KĀLIDĀSA 23 epithets are always fully suggestive. In propriety of dialogue and sentiment he is unsurpassed. More striking than all these, is his strong love for Nature. He looks upon things in Nature with a peculiarly tender feeling, and we may regard him as another St. Francis of Assissi, calling the very flowers his sisters and mothers, and 'looking upon the hill with tenderness and making dear friendship with the streams and groves'. His descriptions of Nature are everywhere tinged with this family love and with such descriptions he combines profound interpretation of human life and character. One more point that we may notice here is that Kālidāsa, as has been remarked by a discerning critic, is a 'poet of love.' Love forms the prevailing sentiment of all his plays and it furnishes the motif to his Meghasandeśa-one of the most exquisite of lyrics. In his other works also, the poet shows a partiality for this senti- ment. But we should remember that love as portrayed by Kālidāsa is different from that described in much of later Sanskrit poetry. As the latter is mostly sensual in its character, the word śṛngāra (love) has come to be associated in this, its perverted sense, with Sanskrit literature in general. This is very unfor- tunate, for the sentiment of love as delineated by the earlier poets, especially Kālidāsa, is of a pure type and has the least to do with the love of the flesh. Even this higher love appears in two phases in Sanskrit literature-one of them corresponding to the Hindu idea of pravṛtti or 'activity', and the other to that of nivṛtti or 'withdrawal'. The former recognises love (kāma) as one of the three aims in life (trigaṇa), the other two being artha and dharma. According to this conception of life, wisdom consists in following all the above aims with equal devotion, and making life a harmonious whole. Although such an ideal makes for social order and individual purity, it can scarcely be described as the highest, for it is not wholly spiritual in character. The second ideal of nivṛtti, on the other hand, merges the immediate in the ultimate and recognises mokṣa as the sole end in life (parama-puruṣārtha). According to this ideal, man should not rest satisfied with a mere harmonising of the various temporal aims of life, but should, from the very beginning, endeavour to set free the universal in him rom the limits of individuality. Viewed in this light, love acquires a new significance. True love is not what can take a circumspect view of all that concerns the self, but that which
