KĀLIDĀSA Ever since the discovery of Sanskrit', Kālidāsa has received the attention of Orientalists, but their attention has hitherto been mainly directed to what seems to be the well-nigh impossible task of fixing the age in which he lived. The determination of the date of a poet like Kālidāsa has, no doubt, its own importance in literary history, but we should not forget that his works are to be valued for other reasons well. A great poet has ways a message for mankind and towards the elucidation of this message, in Kalidasa's case, the western scholar has not hitherto contrib- uted much. While not presuming to make good this deficiency, we may yet put together a few thoughts which readily occur to a student when he looks for data which indicate the chief features of Kalidasa as a man and as a poet. KĀLIDĀSA THE MAN One of the first impressions left on the student's mind is that Kalidasa was a man of the court, though he was not a courtier in the ordinary sense of that term. This impression is quite in keeping with the recorded tradition which, with added romance, makes our poet a protégé of the great king Vikramaditya. Al- though the tradition cannot be true in all its details, a study of Kālidāsa leaves no doubt that the poet lived in and was largely influenced by the aesthetic Indian court. Ample evidence of this may be met with in one of his plays, the Malavikāgnimitra; and elsewhere also in the sister-works-we find indications point- ing to the same conclusion. Indeed, the conditions under which Sanskrit literature grew necessitated poets coming under such influences. When printing was unknown and education was restricted to the few, even great poets had to seek the patronage of generous princes and noblemen. Literary genius accordingly congregated at the chief centres of political life, and Kalidasa exhibits all the traces of a mind brought by the force of circum- stances into close contact with such centres of activity. His great merit lies in the fact that although he wrote under such artificial conditions, he never allowed his love for nature to descend to the level of the conventional but retained it in all its original fresh- ness.
