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Appointment with Kalidasa
about their professed sincerity and devotion of love? It is not possible to ignore this opinion or criticism if Kalidasa's treatment of love and his philosophy of love. were to be correctly appraised.
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Does Kalidasa really intened to paint man as inconstant, given to pleasures and treating woman as a mere object of enjoyment? Even from the angle of realism it will not be possible for us to accept such an intention on the part of the poet. There are two reasons for rejecting the possibility: It is not only Rama but Duşyanta, Pururavas, even Agnimitra, that is to say the kings portrayed by Kalidasa, stand for the contemporary ideals of men in social life; they represent the social ethos. If we do not want to accept these ideals we are, in the present day, at liberty to reject them totally. But we also have to remember that social ideas change with the passage of time; so that the ideals of one age may not appeal to people in another age. However, such a change in attitude does not alter the fact that the ideal men in one particular age were really ideal for the people in their age; this is the social and historical truth, which our present dislike or prejudice can neither suppress nor change. We are inclined today to look upon Rama, who had only one wife, as the social ideal of man. But that does not give us any right or authority to treat Duşyanta and other much-married men as mere pleasure-seekers and philanderers. Kālidāsa had to accept this social fact of his time; and with it he has painted Dusyanta and his other heroes as ideal kings. If it were permissible to ignore this social and historical. fact in private life, according to present-day likes and dislikes, to do so in the sphere of art is positively stupid. The second reason is that the Sanskrit theory of literature and drama had evolved certain canons for literary composition; it was laid down, in course of time, that the hero of a poetic or dramatic composition should. be one of the four recognised types, namely, dhirodatta, dhiralalita, dhitoddhata and dhiraprakanta. The Sanskrit writers generally followed these literary canons and endeavoured to present ideal or representative characters. If the literary canons had not. yet been scientifically shaped in Kalidasa's times, it must be remembered that he had the ideals of Valmiki and Vyasa before him. Besides, a student of literature is perfectly aware that all ancient literature leaned towards ideal and representative pictures of social life; to treat man as a lowly character with all his foibles, vices and crimes is a realistic tendency of the modern age. Thus, Kalidasa's heroes fall in the category of dhirodatta or dhiralalita nayakas. They are ideals of that age. We have, therefore, no buisness to adopt a modern, extrarealistic attitude and treat these heroes as flippant, sex-hungry men, according to our standards of private and social morality. It is far better to let the ancient classics alone if we cannot understand the approach of art.
The point is that a reader has to cultivate an objective attitude in the study of art. The heroes of Kalidasa and other characters in Sanskrit literature should be understood in their contemporary setting, without trying to judge them and their actions with our own standards of morality and behaviour. We owe at least this much
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