The History of Indian Literature c9.75

c9.75

²¹¹ In the introduction to my translation of this drama, the Málavikágnimitra, I have specially examined not only the question of its genuineness, but also that of the date of Kálidása. The result arrived at is, in the first place, that this drama also really belongs to him,—and in this view Shankar Paṇḍit, in his edition of the play (Bombay, 1869), concurs. As to the second point, internal evidence, partly derived from the language, partly connected with the phase of civilisation presented to us, leads me to assign the composition of Kálidása's three dramas to a period from the second to the fourth century of our era, the period of the Gupta princes, Chandragupta, &c., "whose reigns correspond best to the legendary tradition of the glory of Vikrama, and may perhaps be gathered up in it in one single focus." Lassen has expressed himself to essentially the same effect (*I. AK.*, ii. 457, 1158–1160); see also *I. St.*, ii. 148, 415–417. Kern, however, with special reference to the tradition which regards Kálidása and Varáha-Mihira as contemporaries, has, in his preface to Varáha's Bṛihat-Saṃhitá, p. 20, declared himself in favour of referring the 'nine gems' to the first half of the sixth century A.D. Lastly, on the ground of the astrological data in the Kumára-saṃbhava and Raghuvaṅśa, Jacobi comes to the conclusion (*Monatsber. der Berl. Acad.*, 1873, p. 556) that the author of these two poems cannot have lived before about A.D. 350; but here, of course, the preliminary question remains whether he is to be identified with the dramatist. Shankar Paṇḍit, in Trübner's *Am. and Or. Lit. Rec.*, 1875, special No., p. 35, assumes this, and fixes Kálidása's date as at all events prior to the middle of the eighth century. For a definite chronological detail which is perhaps furnished by the Meghadúta, see note 219 below. By the Southern Buddhists Kálidása is placed in the sixth century; Knighton, *Hist. of Ceylon*, 105; *Z. D. M. G.*, xxii. 730. With modern astronomers, the idea of a triad of authors of this name is so fixed, that they even employ the term *Kálidása* to denote the number 3; see *Z. D. M. G.*, xxii. 713.