[Pg vii]
Of the history of Kálidása, to whom by general assentthe Kumára Sambhava, or Birth of the War-God,is attributed, we know but little with any certainty; we can only gatherfrom a memorial-verse which enumerates their names, that he was one of the'Nine Precious Stones' that shone at the Court of Vikramáditya,King of Oujein, in the half century immediately preceding theChristian era.[A]As the examination of arguments for and against the correctness ofthis date is not likely to interest general readers, I must requestthem to rest satisfied with the belief that about the time when Virgiland Horace were shedding an undying lustre upon the reign of Augustus,our poet Kálidása lived, loved, and sang, giving andtaking honour, at the polished court of the no less munificent patronof Sanskrit literature, at the period of its highest perfection.
[Pg viii]Little as we know of Indian poetry, here and there anEnglish reader may be found, who is not entirely unacquainted with thename or works of the author of the beautiful dramas of Sakontalá and The Hero and the Nymph, the formerof which has long enjoyed an European celebrity in the translation ofSir William Jones, and the latter is one of the most charming ofProfessor Wilson's specimens of the HindúTheatre; here and there even in England may be found a lover of thegraceful, tender, picturesque, and fanciful, who knows something, andwould gladly know more, of the sweet poet of the Cloud Messenger, andThe Seasons; whilst in Germany he has been deeply studied in theoriginal, and enthusiastically admired in translation,—not theOrientalist merely, but the poet, the critic, the natural philosopher,—aGoethe, a Schlegel, a Humboldt,having agreed, on account of his tenderness of feeling and his rich creative imagination,to set Kálidása very high among the gloriouscompany of the Sons of Song.[B]
That the poem which is now for the first time offered [Pg ix]to the general reader, in an English dress, will not diminish this reputationis the translator's earnest hope, yet my admiration of the grace andbeauty that pervade so much of the work must not allow me to deny thatoccasionally, even in the noble Sanskrit, if we judge him by anEuropean standard, Kálidása is bald and prosaic. Nor isthis a defence of the translator at the expense of the poet. Fully amI conscious how far I am from being able adequately to reproduce thefanciful creation of the sweet singer of Oujein; that numer