name Vikramorvaçī, while the Kumārasambhava's title may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.[1] The Mālavikāgnimitra with its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa's early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men's minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa are essentially those of the Gupta period, when the Brahmanical and Indian tendencies of the dynasty were in full strength and the menace of foreign attack was for the time evanescent.
2. The Three Dramas of Kālidāsa
The Mālavikāgnimitra[2] is unquestionably the first dramatic work[3] of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in the Vikramorvaçī also he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in the Çakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.
The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa's plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, but en route to his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked
- ↑ Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f.
- ↑ Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition.
- ↑ That the Meghadūta is younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). The Ṛtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of the Kumārasambhava and Raghuvaṅça to the two later dramas is uncertain.
