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It is a foolhardy venture at best to seek to unravel the mystery of a poet’s personality from his works, even when we have neurasthenic diaries and dutiful Boswells to help us along. And the foolhardiness becomes downright impudence, when the poet to be investigated is Kalidasa, who has left behind him no diaries and no autobiographies, but only three plays and four poems (if we include the Ritu-Samhara), and of whom no Boswell has written a single line. Impertinent curiosity is the only possible explanation, if by no means an adequate excuse for this attempt to answer the question: What manner of man was Kalidasa? The impertinence may seem the less egregious, when it is remembered that it is a weakness which we moderns have cultivated to wish to know our authors more intimately than through their books. And when no obliging biographer is available, we let our fancy run amok and paint a picture to worship or condemn as the case may be. A name is too unsubstantial a thing to attract our homage or receive our scorn. The writer whom we like or hate must be something more to us: he must be in our mind’s eye a creature of flesh and blood, whom we might flatter by our praise or irritate by our censure. We do not wish to waste our feelings on the desert air: we want human responses for them. It is only in the case of writers who bore us that we do not indulge in this all too modern weakness. And as no man who prizes the good opinion of those around him would care to admit that Kalidasa sends him to sleep, all who have read Kalidasa, with the exception of a few stern, unbending ‘highbrows,� must have been guilty at one time or another of the indiscretion of trying to picture Kalidasa the man. And as a popular vice tends to become venial and gives one the feeling of sinning in excellent company, here is an account of a brave adventure into realms where angels fear to tread and…�

In the absence of indiscreet diaries, spicy correspondence, and psycho-analytical biographies, we have only legends to fall on in the case of Kalidasa. And a curious assortment they form. There is the story of the blue-stocking Princess who was forced to wed the poet when he was an illiterate boor, and who provoked him by her taunts to worship Kali and achieve poetry–a tale which seems very like an elaborate pun on his name. There are the anecdotes which contrive, with cheerful anachronism, meetings between Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti and give us interesting accounts of their competitive zeal in the service of the Muse. There are the stories which connect him in even more flagrant violation of historical chronology with the court of King Bhoja. Of them all, I like best the one which relates how Kalidasa added the flavour of poetry to the most pedestrian lines which an unpoetic Brahmin had composed to win favour at the hands of the King, who fancied himself, perhaps with more justification than Frederick the Great, on his literary taste. Bluntly and without any literary trimmings, the Brahmin expressed in two laborious lines the thought uppermost in his mind:

Give some food, O king, full of ghee and sauce.

And on this pinnacle of glory, the floods of inspiration left him high and dry. It was left to Kalidasa to finish the stanza with just a touch of ‘the light that never was on sea or land�:

And curds, white as the autumnal moonlight.

Then there is the story which relates how Kalidasa wrote two lines of a quatrain, which cost him his very life. And so on.

But what faith can we place in these tales, when there is no available historical material which can help us to fix even the date of Kalidasa within a century or two. Guesses about the age in which he lived range from the eight century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. And as we have more than ten centuries to choose among, the problem of his age is more or less speculative. There is little or no direct reference to history or the events of his life in the poet’s works. Kalidasa has none of the self-expressive garrulity of some later poets who make up for their poverty of inspiration by giving us too abundant details of their uninteresting lives. In the prologue to the Malavikagnimitra, he apologises for writing a new play, when the writings of such masters as Bhasa, Saumilla and Kaviputra are still available. And it is a remarkable irony of fate that the dramatic works of two at least of these three poets, whose established fame made Kalidasa so diffident, have disappeared without a trace. And one of the readings for the first sentence of Abhijnana-Sakuntala refers to the court of the cultured and accomplished Vikramaditya. Perhaps a compliment is intended to some Vikramaditya or other in the somewhat unusual title of his play, Vikramorvasiyam. This is more or less all the reference that may be found in his works to external events: and here we may take leave of history. In the circumstances, we are thrown entirely on our own resources in the task of forming a picture of the poet’s personality. We have to proceed on the asiumption, however incapable of strict logical proof, that a careful study of his works must enable us to have some idea, however inadequate, of the mind that composed them. And that is why angels will not undertake this work, but leave it to those who rush in where the angels fear to tread.

And what do his works tell us about him? Perhaps the one thing that may be easily inferred from the writings of an author is the extent of his scholarship. Kalidasa, though he does not parade his learning, leaves us in no doubt about his wide reading and versatile culture. He had mastered all the arts and sciences of his day–poetry and painting, music and metaphysics, medicine and grammar and astronomy. Yet there is not the slightest attempt at pedantic display, no incongruous exhibition of undigested knowledge. He did not degrade his sovereign command over the language of the gods by any grotesque exhibition of linguistic acrobatics. He wrote no diagrammatic verses, no lines that read the same wards or forward, no elaborate double-entendre that makes the same poem relate two entirely different stories. In this, as in other things, his perfect taste is never at fault. His superb style is moulded by an art which conceals art: his scholarship mellows and beautifies many a charming passage, but is never seen out of place. His poetry is not highbrow or snobbish, it is no pandit’s paradise with the entry restricted to an esoteric circle of dry-as-dust pedantry. It is not without significance that the Raghuvamsa is placed in the hands of the beginner in Sanskrit. Despite learning and formal rhetoric, despite the learned and critical audience for which he had to write, Kalidasa is fresh and original. His poetry is not second-hand, laboriously catching gleams of inspiration from the rugged strength of a remote antiquity. It is authentic coin and rings true. It does not remind us of some golden afternoon, basking in the memories of a departed noon, but is in itself a blazing glory of splendid achievement. In brief, Kalidasa is the master–and not the slave–of his learning.

Another elementary fact, which may be deduced with equal ease from his works, is that he was a traveller. More than once in the course of his poems he describes the entire continent of India, and every line gives evidence of first-hand knowledge and authentic experience. He portrays with minute accuracy the saffron flower which grows only in Kashmir, and he appears to have visited the sandal-scented forests of the far South. He had knowledge of foreigners beyond the borders of India–Greeks and Persians in the west and the Chinese in the East. The geography of the Raghuvamsa and the Meghadhuta has attracted the attention of historians and furnishes striking testimony in favour of Kalidasa’s knowledge of the India of his days. Travel, as Sister Nivedita has pointed out, is the true means of reading Indian history: and Kalidasa’s travels not merely gave him an insight into the historic past of India, but also imbued him with a passionate patriotism. He loved his motherland as few men have loved theirs. From the north to the south and from the east to the west, every square foot spoke to him of a thousand associations. The beauty of city and forest and mountain and river, mingled with memories of what they had been, inspired the poet to celebrate India from end to end. And it may be permissible to conjecture that in describing the exploits of the emperors of the Dynasty of Raghu, Kalidasa was placing before his contemporaries the ideal of a national state under unified political control.

The poet’s travels appear to have been confined almost exclusively to the mainland of India. His references to the sea lack the touch of a true sailor. He describes the mystery and might and sublimity of the ocean, but exhibits none of the easy familiarity of the true traveller on the seas. His essay at poetry he compares to a launching of a puny bark ‘on the ocean’s swell�. And in a memorable stanza in the thirteenth canto of Raghuvamsa, Rama, gazing at the sea from the Pushpaka-vimana, describes it thus to Sita:

The form of ocean, infinitely changing
Clasping the world and all its gorgeous States,
Unfathomed by the intellect’s wide ranging,
Is awful like the form of God and great.

Kalidasa has described the sea as only a great poet can. But ‘custom� has not ‘staled� its infinite variety for him. Its romance and enchantment have not been killed by too familiar contacts.

Yet another inference that we may make with fair certainty is that the poet was familiar with court and city life. Palace-intrigues form the staple of two of his plays. Even in the Sakuntala the harem appears in the ground. The jealousy between the dancing masters which Kalidasa describes in the Malavikagnimitra reveals his intimate knowledge of the atmosphere of royal courts. The awe which surrounds royal majesty is graphically portrayed by him in a stanza in the Sakuntala: at the same time he shows in the speech of Sarungarava that tyranny and injustice may lurk behind the mysterious halo of royalty. Princes and politicians ‘study to deceive.� The formal pomp of coronations and the festive gaiety of royal marriages form the theme of some of his most charming descriptions. And it may not be an improbable inference that Kalidasa attended some such functions in his life-time. If, as is frequently supposed, he lived at a time of renascent vitality in the history of Hindu civilisation, some aspiring prince may well have revived the ancient institution of Svayamvara, and the immortal picture of Indumati’s choice of her husband may have been inspired by a contemporary event. The elaborate etiquette of the courts, with its nice gradations of precedence, is hinted at in the description of the way in which Lord Siva greeted the gods who attended his marriage. "He greeted Brahma with a shake of his head, Hari with speech, Indra with a smile and the assembled gods with a mere look" (Kumara-Sambhava). He was also quite familiar with the royal sport of chase, though his attitude thereto requires some further discussion. His descriptions of war however lack the touch of realism, though they are in the strict epic tradition. Does this mean that he never played the part of a war correspondent? The wars described in his poems and plays may contain oblique allusions to the events of his day: but we lack sufficient data even to start a guessing game.

And yet familiarity with court life did not keep him aloof from ‘the madding crowd’s ignoble strife�. The picture that he has drawn of the fisherman in the Sakuntala, brief as it is, reveals his insight into the hearts of the masses. Bullying policemen make fun of the angler’s profession but the fisherman reproves them with the voice of wisdom. He cites the example of the tender-hearted Brahmin who does not hesitate to indulge in bloody animal sacrifices. The true worth of the soul has to be measured by other standards. Fishing may be cruel: but to follow the calling of one’s fathers is no crime. The honours of the debate rest with the despised plier of hooks and nets. There are other pictures of the common folk scattered in his writings. Raghu’s fame is celebrated in song by peasant girls, "protectresses of rice-crops resting under the shade of sugar-canes." Village ancients tell their tales of old romance in Avanti (M. D.). The farmer’s wives in Malakuta, innocent of coquetry, greet rain-bearing clouds with lowing glances (M. D.). In winter, "villages with bustling cry bring home the ripened corn." (R. S.) Paternal royal proclamations are welcomed by the people like timely showers. (Sakuntala) Kalidasa’s interested observation surveyed all sorts and conditions of men, princes and peasants, wise sages and worldly Brahmins, despised fishermen and domineering minions of the law. He wrote, it is true, mostly of men and women of high degree, as befitted the themes that he chose: but the great mass of mankind were not strangers to him. Kalidasa was no drawing-room poet.

Wide as was the range of his interest in mankind, he was not content to listen only to ‘the still sad music of humanity.� Nature in all her moods appealed to him. He portrays for us the sublimity of the Himalayas, the majestic flow of the Ganges, the wild rush of tiger and lion in the forest, as well as smallest flower and leaf and fruit, the rippling stream and the stag at play. Every picture is instinct with beauty, and testifies to a rarely surpassed exactitude in observation and description. It is not difficult to find examples. Professor Ryder cites among other things the reference to the Deep River in the Meghadhuta:

"But steal her sombre veil of mist away,
Although her reeds seem hands that clutch the dress
To hide her charms......,"

and the ashoka tree shedding its "blossoms in a rain of tears." Many more will occur to a student of the poet–the deer in the Sakuntala who ‘leaps so often and so high� that he ‘does not seem to run but fly,� the

‘dark eyes that dance beneath the lifted lash
As when black bees round nodding jasmine blossoms flash�

and

"the fluttering pigeons on the palace terrace in the dark, disguised as rings of smoke,
That from the window-ways have floated out into the evening."

And there runs through all his description of Nature a feeling of kinship with her, which yet does not give rise to any mystical obscurity or vagueness. In spite of all the delight he found in the description of Nature, Kalidasa evolved no cult of a single impulse from the vernal wood teaching more of man,

‘Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.�

He is a poet as much of the human heart as of natural beauty. "The two characters," writes Prof. Ryder, "unite in him almost chemically." The Meghadhuta with its faultless blending of human emotion with scenes of natural beauty shows how this magic is achieved.

Of the quality of his imagination it is not necessary to write here at length. Critics, Eastern and Western, have paid their tributes thereto, always in glowing terms, often in ecstasy. The excellence of his similes has long been recognised in India. One stanza from the Raghuvamsa, describing the feelings of the assembled princes, as Indumati passes them by, one after another, at her swayamvara, has been singled out for special praise:

And every prince rejected, while she sought
A husband, darkly frowned, as turrets, bright
One moment with the flames from torches caught,
Frown gloomily again and sink into night

It is however really a thankless task to pick and choose among Kalidasa’s figures of speech. Reference may however be made to two stanzas from the Sakuntala, which, while displaying the poet’s unequalled imaginative power, are at the same time of more than passing interest to us of the twentieth century. To appreciate fully the amazing accuracy of description and truth of feeling in the following verse, one must have watched the landing of an aeroplane from within as a passenger:

The plains appear to melt and fall
From mountain-peaks that grow more tall;
The trunks of trees no longer hide
Nor in their leafy nests abide;
The river network now is clear,
For smaller streams at last appear;
It seems as if some being threw
The world to me for clearer view.

And here is a description of what perhaps the speed-kings of today see but cannot very easily express:

As onward and onward the chariot plies,
The small flashes large to my dizzy eyes.
What is cleft in twain seems to blur and mate;
What is crooked in nature seems to be straight.
Things at my side in an instant appear
Distant, and things in the distance near.

It is however more to our purpose to speak of the range of his imagination, which is equally capable of grandeur and grace. Look on the one hand at the sublimity of the description of Mount Kailas as ‘the massed laughter� of Siva:

So lotus-bright his summits cloud the heavens
Like form and substance to Gods� daily laughter given.

(Meghadhuta)

Or at the opening lines of the Kumara-Sambhava:

God of the distant north, the Snowy Range
O’er other mountains towers imperially;

Earth’s measuring-rod, being. great and free from charge, Sinks to the eastern and the western sea.

Observe in contrast Dushyanta’s graceful apostrophe to the bee which was hovering round Sakuntala’s face-lines, which remind us of the charm of Caroline lyricists.

Eager bee, you lightly skim
O’er the eyelid’s trembling rim,
Toward the cheek a-quiver.
Gently buzzing round her cheek,
Whispering in her ear, you seek
Secrets to deliver.
While her hands that way and this
Strike at you, you steal a kiss,
Love’s all, honey-maker.
I know nothing but her name,
Not her caste, nor whence she came�
You, my rival, take her.

To pass on to yet another question, what was Kalidasa’s religion? The name Hinduism covers a multitude of sects and points of view. It has often been suggested that Kalidasa was a Saivite, and in a recent work by Pandit Lakmidhar of Delhi an attempt has been made to identify Kalidasa’s faith with the pratyadhijna philosophy of Kashmir Saivism. If however we conquer the temptation to read between the lines, the inference is irresistible that Kalidasa is no narrow sectary or bigoted enthusiast. To the broad fundamentals of the Vedanta he appears to have subscribed: though it is not possible to say with certainty what particular school of thought he embraced. Siva, Vishnu and Brahma alike receive his homage: and each is to him only a name and symbol of the one Supreme Reality of which all religions speak. "So far as we can judge," writes Prof. Ryder, "Kalidasa moved among the jarring sects with sympathy for all, fanaticism for none." This faith in fundamentals and this freedom from narrow-minded bigotry give a ground of serenity to all his thoughts: but it does not make him, as Prof. Keith insinuates, superficial. Merely because we can discover in his writings no revolt against society or the dispensations of fate, nor any dyspeptic protests against an unfriendly universe, we cannot say that he is ignorant of the deeper feelings of human life. There is a touch of restraint in all his pictures of grief. Even the agonising pain of bereavement is often set against a larger ground of faith and resignation, which makes it gain in stature at the same time that it mitigates its personal poignancy. To believe in karma and to have faith in the justice of the cosmic order of things, in spite of all seeming evidence to the contrary, is hardly the same thing as to be guilty of cocksure optimism. Great poetry is surely not synonymous with the glorification of despair. Yet despite the greatness and adequacy of the Vedanta, Kalidasa, like all great poets, was sensitive to the ultimate mysteriousness of life. Neither an ascetic nor a dreaming philosopher, Kalidasa appears to have travelled (if a suggestion may be hazarded) towards the ecstatic experience of the mystic from the domains of art. Says Dushyanta with just a suggestion and no more of things deeper than thought can fathom:

In face of sweet presentment,
Or harmonies of sound,
Man e’er forgets contentment,
By wistful longings bound.
There must be recollections
Of things not seen on earth,
Deep nature’s predilections,
Loves earlier than birth.

So far, we have gathered some traits of the poet’s personality, and in our attempt to understand his religion, we have perhaps come as near his heart as we can. Yet what we have learnt is not much, and to gather the proportions of the out- line we have been sketching, it is needful to ask, of him as Leslie Stephen does of Shakespeare: whom does he resemble? To what psychological type does he belong? Is he a mystic, absorbed in super-normal experiences, a devotee always engaged in hymning his God? Was he tossed between revelry and renunciation like Bhartrihari who wrote both on love and his disgust for it? Was he conscious of a mission and proud of his poesy, confident like Bhavabhuti of a select audience, fit though few? Was he a strict moralist as Tagore suggests, or a believer in the cult of beauty, Bohemian rather than ascetic in his sympathies?

If we try to answer questions like these, we have to analyse the impression that his works on the whole leave on us. This impression, it may be stated at once, is one of wonderful balance and harmony. One can see no angularities in his soul, no abnormal development of a single faculty at the expense of others. We do not observe in him a house divided against itself, a Hamlet filled with doubts and misgivings. His great wit was not ‘to madness near allied.� His genius was sane and clear-eyed, beautiful even in its very balance and poise. He was a scholar who took all the knowledge of his day for his province, but on whom the weight of learning sat easily: a courtier and a man of culture, who did not feel out of his element in the company of the lowly and the unlettered; and a lover of nature who did not disdain the company of men. By no means a passionate mystic or fervent devotee, he was yet religious in the true sense of the term. It is because of this singular balance in his nature that his treatment of all human problems is characterised by calmness and sanity. He never glorifies mere passion or despair. He believed in romantic love and spared no art to render beautiful the rise of love at first sight in Sakuntala. But he knew also of the ephemeral character of all passion not chastened by suffering. The Dushyanta of the first act and the Dushyanta of the sixth act are different (To this extent at least, Tagore’s contention is true.) To the much-married king, Sakuntala is only one of many adventures: we are let into the secret, when the neglected Queen Hansavati plaintively asks in a song: "Fresher honey’s sweet, I know. But can you forget?" Remorse and suffering change this flighty passion to something more enduring: and the king gains in stature by virtue of the ordeal of fire through which he passes. So too Sakuntala. Innocent of the ways of the world, she is at the beginning "self-forgetful and obedient to Nature’s impulses like the plants and flowers." But the final picture of the deserted wife, framed in the heavenly hermitage of Marichi, is rich in suggestion. It reveals the strength of her soul and the innate purity of her character, which the long trial of separation only served to bring out in bold relief. Kalidasa looked on passion with understanding: but he respected love. He reserves the best resources of his art for ‘the love stripped of all the external robes of beauty and circled with the pure white halo of goodness.� In the Kumara-Sambhava is portrayed the eternal antithesis between passion and penance, but the lesson of the struggle is neither self-indulgence nor rigid mortification of the flesh. To quote Tagore, "he proclaims goodness as the final goal of love."

It is perhaps not necessary to add that Kalidasa has a fine sense of humour, the result of his exquisite sense of proportion. The clowns in his plays speak more than the customary badinage. The poet’s laughter does not even spare the gods. The clown in Vikramorvasiyam observes: "Who wants paradise? It is nothing to eat or drink. It is just a place where they never shut their eyes–like fishes!" The reference of course is to the ancient belief that the gods do not wink. And there is in the Kumara-Sambhava a remarkable essay in vituperation directed against Siva himself, boldly making fun of the Lord’s matted locks and uncouth dress and manners. The passage is all the more charming by reason of the author and the victim of the libel being one and the same. The fisherman scene in Sakuntala is rich with the possibilities of a roaring farce. Kalidasa was no mere humorist, but he has the wide humanity and generous tolerance of such great masters of comedy like Shakespeare and Dickens.

Here is an outline of the poet’s personality, as definite as one can make it. But is it possible to fill in the details and discover a few distinctly personal characteristics? Writing on Shakespeare the Man, Bradley suggested (with a wealth of evidence in support) that the Bard of Avon did not love dogs. Is there any trait in Kalidasa, even more trivial, which can bring him nearer to us? I am going to suggest, not without some trepidation, that Kalidasa hated the slaughter of deer in the name of sport. Whenever there was risk in the game, he was prepared to admire it. General Bhadrasena says to Dushyanta:

The hunter’s form grows sinewy, strong and light;
He learns, from beasts of prey, how wrath and fright
Affect the mind; his skill he loves to measure
With moving targets. Tis life’s chiefest pleasure.

But notice the striking simile which Kalidasa puts into the mouth of the hermit, who requests Dushyanta to forbear from killing the stags of the hermitage.

What has bright steel to do with the frail life
Of deer? As well might you fling flame on flowers!

In the midst of a description of Dasaratha’s hunt in the ninth canto of the Raghuvamsa, the poet interposes a most suggestive incident. Dasaratha is about to shoot a deer with an arrow: the bow is drawn and the arrow is ready to fly. Just then, the deer’s mate, sensing the danger, shields her spouse with her body. The king’s heart is touched and he immediately returns the arrow to the quiver. Not a dissimilar sentiment is expressed also in the Sakuntala. Dushyanta ruminates:

The bow is strung, its arrow near:
And yet I cannot bend
That bow against the fawns who share
Soft glances with their friend.

The friend of course is Sakuntala. Kalidasa’s abhorrence of the senseless massacre of innocent animals in the name of sport was not due to any sickly love of sentimentalism. When Dushyanta was indulging in self-pity at his separation from his beloved Sakuntala, Matali makes a pretence of kidnapping the clown in order to rouse the king to manliness. Kalidasa realised the weakening influence of sentiment, but he had an honest horror of the futile butchery to which the sport of chase often degenerates. "The weapon’s office," as Dushyanta is told, is "to champion the distressed, not maim the innocent." Yet another distinctly personal characteristic is of course the poet’s well-known love for Ujjain. In the Meghadhuta, the Yaksha exhorts the cloud to visit Ujjain, even though it lies out of the way:

Swerve from thy northern path, for westward rise
The palace balconies thou mayst not slight
In fair Ujjain: and if bewitching eyes,
That flutter at thy gleams, should not delight
Thine amorous bosom, useless were thy gift of sight

And again:

Oh, fair Ujjain! Gem to Avanti given,
Where village ancients tell their tales of mirth
And old romance! Oh, radiant bit of heaven,
Home of a celestial band whose worth
Sufficed, though fallen from heaven, to bring down heaven on earth!

Whether the poet was born at Ujjain or in Kashmir has been the subject of controversy. But it is certain that he spent a part of his life at least in the ancient imperial capital and passionately loved it.

Kalidasa’s grace and delicate taste, sweetness and sureness of touch have been commented on by his successors in India. They rest as on a granite foundation, on his serenity of spirit and harmony of soul. The rare gift appears to have been his of a happy and equal temper, which yet was not shallow or superficial in its sympathies. Prof. Ryder writes that Kalidasa must have ‘moved among men and women with a sovereign and god-like tread, neither self-indulgent nor ascetic, with mind and senses alert to every form of beauty.� If we add to these traits a true appreciation of the fundamentals in religion, philosophic and tolerant, universal sympathy and insight into the workings of the human heart, wisdom culture transcending mere learning, a love of the motherland, the loveliness of her landscape and the beauty of her flora and fauna, a sense of proportion and a keen sense of humour, a partiality for Ujjain and an abhorrence of the criminal slaughter of deer in the name of sport–we may perhaps claim to have a picture of the poet’s personality which is not too vague and which yet rests on the evidence of his extant works.

The translations quoted in this article are mostly from Prof. Ryder, some are from Kedarnath Das Gupta, and one from Aurobindo Ghose.