पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/१३२

100 KĀLIDĀSA AND THE GUPTAS seeks to secure reunion in her next life with her spouse: the power to pass through closed doors may be won, and the Yogin needs not cremation, but like Raghu is buried in mother earth. But we cannot hold that the godhead envisaged by Kālidāsa is the pale Içvara of the Yoga; in Brahman we are told are united both matter and spirit as they are known in the Sāṁkhya, and this we may fairly take as indicating that to Kālidāsa, as to the author of the Katha Upanişad, over the spirits and matter stood the absolute, who to Kālidāsa takes specially the form of Çiva but who is also Brahman and Visņu, the spirit that perishes not beyond the darkness. With this absolute man is merged on death if he has attained enlightenment, for this is the sense of brahmabhūyam gatim ājagāma in the Raghuvança. If enlighten- ment is not his but good deeds, he has heaven for his share, for knowledge alone burns up man's deeds which else force him to life after life. We need have the less hesitation to accept this view in that it is essentially the standpoint of popular Vedāntism and that it afforded to a man of thought and good sense an effective means of reconciling belief in the three great gods. What is clear is that in his advancing years Kālidāsa's mind turned more and more to the conception of the all-embracing character of the godhead and of the efficacy of Yoga practices to attain union with him. From such a philosophy it would be idle to seek any solution for essential conflicts in the heart of man, or to demand any independent criticism of man's aims and fate. India knew atheists enough, but their works have all but perished, and we must rather be grateful that we have preserved in such perfection the poetic reflex of the Brahmanical ideal both in its strength and in its weakness. Nor, let us remember, does such an ideal shut out deep human feeling such as we may suspect in the longing of the Meghaduta, the lament of Aja over the dead Indumati, of Rati for Kāma slain. But it does demand resignation, and if in perfection of form Kālidāsa's poems proclaim him the Virgil of India, we may admit that he was incapable of the vision and imagery of the sixth book of the Aeneid.