KĀLID ĀSA

(fl. between 375 and 415)

Kālidāsa is generally recognized as the most important poet of classical India, and as India’s greatest dramatist. Little is known of his life: Even his birth date is controversial, with estimates ranging from 150 B.C.E. to 650 C.E. But most scholars believe he was active during the Gupta period, usually recognized as the high point of classical Indian culture, and Kālidāsa is generally associated with the northern Indian reign of Candragupta II (375–415), greatest of the Gupta monarchs.He is believed to have been born in Ujjain, and to have been of the Brahman caste (although one legend says he was a lowly cowherd). He seems to have traveled widely, since his works reveal a familiarity with the geography of most of the Indian subcontinent.

Kālidāsa is generally believed to be the author of two long lyrical poems, two epic poems, and three dramas. His poem Ritusamhārais a lyrical composition in six books describing the Indian seasons in vivid imagery. HisMēghadūta(The cloud-messenger) is a lyrical love poem, purported to be a message sent through a cloud by Yaksha, an absent lover, to his beloved in a distant town. The epic Kumārasambhava(The birth of the war god) celebrates the god Siva’s marriage to Parvati.Raghuvamsa(The house of Raghu) is an epic focusing on the lives of a number of kings, beginning with Rama, hero of the widely popular traditional epicRāmāyana.

Perhaps Kālidāsa is best known as a dramatist. His earliest play was Mālavikāgnimitra, a drama concerning the second century B.C.E. hero Agnimitra. Kālidāsa’s playVikramōrvasīya(The king and the nymph) retells the ancient and popular Indian story of the virtuous King Pururavas and the beautiful nymph Urvasi. But Kālidāsa’s most famous work, and India’s most beloved classical play, is Abhijñāna´sākuntala(´SāKUNTALāAND THE RING OF RECOLLECTION), often simply called ´Sākuntalā).

The plot of ´Sākuntalā is based on the first book of the epic Mahābhārata, telling of the birth of the epic’s hero Bharata.Kālidāsa shapes the story as a heroic romance—a nātakain Sanskrit, which denotes a play in which a noble hero loves a beautiful woman. The woman in this case is ´ Sākuntalā, a child of nature living in an isolated place in the woods. King Dusyanta sees her and falls in love with her, and she returns his passion. They are forced to part, and are kept apart by the curse of a sage. The loss of Dusyanta’s signet ring makes him forget to meet ´ Sākuntalā.When the king finds the ring, he remembers his love, but does not know where to find her. As the play progresses, both lovers are changed and refined through their suffering. Ultimately, with supernatural intervention, the king is reunited with his beloved, and with their love child, Bharata.

Language is one of the more interesting aspects of this play. Kālidāsa has his noble male characters speak in Sanskrit poetry, while his women and lower-caste characters speak in prose, and inPankrits, or vernacular languages. This kind of subtlety, and some of the technical aspects of Indian dramatic theory of which ´ Sākuntalā is the prime example, are elements that are lost in any translation of the work. But the play has comic elements (particularly in the character of the Buffoon) and elements of supernatural wonder that come through even in translations. The English translation made by Sir William Jones in 1789 was very popular in Europe, and influenced the great German classical writers, including particularly Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

■ Kālidāsa.Theater of Memory: The Plays ofKālidāsa. Translated by Edwin Gerow, David Gitomer, and Barbara Stoler Miller, edited by Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.