Kalidasa

How should it be the trailer of Shakuntalam written by Kalidasa and directed by whom? Shakuntala running as a teenage girl child after the deer, growing into, standing near the ashrama, the daughter of the rishi and the apasara, but left and fostered by another. How the pictures imagistic of, so scenic and landscapic of the forest, the hermitage, the rishi and the rishi-daughter? How the lilacs of love blooming? Whose love where is it blooming? Whose love cherished or uncherished nurtured and nourished so far? Is it of Kalidasa or something different? How the heroine looking like a sadhvi or some sadhvi daughter? How the image of the upsaras hanging over? How the Heavenly Dream shaded and the script dramatized under the cast of such an imagery of hope and optimism, dream and romance balancing the amorous and the celestial? And our story one of kama-kraudha-ahamkara, vasana-tripti-sambhoga-moksha, dharma-adharma-karma-nyaya. How do we spoil innocence? How do we stain it here love? How does infatuation get spoilt in the end with our selfishness and greed? At that time does love remain pure and chaste? Shakuntala though may be a remnant of the apsara stuff telling of celestial beauty, Yogini, Maya, Kamini, Apurva Sundari representing niscchal prem, but our manna replete with dormant vasana lies in waiting as for to prey upon. A rishi's daughter too has to go however innocent be she reminiscent of pastoral or classical love. Love is love. Can it be chaste? Can it be so innocent? Was Dushyanta true to his love? Was it the curse which had the origin of its own? Or, was Shakuntala like Karna? We do not know to do justice to it, to the India of myths, mysteries and spirituality, culture and superstition as well, thought and tradition but contradicted by subcultures. If it is correct from the Aryan point of view, it may not be from the aboriginal point of view. Another thing is this, does love know any barriers as Tennyson depicts it in The Beggar Maid poem? A rishi wants to be a Brhamrishi, a Devarishi like Dadhichi, but there is also something in Surpanakha, Sabri, Hidimbi and their tales we know it not. Putana, who is she? Why has she been described in such a light? Such a thing is but tribal too which one may find in Mexico-related works of Lawrence. Was the Naga culture not so? But the aboriginal culture of the Nagas gets it purged when we see the Naga sadhus leaving it behind in hathyoga.

Flora and Fauna is one of the inevitable ingredients of a Mahakavya. Kalidasa, who is praised for his poetic use of language, goes beyond mere description of nature. He integrates flora and fauna within the plot of his mahakavyas in various dimensions. This paper is an attempt to understand Kalidasa's use of flora and fauna in different facets in his mahakavyas. Here, Raghuvamsha and the first 8 cantos of Kumarasambhava have been taken up for study.

In this paper, presented at "National Seminar on Literature and Society: A Discourse on Relevance of Kalidasa's Works in Contemporary Society" (30th & 31st Oct. 2014) at Nizam College, Hyderabad and published in the proceedings of the Seminar, it is shown based on वागर्थाविव सम्पृक्तौ,  that Kalidasa holds the relation between Sabda and Artha to be nitya, that this position must necessarily imply a belief in Sabdanityatva, which makes him a Mimamsaka, Vaiyakarana or a Vedantin. Kalidasa can be seen from Raghuvamsa etc. to be a believer in the Sannyasa Asrama, which is not agreeable to Mimamsakas. Since the latter two categories are not different, it is safe to conclude that Kalidasa is a Vedantin.

The piece begins with a quick review of the encomia showered on Kālidāsa by great Indian poets over nearly two millennia and also by many western poets and scholars ever since Sir William Jones’s translation of ‘Sakontala’. The review of Abhijñāna-Śakuntalā traces the gradual unfolding of Duṣyanta as a tender lover; an accomplished poet (with some of the best of Kālidāsa’s subhāṣitas emerging from his lips); a lover of music; a gifted painter; an affectionate father; and a dutiful king. It was to Kālidāsa’s credit that he converted a secondary one-dimensional character of the original epic into the towering multi-faceted protagonist of his incomparable play. But unlike Bhavabhūti’s Rāma, Kālidāsa’s Duṣyanta is not a root-and-branch alteration of the original.  Kālidāsa respects the epic’s tradition and portrays his hero as a credible aggregate of humanly strengths and flaws.
The review analyses how with three brilliant innovations – Durvāsā’s curse; non-ritualistic (gāndhrava) marriage between Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā and the lost-and-found signet ring – Kālidāsa effectively redeemed the libertine Duṣyanta of the epic, thus conforming to the Alaṅkāra-Śāstra of classical Sanskrit drama, while also upholding poetic justice. Kālidāsa’s Śakuntalā too is as human in her attributes and failings. She has passion in her blood and passion makes her enter into a hasty marriage without even informing her foster father, the kind and wise sage Kaṇva; she also allows her romantic languor to ignore her duty as hostess, thus bringing on herself the curse of Durvāsā. But she is a composite of some truly fine qualities: of heart-warming affection for plants and animals; of joyously pure friendship for her inseparable companions; of fiery protest against Duṣyanta’s injustice; of tender and dignified love for her offspring; and of gentle fortitude to withstand adversities – first of estrangement and then of rejection. The other notable characters are also etched out with life-like clarity. Kaṇva the holy recluse is the epitome of worldly wisdom and affection. Then there are the character-pairs created by Kālidāsa who have become intrinsic to the Śakuntalā lore: Anasūyā-Priyaṃvadā representing the living embodiments of selfless friendship, and Śarṅgarava-Śāradvata representing two distinct faces of righteousness – one intense, the other placid in strikingly dramatic contrasts.
As a model drama, Abhijñāna also mirrors the image of contemporary society – the society of Kālidāsa’s time. The episode of police treatment of a poor fisherman who found the ring shows power was as much a corruptor then as it is now. The same fisherman’s comparison of his own profession with the deemed non-cruelty of the Vedic act of sacrifice can be interpreted as a reaction to Buddhist attack on the Veda. The reference to Yavanīs (Greek women) as attendant-bodyguards to the king indicates a possible practice of employing those bow-wielding foreign women around the king on security grounds. The difference in spoken language (pure Sanskrit by higher male characters and Prākrit by the women and lowly persons) implies difference in educational levels across genders and across social classes.

Kalidas was a classical Sanskrit writer and also known as greatest poet and dramatist in Sanskrit language of India. Whenever people speak or discuss about Kalidas we often herd one line that: Kalidas is Shakespeare of India or Indian Shakespeare; but now it becomes necessary that when people of England introduce Kalidas as Shakespeare of India at that time Indians were also describe Shakespeare as Kalidas of united kingdom.
Logically the period of Kalidas was supposed to 5th century CE; and the period of Shakespeare is 1564-1616. Though English man admire Shakespeare as greatest poet, Indians also do same thing and admire Kalidas; but we know that both are greatest of their times, both belongs from different time, different place and also they differs from one another by Age. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the bard of Ujjain lived eleven hundred years before the birth of the bard of Avon.
If son resembles his father we must say "You look like your father", but we never say his father that "You look like your son"; and this is real problem of English man; who belongs from the crumb of criminals and pilfer everything from others. The same thing we can see here many critics has proved that Shakespeare has used content of Kalidas; he might read Kalidas or heard about him from somewhere. Here in my paper I show you similarities between Shakespeare and Kalidas and also compare some literary works of both to conclude my paper.

Kalidasa authored three plays: Abhijnanashakuntala (" The Recognition of Shakuntala "), Vikramorvashi (" Urvashi Won by Valour "), and Malavikagnimitra (" Malavika and Agnimitra "). His plays are marked for their themes, especially that of memory. Heroines in Kalidasa are always portrayed as the objects of desire, with little agency over their bodies. There is always a voyeuristic view of the bodies of these heroines, as the voyeur (mostly the protagonist) watches while hiding behind a tree or creepers. It could be interpreted that the lack of agency to his female characters is a retaliation to the arrogance of his much knowledgeable wife, Vasanti. Kalidasa's portrayal of the hero is always that of a virtuous king. It is speculated that this is because he was part of a king's court. This paper is an attempt to study agency in the plays of Kalidasa, by doing a close reading focusing on the depiction and description of bodies. In the description of a body, there are two components to be looked at: the object and the subject. The subject is the beholder of the gaze and in most cases a voyeur, while the object is one being gazed upon, oblivious of the gaze. The paper is divided into an introduction, three sections and a conclusion. The first section deals with Abhijnanashakuntala (" The Recognition of Shakuntala "), the second with Vikramorvashi (" Urvashi Won by Valour "), and the third section is on Malavikagnimitra (" Malavika and Agnimitra "). Each section begins with a brief summary of the play, followed by a close reading with mentions of key passages from the text.

Among the most interesting episodes in art history of the late 19th
century Osijek is undoubtedly the sculpture of mythological Hindu
queen Sakuntala (Shakuntala), placed in 1892 in Le Maitre park in
Osijek, which at the time was situated in an undeveloped area of
the city between the Capuchin street to the west, the Fortress to the
east, the Jäger street to the south and the Drava River to the north,
but which soon became one of the most important urban parks /
squares in the city. The legend of Queen Sakuntala was dramatized
in 4th or 5th century AD, by one of the greatest Indian writers, Kalidasa. The legend has since become one of the common places of Indian cultural history. The English translation introduced the story
into European art in the late 18th and 19th century and Sakuntala
became the character of numerous literary works, operas, paintings
and sculpture.
The reasons for selecting Sakuntala as the topic for public
sculpture in Osijek undoubtedly lie in the complex circumstances of
ethno-religious settings and fluttering political arena of the city. In
the late 19th century Osijek was, in fact, a highly multinational, multiconfessional city with a high proportion of German, Hungarian
and Jewish population. The city never accomplished the ambition to
become the capital of Slavonia (Landeshauptstadt), and not only the
capital of one of Croatian counties. The city government of that period regularly sided with the Khuen regime in Zagreb, trying to take
advantage of the economic power to strengthen Osijek’s political position, which suited Khuen’s policy because conflicts within Croatian
political scene helped him control the land. Under such circumstances, memorials and parks dedicated to prominent individuals
from any of the ethno-religious groups would provoke the opposition
from other groups and so the choice fell on the Indian queen who
represented a sufficiently universal theme from the Far East mythology that nobody could object to. Finally, a copy was purchased of
the work of the Berlin sculptor Gottwald Kuhse (originally created
in 1881), made in terracotta by the factory Ernst March'Söhne,
Thonwaarenfabrik from Charlottenburg / Berlin in 1892.
It is not easy to establish the immediate cause for placing the
statue in one of the city’s parks, or why it was exactly Sakuntala
that was selected. The key role in ordering the sculpture was played
by teacher Bogdan Penjić the Older and City Captain Peter (Peter)
von Modesti, in charge of communal parks. It is hard to tell what
inspired them, but it could be one of the performances of Kalidas’
play or one of the operas. Peter Modesti, who had an important role
in the cultural life of his city at the time as head of the Society for
the Embellishment of Osijek, probably played a more prominent role
in the initiative. In Croatian art history he is better known as the
uncle of Bela Csikos Sessija, who played an important role in guiding
his nephew to painting.

Ces 18 pages (avec des annexes en plus) analysent la plus célèbre pièce du théâtre de l'Inde ancienne, Shakuntala. Shakuntala est le nom d’une femme. C’est aussi par ce nom qu’on désigne la pièce la plus célèbre de tout le théâtre de l’Inde ; elle en est l’héroïne. C’est une pièce magnifique, qui hors du théâtre peut aussi être lue avec plaisir. Et relue : on y trouve à chaque fois des choses qu’on n’avait pas vues avant, et qui orientent la lecture d’une façon différente.

Women Empowerment, a multidimensional concept, is one of the perennially contemporary issues never losing relevance. Woman’s role in decision making and her rights are important dimensions in the discourse. To understand the modern issue of Woman Empowerment in traditional context, this paper takes up two ancient Indian landmark Texts – Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra and Kālidāsa’s Abhijñānaśākuntalam to investigate and examine the status of women in Ancient India. This paper makes firsthand approach to the Sanskrit Texts and their renowned translations and interpretations in English through comparative, analytical and critical study. Though the texts are two different genres of human creativity situated several centuries apart, there is a link between them in matters of the discourse. Arthaśāstra is a Text of theory on statecraft and economics, but in actuality it is a valuable documentation on ancient society particularly the Post-Buddha phase. Abhijñānaśākuntalam is narrative-literature based on the Mahābhāratan Śakuntalā-Duḥṣanta narrative; however, it is an important historical documentation of the Gupta Age including the post-Mauryan age. Exploration of both the texts reveals the Empowered Woman with all Rights that are nowadays regarded as constitutional rights under the broad frame of Human Rights, with simultaneous concern with universal morality and ethics. This author believes that this research, other than its interdisciplinary relevance, would open up new vistas of understanding the modern issue of Women Empowerment in historical and traditional context.

The most popular ancient Indian classical play Abhigyan Shakuntalam, written by Kalidasa which was inspired by the main events of the Shakuntala narrative in the Mahabharata. The play Abhigyan Shakuntalam created by combining the two episodes of Abhigyan and Abhishap. However, psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), came up with an analytical method for inventing the unknown mysteries of the human mind which he claims "Psychoanalysis". And the most salient abstract of this psychoanalysis theory is the unconsciousness of human mind. Later, one step ahead of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) appeared with the concept of "Desire" which is related to Sigmund Freud's theory of "Psychoanalysis". An analysis of Abhigyan shakuntalam clearly shows the presence of Sigmund Freud's "Psychoanalysis" and Jacques Lacan's concept of "Desire". Although it seems to rely on mythology, this play reveals how the "Unconsciousness" and "Desires" of human mind are expressed. In this article, it has been tried to explain the concepts of "Unconsciousness" of human mind, the intense desire of subconscious mind and the conflict of desire with desire works among the main characters of Kalidasa's play Abhigyan Shakuntalam.

Kālidāsa's nāṭakas, namely the Abhijñānaśākuntala and the Vikramorvaśīya are undisputedly among the greatest works of Sanskrit literature. Thus it is not surprising that there have already been many excellent literary interpretations focusing on these works. My aim is not to augment this list, but instead I intend to shed some light on the less-investigated political message of these dramas. In other words, I am attempting to re-read Kālidāsa's plays as pieces of political theatre.

This paper analyses as to how, and to what extend, the concept of Dharma influenced Kalidasa, who is often regarded as the national poet of India, who had drunk deep at the spring of Vedic lore
. A staunch advocate of ritualistic Dharma, Kumarila Bhatta, cites Kalidasa as an authority on dharma - एवं हि विद्वद्वदनाद्विनिर्गतं प्रसिद्धरूपं कविभिर्निरूपितम्.
Kalidasa literature bears the imprints of वर्णाश्रमधर्म .

In the fairly late daśāvatāra lists enumerating Viṣṇu’s ten ‘canonical’ descents among the myriads which are believed to happen time and again, two Rāmas consistently occupy the sixth and seventh place, to wit Rāma of the Bhṛgu family, son of Jamadagni, and Rāma of the Raghu lineage, son of Daśaratha. The latter obviously requires no introduction; as for the former, lately dubbed Paraśurāma or ‘Rāma with the axe’ by association with his most characteristic weapon, his main exploits — his predestined birth as a warrior-like brahmin, the beheading of his own mother at his father’s command and especially the 21fold extermination of the kṣatriyas in revenge for the murder of his father — are already known to the Mahābhārata, and later subsumed by the puranic literature. But there is another remarkable episode the Mbh does not appear to know about, which apparently only surfaces in the late Balakaṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa: the episode of the encounter of the two Rāmas.
The story runs basically as follows: Paraśurāma has heard about Rāma’s wondrous feat of the breaking of Śiva’s bow at the court of Janaka, which has earned him the hand of princess Sītā, and comes raging to challenge him. This time Rāma shall prove his strength by stringing Viṣṇu’s bow, receiving it from Paraśurāma’s hands. Rāma is successful, Paraśurāma is punished for his arrogance and retreats to mount Mahendra without further ado.
Apart from the Rāmāyaṇa, a variant of the story is found in the Vulgate, which has however been discarded by the CE of the Mahābhārata. In the Purāṇas the episode occurs rather inconspicuously in the Padma, Narasiṁha and Viṣṇudharmottara. It appears, however, to have found greater favour with kāvya: after Kalidāsa’s masterly reworking in the Raghuvaṁśa other mahākāvyas featuring (or at least mentioning) our episode include Bhaṭṭi’s Rāvaṇavadha and Kumāradāsa’s Jānakīharaṇa. Playwrights seem to have been particularly keen on the theme; dramatic works featuring it include the Yajñaphala ascribed to Bhāsa, Bhavabhūti’s incomplete Mahāvīracarita, and Rājaśekhara’s Bālarāmāyaṇa. The episode likewise figures prominently in late bhakta and śākta Rāmāyaṇas both sanskrit and vernacular, such as the sanskrit Adhyātma and Adbhutarāmāyaṇa, the tamil Kamparāmāyaṇam, the hindi Rāmcaritmanas by Tulsīdās, as well as other medieval works like the Rāmavijaya by Śaṅkaradeva.
In this paper I purpose to focus on an analysis of the way Kalidāsa’s retelling in the Raghuvaṁśa relates to its epic model, as well as on the way it has in turn influenced later versions of the episode.

It's a paper tracing the sources of Kālidāsa's 'fisherman ' in the Abhijñānaśākutaļa. The fisherman is a straightforward gentleman with the traits of 'sthitapajña'. The author goes into the the rich source of Jātaka tales and Greek mythology. He analyses how Kālidāsa has suggestively employed the concept of Dharma in his play.

അഭിജ്ഞാനശാകുന്തളത്തിലെ മുക്കുവനെക്കുറിച്ചുള്ള പരിചിന്തനം . മുക്കുവൻ ധാർമ്മികനാണ്. സ്ഥിതപ്രജ്ഞനും. കാളിദാസന്ന് ഈ മുക്കുവനെ എവിടെ നിന്ന് കിട്ടി?
അന്വേഷണം ജാതകകഥകൾ, ഗ്രീക്കു കഥകൾ, മഹാഭാരതം, കഥാസരിത്സാഗരം എന്നിവയിലേക്ക് ഇറങ്ങിച്ചെല്ലുന്നു.
ധർമ്മസങ്കല്പത്തെ കാളിദാസൻ നാടക ശില്പരചനക്ക് സമർത്ഥമായി വ്യംഗ്യാത്മകമായി ഉപയോഗിച്ചു.
"ധർമ്മം" ലളിതമാണ്. ആർജവവും കർത്തവ്യനിർവ്വഹണവും ആണ് അതിൻ്റെ കാതൽ. നേരും നെറിയുമുള്ള സാധാരണക്കാരനാണ് ധർമ്മത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് പറയാൻ യോഗ്യൻ.

Buddhaghoṣa’s Padyacūḍāmaṇi is a medieval Sanskrit mahākāvya telling the story of the life of Siddhārtha. Surprisingly enough, the influence exerted on it by its famous predecessor, Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita, is marginal, if any. As a matter of fact, Buddhaghoṣa’s poetic model is Kālidāsa, and especially his Raghuvaṃśa, on which he draws profusely in terms of language, motifs and scenes. However, despite his indebtedness to Kālidāsa, Buddhaghoṣa is far from being a mere imitator. This article illustrates the diverse ways in which Buddhaghoṣa melded the words and ideas he drew from Kālidāsa’s work in the mould of his own creativity, and ingeniously remodelled them into new, fresh, enjoyable poetry.

কালিদাস রবীন্দ্রনাথের প্রিয়তম কবি। তার মধ্যে আবার ‘মেঘদূত’ই ছিল রবীন্দ্রনাথের প্রিয়তম কাব্য। অথচ ক্লাসিক কবি কালিদাসের ব্যাপারে রোমান্টিক রবীন্দ্রনাথের আপত্তি থাকারই কথা। রবীন্দ্রনাথ, স্মরণ করা যেতে পারে, কালিদাস ছাড়া দুনিয়ার আর কোনো ‘ক্লাসিক’ কবির ব্যাপারে নিজের আগ্রহ প্রকাশ করেননি। তাহলে কালিদাসের ক্ষেত্রে ফারাকটা হল কেন? রবীন্দ্রনাথ ‘মেঘদূত’ কিভাবে পড়তেন? এসব প্রশ্নের জবাব খোঁজা হয়েছে ক্লাসিক আর রোমান্টিক সাহিত্যতত্ত্বের প্রেক্ষাপটে।

Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam has been traditionally interpreted as a play of acceptance of life’s vicissitudes which traces the transformation of Duhsanta’s carnal love for Shakuntala into a mature and spiritual love. The play’s title, “The Recognition of Shakuntala,” has been understood to refer to the literal recognition of Shakuntala by her husband Duhsanta who has forgotten her due to a curse by the short-tempered sage Durvasa. But what exactly does the “recognition” in the play signify—is Shakuntala recognized for what she is, or is she only recognized after her bare-naked life (zoë) is broken and she is remade into the conformist social subject (bios) that society wants her to become? After her love marriage to Duhsanta, is Shakuntala prevented from becoming the Queen because she is a person of mixed descent, a free-spirited lover, and a girl brought up in a forest hermitage? Is Abhijnanashakuntalam a discreet play about a person of hybrid identity born of an inter-caste union whose transgressive otherness is not accepted in the caste-coded, patriarchal “Indian” society of 5th century CE? These are some of the questions that I explore, employing the genealogical approach of Nietzsche, to unravel the regressive morality of the play.

L'ouvrage de Claudine Le Blanc, combinant exhaustive érudition, réflexion méthodologique, histoire disciplinaire et ambition théorique et conceptuelle, justifierait plutôt qu'un simple compte rendu un dialogue de fond pour lequel son lecteur curieux et critique devrait non seulement mettre en oeuvre beaucoup de savoirs de tous ordres mais adopter tour à tour au moins autant d'attitudes que celles, nombreuses et variées, des lecteurs des « livres de l'Inde » en France au XIXe siècle. Autant dire que, loin de constituer une simple introduction au sujet traité, il expose et propose un champ d'expérience sans exiger d'adhérer à des présuppositions contraignantes ni imposer de conclusions définitives. Faute de posséder tous les éléments qui permettraient une critique surplombante, il convient donc de se tenir sur la ligne de crête entre examen des données factuelles de transmission, de réception et d'interprétation et une écoute flottante de ce qui peut se dégager idéologiquement de la masse des documents dépouillés et étudiés dans leurs affinités et leurs étrangetés. Pour ce faire, je regrouperai sous quatre axes les objectifs que l'auteur paraît s'être assignés, de la détection d'une évolution historique marquée au cours du siècle à un projet de révision méthodologique du comparatisme en ce qui concerne aussi bien la relation « Orient-Occident » que le point de vue « français », en passant...

Literature and literary theories are universal and enduring. There have been efforts among scholars to study and find some common thread across cultural and national boundaries in order to understand a common pattern of expression. The objectives of this paper are: a) to study the applicability of western literary theories on a Sanskrit work of literature in the context of the society depicted in that text and b) to understand the reason why readers take for reading a text which was written a long time ago. The paper takes into account contemporary readers’ response to understand the dynamics of the act of reading and the effect that it can possibly have on forming the meaning of a literary text.

Kālidāsa’s descriptions of seasons are remarkable for the minute power of observation and the deep psychological insight they yield concerning human behaviour. The present paper will focus on the nature and implication of the description of the advent of Vasanta at an untimely hour as described by him in Kumārasambhava, in comparison with other descriptions of the same season by the poet himself. A close scrutiny of the description of spring in Kumārasambhava would lead us to the conclusion that the poet views any attempt to tamper with the natural order of the cosmos with apprehension. There is a surrealistic touch in the whole description which is not found in other places. Love poet as he is, Kālidāsa shows his subtle apprehension in the transgression of the sanctity of the sacred domain of penance. Probably, the rather unwarranted reference to the lack of fragrance in the karṇikāra flower, unusual in Kālidāsa symbolizes the whole advent of spring here, which was like a magical effect, a māyā created to beguile the god of destruction.

The Book, 53rd number in the Calicut University Sanskrit Series, is a collection of research articles written in Sanskrit. The articles deal with various aspects of the Vedas, the Upanishads, Bhagavadgita, the Valmiki Ramayana, and Sanskrit poetics.

It is a paper (in Malayalam) discussing the aspects of Vedic tradition reflected in Kalidasa literature.
It refutes, with valid arguments, the stand held by some that Kalidasa was not well-acquainted with the श्रौत rituals.
Kalidasa's advocacy for the strong aspiration  for the ideal blending of ब्रह्म and क्षत्र (held by the vedic Rshi-s , reflected in the ब्राह्मण  literature) is highlighted.

The concept of Dharma is very important one in the Indian tradition. In the early Vedic literature, we find a very simple concept of Dharma - Living in tune with cosmic rhythm. Later on it got complicated. Dharma can broadly be divided into two - "great" Dharma and the "circumscribed" Dharma.
Kāidāsa is carried away by the latter one. But in the Abhijňānaśākuntala, he sets himself free from its clutches and calls statecraft as a 'discipline of deception'.

The Raghuvaṃśa is as a gallery of portraits of kings, all of them –but the last– encomiastic in tone. Taking all these portraits together, it stands out that Kālidāsa’s ‘ideal ruler’ is a very complex character, who is supposed to be endowed with diverse, dissimilar –and sometimes even contrasting– virtues. It won’t come as a surprise, then, that besides possessing these very virtues, a great king must be able to harmonize them.
This article aims at pointing out the images and the stylistic devices that are employed by Kālidāsa to convey the idea that a great king is characterized, above all, by his ability in reconciling and keeping in balance the potentially conflicting qualities he is required to possess.