Kalidasa is believed to have resided in Benaras during the 5th or 6th century CE. There is no factual biographical data about the author whose works are celebrated to date as the greatest of Sanskrit poets.
According to various accounts, Kalidasa was adopted by an ox-driver at the age of six months. He received no formal education. The Princess of Benaras was big-headed, who rejected one suitor after another because they failed to reach her standard as scholars and poets. A rejected counselor to seek revenge took the handsome ox-driver from the street, gave him garments and a retinue of learned doctors, then introduced him to the princess. The princess was struck with his beauty and soul by his determined silence, which seemed to her, as evidence of deep wisdom. She desired to marry Kalidasa, and together they went to the temple. But sooner the secret came out, and the bride was furious. But she relented in response to Kalidasa’s entreaties and advised him to pray for learning and poetry to the goddess Kali. The prayer was granted; education and poetical power descended miraculously to dwell with the young ox-driver, who in gratitude assumed the name Kalidasa, servant of Kali. Feeling that he owed this change to his princess, he swore that he would ever treat her as his teacher, with profound respect but without familiarity. This was more than the princess had bartered for; her anger burst forth again, and she cursed Kalidasa to meet his death at the hands of a woman. At a later date, the story continues, this curse was fulfilled.
Another account mentions that Kalidasa was connected with King Vikramaditya and the literary figures of his court. King Vikramaditya ruled in the West-central of India, the city of Ujjain. He was mighty both in war and in peace, winning special glory by a conclusive victory over the barbarians who came to India through the northern passes. Though it has not proved possible to identify this monarch with any of the known rulers, there can be no doubt that he existed and had a character accredited to him. Kalidasa intended to pay a tribute to his patron, the Sun of Valour, in the title of his play, Urvashi won by Valour.
King Vikramaditya was a great benefactor of learning and poetry. Ujjain during his reign was the most brilliant capital in the world, nor has it to this day lost its aesthetics. Among the eminent men gathered there, nine were particularly distinguished and it included poets, representatives of science—astronomy, medicine, lexicography. Although the details of the nine gems are open to suspicion, the central fact is not doubtful: that there was at this time and place a great quickening of the human mind, an artistic instinct creating works that cannot perish. Ujjain in the days of Vikramaditya stands earnestly beside Athens, Rome, Florence, and London in their great centuries.
Kalidasa mentions his name only in the prologues to his three plays. He speaks in the first person only once, in the verses introductory to his epic poem The Dynasty of Raghu. In his poem, the cloud-Messenger, he dwells upon the Ujjain city’s charms beautifully. We can comprehend further that Kalidasa traveled widely in India through his works. His works are full of the Himalayas. He mastered the works on rhetoric and dramatic theory—subjects which Hindu sages have treated with great resourcefulness. Kalidasa knew philosophy, astronomy, and law.
Kalidasa left seven works that have come down to us: three dramas, two epics, one elegiac poem, and one descriptive poem. Of these seven works, four are poetry throughout; the three dramas, like all Sanskrit dramas, are written in prose, with a generous mingling of lyric and descriptive stanzas. The poetry, even in the epics, is stanzaic; no part of it can fairly be compared to English blank verse.
Kalidasa’s three dramas bear the names: Malavika and Agnimitra, Urvashi, and Shakuntala. The two epics are The Dynasty of Raghu and The Birth of the War-god. The elegiac poem is called The Cloud-Messenger, and the descriptive poem is entitled The Seasons.
It is somewhat possible to fix the chronology of Kalidasa’s writings. Malavika and Agnimitra was certainly his first drama, almost positively his first work. It is a reasonable estimation, though nothing more, that Urvashi was written late when the poet’s powers were weakening. The introductory stanzas of The Dynasty of Raghu propose that this epic was written before The Birth of the War-god, though the inference is far from certain. Again, it is reasonable to assume that the great works on which Kalidasa’s fame chiefly rests—Shakuntala, The Cloud-Messenger, The Dynasty of Raghu, the first eight stanzas of The Birth of the War-god—were composed when he was in the prime of manhood. But as to the succession of these four works, there is not much accounted for.
The best proof of a poet’s greatness is his power to win and hold through centuries the love and admiration of his people, especially when that person has shown itself capable of high intellectual and spiritual achievement.
No other poet in any land has sung of happy love between man and woman as Kalidasa sang. Every one of his works is a love-poem, however much more it may be. Yet the theme is so infinitely varied that the reader is never exhausted. Another thing about Kalidasa’s writing is his love of external nature. Kalidasa’s knowledge of nature is not only compassionate, but it is also closely accurate.
Kalidasa possessed the combination of poetical fluency and intellectual grasp which is very rare, and that makes him the widely read author in India for something like fifteen hundred years, and it is precisely conferred on him the title of ‘Kavikulaguru’ – the Master for all poets.
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