KALIDASA, a great dramatist and epic poet of Northern India, and, according to Hindu tradition, the father of the erotic lyric. He lived about the beginning of the 6th century A.D. Ho is men tioned with Bharavi, another famous poet, in an inscription dated 507 Saka era, or A.D. 585-586. But has era has been supposed by Wilson to have been during the reign of a Vikramaditya. Dr. Bhau Daji supposed it to be that of Harsha Vikramaditya, in the middle of the 6th century ; Monier Williams thinks he wrote in the middle of the 3d century ; Lassen places him half a century later, and some believe that more than one person bore this name as a literary title.
His most celebrated dramas are Sakuntala, Vikramurvasi, and Megha-duta, but the Kumara Sambhava, the Raghu Vansa, the Malavi Kagni mitra, the Ritu Sanhara, Nalodaya, and Mudra Rakshasa are also attributed to him.
Sakuntala was made known to the west in 1789 by Sir William Jones. This drama relates how a Kshatriya prince, Dushyanta, prevailed on a Brahman's daughter to yield to him, under a promise of marriage, and he gave her his ring as a pledge of his troth. He then went to his own city, leaving the girl behind. She soon found that she was to become a mother, and she then set out to her husband, but lost the ring on the road, and he refused to recognise her until it was found. Vikramurvasi, or the Hero and the Nymph, celebrates Vikranisena, son of India and 1..Trvasi, a celestial songstress. His Megha duta, or Cloud Messenger, has 11G stanzas. In it an exile sends a message by a wind-borne cloud to his love, and the countries beneath its long aerial route are made to pass like a panorama before the reader's eye. The Kumara Sambhava recounts the birth of the war god. It contains passages of much beauty of style and grace of thought. It has been translated into English verse by Mr. Ralph T. H. Griffith.
The Raghu Vansa is an epic poem which cele brates the Solar line of Raghu, king of Ayodhya, but more particularly the ancestry and the life of his descendant Rama, who was the boast and ornament of the race. Rain's story occupies a
considerable place in many of the Puranas, and is the solo object of the Ramayana byValmiki ; also in the Bhatti Kavya and the Raghava Pandaviya, all in Sanskrit, and in Hindi the Ramayana of Tulsi Das and the Rama Chandraka of Kesava Das. Portions of it also are in the Tamil and Telugu.
Malavika and Agnimitra recounts the loves a those two. Mudra Rakshasa relates • a contest between Rama and his sons Lava and The Nalodaya is in four cantos, and tells the adventures of Nala and Damayanti. The poetical descriptions of his dramatic works have led to the supposition that these plays were written for reading rather than representation but such was not the case, as the MSS. which have come down to us contain fall directions aE to the proceedings on the stage. Wit is scarcely cared for by the Hindu, whose great delight is to portray the delicate loves of innocent and bashful youths. In this art none has excelled Kalidasa. No poet is so celebrated and highly esteemed in India ; to none have so many poems, epic, lyric, and dramatic, been ascribed. His play Sakuntala is considered the gem of oriental literature, and received the rapturous applause of Goethe. Professor Wilson's list of the Hindu Theatre contains the names of 60 pieces. Of these not more than six belong to the classical age, and two of these are the works of the famous Kalidasa. .The most interesting, though it has not the beauties of the Sakuntala, is the Mrichi kata or Toy Cart, and it is the only play from any part of India which has been acted on a European stage.
The Kumara Sambhava of Kalidasa, his Raghu Vansa, also the Neshadha of Sri Harsha, the Magha or Sisupala Badha and the Kiratarjuniya by Bharavi, are five of the six recognised excellent compositions in Gaz. ; Taylor ; Wheeler's Hist. of India, i. p. 50; Ward, iv. p. 1390.