Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works | Page 3

believe that Kalidasa had not himself made
such a "grand tour"; so much of truth there may be in the tradition
which sends him on a pilgrimage to Southern India. The thirteenth
canto of the same epic and The Cloud-Messenger also describe long
journeys over India, for the most part through regions far from Ujjain.
It is the mountains which impress him most deeply. His works are full
of the Himalayas. Apart from his earliest drama and the slight poem
called The Seasons, there is not one of them which is not fairly redolent
of mountains. One, _The Birth of the War-god_, might be said to be all
mountains. Nor was it only Himalayan grandeur and sublimity which
attracted him; for, as a Hindu critic has acutely observed, he is the only
Sanskrit poet who has described a certain flower that grows in Kashmir.
The sea interested him less. To him, as to most Hindus, the ocean was a
beautiful, terrible barrier, not a highway to adventure. The "sea-belted
earth" of which Kalidasa speaks means to him the mainland of India.
Another conclusion that may be certainly drawn from Kalidasa's
writing is this, that he was a man of sound and rather extensive
education. He was not indeed a prodigy of learning, like Bhavabhuti in
his own country or Milton in England, yet no man could write as he did
without hard and intelligent study. To begin with, he had a minutely
accurate knowledge of the Sanskrit language, at a time when Sanskrit
was to some extent an artificial tongue. Somewhat too much stress is

often laid upon this point, as if the writers of the classical period in
India were composing in a foreign language. Every writer, especially
every poet, composing in any language, writes in what may be called a
strange idiom; that is, he does not write as he talks. Yet it is true that
the gap between written language and vernacular was wider in
Kalidasa's day than it has often been. The Hindus themselves regard
twelve years' study as requisite for the mastery of the "chief of all
sciences, the science of grammar." That Kalidasa had mastered this
science his works bear abundant witness.
He likewise mastered the works on rhetoric and dramatic

theory--subjects which Hindu savants have treated with great, if
sometimes hair-splitting, ingenuity. The profound and subtle systems of
philosophy were also possessed by Kalidasa, and he had some
knowledge of astronomy and law.
But it was not only in written books that Kalidasa was deeply read.
Rarely has a man walked our earth who observed the phenomena of
living nature as accurately as he, though his accuracy was of course that
of the poet, not that of the scientist. Much is lost to us who grow up
among other animals and plants; yet we can appreciate his "bee-black
hair," his ashoka-tree that "sheds his blossoms in a rain of tears," his
river wearing a sombre veil of mist:
Although her reeds seem hands that clutch the dress
To hide her
charms;
his picture of the day-blooming water-lily at sunset:
The water-lily closes, but
With wonderful reluctancy;
As if it
troubled her to shut
Her door of welcome to the bee.
The religion of any great poet is always a matter of interest, especially
the religion of a Hindu poet; for the Hindus have ever been a deeply
and creatively religious people. So far as we can judge, Kalidasa moved
among the jarring sects with sympathy for all, fanaticism for none. The
dedicatory prayers that introduce his dramas are addressed to Shiva.

This is hardly more than a convention, for Shiva is the patron of
literature. If one of his epics, _The Birth of the War-god_, is
distinctively Shivaistic, the other, _The Dynasty of Raghu_, is no less
Vishnuite in tendency. If the hymn to Vishnu in The Dynasty of Raghu
is an expression of Vedantic monism, the hymn to Brahma in The Birth
of the War-god gives equally clear expression to the rival dualism of
the Sankhya system. Nor are the Yoga doctrine and Buddhism left
without sympathetic mention. We are therefore justified in concluding
that Kalidasa was, in matters of religion, what William James would
call "healthy-minded," emphatically not a "sick soul."
There are certain other impressions of Kalidasa's life and personality
which gradually become convictions in the mind of one who reads and
re-reads his poetry, though they are less easily susceptible of exact
proof. One feels certain that he was physically handsome, and the
handsome Hindu is a wonderfully fine type of manhood. One knows
that he possessed a fascination for women, as they in turn fascinated
him. One knows that children loved him. One becomes convinced that
he never suffered any morbid, soul-shaking experience such as
besetting religious doubt brings with it, or the pangs of