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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c12.s1: 1. The Date of Kālidāsa

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c12.s1

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English

1. The Date of Kālidāsa

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It is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories¹ of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not one *prima facie* to be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh century A.D. As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth century A.D. The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.²

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¹ Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa* (1921), pp. 7 ff.

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² JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff.

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The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch's entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57 B.C. and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,³ there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson's suggestion⁴ that the era of 57 B.C. was based on a real victory over Hūṇas in A.D. 544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller¹ adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson's hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, before A.D. 544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle² found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaṣodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,³ who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in the *Raghuvaṃśa*⁴ refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.

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³ e. g. Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff.

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⁴ JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f.

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¹ *India* (1883), pp. 281 ff.

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² *JRAS.* 1909, pp. 89 ff.

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³ *JBRAS.* xix. 39 ff.

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⁴ iv. 68.

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An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,⁵ who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly after A.D. 450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place before A.D. 455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,⁶ who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at between A.D. 480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa's time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmani-cal poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second century A. D. if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuries A. D.¹

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⁵ *Meghadūta* (ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he reads *Vaṅkṣu* = Oxus, for *Sindhu*; see Haranchandra Chakladar, *Vātsyāyana*, p. 23.

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⁶ *JRAS.* 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f.

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¹ Huth, *Die Zeit des Kālidāsa*, pp. 29 ff.

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Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of the Meghadūta a reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dinnāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth century A. D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth century A. D. But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dinnāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is the *double entendre* at all in Kālidāsa’s manner;² such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣiṇāvarta Nātha (*c.* A. D. 1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dinnāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth century A. D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests that A. D. 400 is as late as he can properly be placed.³

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² Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference.

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³ Keith, *Indian Logic*, p. 28.

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As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.¹

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¹ Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f.

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More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in the *Vikramorvaçī* a proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A. D. 499) on the score that in the *Raghuvaṃça* he refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in the *Vikramorvaçī* refers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in the *Raghuvaṃça* and the *Kumārasambhava* to the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms like *ucca* and even *jāmitra*, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior to A. D. 350 is indicated by such passages.²

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² Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.; *Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W.*, 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth, *op. cit.*, pp. 32 ff., 49 ff.

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Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuries A. D. He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription of A. D. 634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A. D. 620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti of A. D. 473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to about A. D. 413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the name *Vikramorvaçī*, while the *Kumārasambhava*'s title may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.¹ The *Mālavikāgnimitra* with its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa's early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men's minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa are essentially those of the Gupta period, when the Brahmanical and Indian tendencies of the dynasty were in full strength and the menace of foreign attack was for the time evanescent.

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¹ Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.

Cites (3)