Appointment with Kalidasa

Author(s): G K Bhatt
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Appointment with Kalidasa
and stand for certain ideals, His heroines include young women from the innocent, bashful princess to the fearless daughter of Nature, and a daughter of a celestial person who could shame the tried ascetics by her severe austerities. Kalidāsa's women are devoted to their husbands and possess purity of character. In the love-inspired creation of Kalidasa there are female companions who shower their selfless love on their friend; there are fathers like Himalaya and Kaņva whose touching love for their children has a divine fragrance; and there are also children like Sarvadamana who would melt any one's heart with love. It is unthinkable to imagine that a poet who created this loving world of humanity had no private sense of morality and of moral virtue. It is wrong to interpret Kālidāsa's pictures of śrngāra by the changing standards of later times or by imposing current ideas on old literary works. It is useless to read old masters by imagining ourselves to be defenders of current morality.
One more detail : The stories about Kālidāsa associate him with Ujjayini and Kāśi. Kāśi or Vārāṇasi has been known as the centre of traditional learning from old days; it is not improbable that Kālidāsa had his education there. The Yakņa in the Meghadūta particularly recommends to the Cloud to visit Ujjayinī, though the city does not lie on his chartered course of journey; the soft corner for Ujjayini that Kālidāsa seems to have naturally suggests that he had a personal and private association with this city; Ujjayini is very probably the birth-place or the work-place of Kalidasa, as tradition aslo believes.
(4) Some other details of Kālidāsa's personality must now be collected from his writings. This is an attempt to construct the literary personality of Kālidāsa.
(a) The poet's education, his acquisition of śāstric knowledge and his preparation for a literary career were referred to in the foregoing section. In the words of Mammata, 13 this is expertness or skill (nipuņata) which comes to a studious person by keen observation of the world and the people, śāstras and the poetic art. A few additional details could be filled in the picture. The system of education followed in the ancient 'gurukulas' does not appear to be one-sided. Study of grammar and the academic śāstras must naturally have received priority as the foundation of sound learning. But the other aspects of education, including the training of girls, do not seem to be neglected. Anasāyā diagnoses the physical ill condition of Sakuntalā as a result of love-sickness, without any personal knowledge of the matter but from her knowledge of the love-lorn young people described in histories and purānas.14 The Brahmacārin in Bhāsa's Svapnavāsavadatta alludes to the cakravāka bird and other lovers described in Kāvya literature when he speaks about the tragic sorrow of Udayana,15 It is evident, therefore, that poetry, historic and purāņic story literature had also a due place in the academic syllabus at the centres of education. Another interesting reference occurs in the context of Nature's unexpected wedding gifts to