The History of Indian Literature c9.74.1

c9.74.1

The dramas of Kálidása—that one of the ‘nine gems’ with whom we are here more immediately concerned—furnish in their contents nothing that directly enables us to determine their date. Still, the mention of the Greek female slaves in attendance upon the king points at least to a time not especially early; while the form in which the popular dialects appear, and which, as compared with that of the inscriptions of Piyadasi, is extraordinarily degraded, not unfrequently coinciding with the present form of these vernaculars, brings us down to a period at any rate several centuries after Christ. But whether the tradition is right in placing Kálidása at the court of Bhoja in the middle of the eleventh century appears to me very questionable; for this reason in particular, that it assigns to the same court other poets also, whose works, compared with those of Kálidása, are so bad, that they absolutely must belong to a later stage than his—for example, Dámodara Miśra, author of the Hanuman-náṭaka. Moreover, Kálidása has allotted to him such a large number of works, in part too of wholly diverse character, that we cannot but admit the existence of several authors of this name; and, in point of fact, it is a name that has continued in constant use down to the present time.