit of his meditations in old age. We may not share the affection of Indian and even of a section of modern taste for the erotic scenes of the last cantos of the *Raghuvaṁça*, but we must not regard them as the outpourings of a sensual mind. The sages of the Upaniṣads themselves deemed marriage obligatory and the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka* gives the spell to obtain a male son; the saintly Çvetaketu is deemed an authority on the *Kāmasūtra*, and Kālidāsa expressly claims the divine precedent of Çiva and Umā as sanction for the most passionate married love. Statecraft again is essentially part of the material ends of life, and not only does he paint in Rāma an ideal ruler, but throughout the *Raghuvañça* we are reminded of the duties of kings to the subjects. Let us grant that his vision was Brahmanical; he deliberately repeats the condemnation of the *Rāmāyaṇa* on the Çūdra who threatens the security of established order by venturing to expose himself, head downwards, hanging from a tree to fire, in order by penance to acquire merit. This reminds us of Fa-hien's¹ emphatic testimony of the degradation of the Caṇḍālas in the Gupta realm.

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¹ Cf. M. T. Narasimhiengar, IA. xxxix. 236 ff. with Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, pp. 137 ff.

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² A. Gawroński, *The Digvijaya of Raghu* (1915).

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¹ Smith, EHI. p. 314; Foucher, *L'Art Gréco-Bouddhique du Gandhāra*, ii. 8.

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Youth and manhood are no time for deep philosophic views, and the Kālidāsa of the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*, *Meghadūta*, and *Kumārasambhava* remains within narrower limits. We feel, however, a growing sense of the greatness and glory of Çiva; the remote figure of the *Meghadūta* is definitely brought nearer to us in the *Kumārasambhava*. Even Brahman and Viṣṇu are less than he, and the term Lord, Īçvara, is his *par excellence*; moreover, despite his all-embracing majesty, he is intensely personal. Yet neither Brahman nor Viṣṇu is forgotten; to Brahman in the *Kumārasambhava* itself, to Viṣṇu in the *Raghuvañça* two noble prayers are addressed in which in the true spirit of kathenotheism either appears as the greatest of gods, as more than the world, as beyond all comprehension. The inconsistency, however, is rather apparent than real; it is possible to ascertain with fair certainty the view Kālidāsa took of the universe, and this affords a reconciliation of his diverse views.

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Both epics, but especially the *Raghuvañça*, show that Kālidāsa accepted Sāṁkhya and Yoga views of the nature of the universe. The three constituents of nature, goodness, passion, and dullness, in their ethical aspect afford themes for simile; the Brahman sea as the source of the Sarayū is like the unmanifested (*avyakta*) whence springs intelligence. Yoga practices are recognized; the aged king practises concentration (*dhāraṇā*) as he sits on Kuça grass; the difficult posture known as Vīrāsana of ascetics is compared to trees standing motionless; Sītā by asceticism seeks to secure reunion in her next life with her spouse; the power to pass through closed doors may be won, and the Yogin needs not cremation, but like Raghu is buried in mother earth. But we cannot hold that the godhead envisaged by Kālidāsa is the pale Içvara of the Yoga; in Brahman we are told are united both matter and spirit as they are known in the Sāṁkhya, and this we may fairly take as indicating that to Kālidāsa, as to the author of the *Kaṭha Upaniṣad*, over the spirits and matter stood the absolute, who to Kālidāsa takes specially the form of Çiva but who is also Brahman and Viṣṇu, the spirit that perishes not beyond the darkness. With this absolute man is merged on death if he has attained enlightenment, for this is the sense of *brahmabhūyaṁ gatim ājagāma* in the *Raghuvaṁça*. If enlightenment is not his but good deeds, he has heaven for his share, for knowledge alone burns up man's deeds which else force him to life after life. We need have the less hesitation to accept this view in that it is essentially the standpoint of popular Vedāntism and that it afforded to a man of thought and good sense an effective means of reconciling belief in the three great gods. What is clear is that in his advancing years Kālidāsa's mind turned more and more to the conception of the all-embracing character of the godhead and of the efficacy of Yoga practices to attain union with him.

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From such a philosophy it would be idle to seek any solution for essential conflicts in the heart of man, or to demand any independent criticism of man's aims and fate. India knew atheists enough, but their works have all but perished, and we must rather be grateful that we have preserved in such perfection the poetic reflex of the Brahmanical ideal both in its strength and in its weakness. Nor, let us remember, does such an ideal shut out deep human feeling such as we may suspect in the longing of the *Meghadūta*, the lament of Aja over the dead Indumatī, of Rati for Kāma slain. But it does demand resignation, and if in perfection of form Kālidāsa's poems proclaim him the Virgil of India, we may admit that he was incapable of the vision and imagery of the sixth book of the *Aeneid*.

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