पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/११२

KĀLIDĀSA AND THE GUPTAS asserting that he was originally extremely stupid, and won skill in poetry by the favour of Kālī, an obvious deduction from his name, slave of Kāli. He is alleged also to have shown remark- able skill in the ready manufacture of verses to order, either to describe a given situation or to complete an imperfect stanza, and a more circumstantial legend¹ tells of his murder in Ceylon while a guest of King Kumāradāsa at the hands of a greedy hetaira. There is not the slightest ground to accept the sugges- tion, still less to find in it an indication of date, Kālidāsa's visit to Ceylon on this view being due to the Hun inroads. His own poems, on the other hand, and especially the description of Raghu's conquests, prove him intimately acquainted with many Indian scenes, the sandal of Kashmir, the pearl fisheries of the Tamraparņi, the deodars of the Himalayas, the betel and coco-palms of Kalinga, the sand of the Indus, but it would be hazardous to claim for him any part in the great expedition of Samudragupta when he won his right to perform the horse sacrifice as a sign of his paramount power in India. Nonetheless it is difficult to dissociate Kalidasa from the great moments of the Gupta power. He was later than Açvaghosa and than the dramatist Bhāsa; he knew Greek terms, as his use of jamitra proves, the Präkrit of his dramas is decidedly later than Açvaghoṣa's and Bhasa's, and he cannot be put before the Gupta age. His complete acceptance of the Brahmanical system, the sense of sharing in a world of prosperity and power, the mention of the horse sacrifice in the Malavikägnimitra, Raghu's conquests in the Raghuvança, seem best explicable as the out- come of the enjoyment of the protection of a great Gupta ruler, and we must remember that Candragupta II had the style of Vikramaditya, with whose name tradition consistently connects Kalidasa. Nor is it absurd to see in the title Kumarasambhava a hint at the young Kumāragupta, the heir apparent, or even in Vikramorvaçī an allusion to the title Vikramaditya. It has been attempted to refer Kālidāsa to the sixth century by making the Vikramaditya of tradition the Yaçodharman who defeated the 80 1 Geiger, Lit. und Sprache der Singhalesen, pp. 3 ff.; Rhys-Davids, JRAS. 188⁹ pp. 148 ff.; Bendall, p. 440; Nandargıkar, Kumāradāsa, pp. v ff.; Vidyabhusana, POCP. 1919, i, p. clxxii. 2 Hoernle, JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff.