North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

produce cumulative evidence of some cogency.¹ The question is very often asked: what was the birth-place of Kālidāsa ? Was it Mālava or was it Kashmir? The first of these views was propounded by the late Mahāmahōpādhyāya Haraprasad Sastri;² and the second by Pandit Lachhmi Dhar kalla.³ It is very difficult to decide as to who is correct. But the trend of the evidence points to the inference that Kālidāsa was a native of Mālava, that for a long time he resided in Kashmir and that explains the intimate acquaintance he displays in his writings, with that country. This strengthens Bhau Daji’s suggestion that Mātṛigupta who, according to the Rājataraṅgiṇī was sent by Vikramāditya to rule over Kashmir, was but another name of Kālidāsa.

        The only argument that can be urged against this inference is that Kshēmēndra, a native of Kashmir, distinguishes between Mātṛigupta and Kālidāsa in his Auchityavichāracharchā. But there were probably two or three different Mātṛiguptas, one a poet referred to by Kshēmēndra, another a writer on Alaṁkāra mentioned by Vāsudēva in the Karpūramañjarī and a third who wrote a commentary on Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.⁴ That does not preclude the possibility of either Kālidāsa being confounded with Mātṛigupta in the legend connected with Vikramāditya in Kashmir and narrated by Kalhaṇa, or again of Kālidāsa having borne the appellation of Mātṛigupta just as Bhavathūti bore that of Śrīkaṇṭha. What we have further to note in this connection is that the Rājataraṅgiṇī mentions also a third personage who was ? contemporary of Kālidāsa and Chandragupta-Vikramāditya, namely, Pravarasēna II.

       As Chandragupta was the imperial ruler, we can understand how Mātṛigupta (=Kālidāsa) could be appointed as the governor of one province in Kashmir and his grandson Pravarasēna of another as he was then a mere prince of the Vākāṭaka territory, his elder brother Divākarasēna being then the Yuvarāja with their mother Prabhāvatiguptā as queen-regent. The connection of Kālidāsa with Vikramāditya and Pravarasēna did not cease here, and Kālidāsa seems in the later period to have been dispatched as Tantrapāla or chargé d’ affaires to the Court of Pravarasēna when he became king. It was in regard to his political connection that a poem came into existence with the romantic figure of Kālidāsa at the centre, entitled Kuntalēśvarakāvya, wrongly shortened into Kuntēśvarakāvya. Kuntala itself denotes the south-western parts of the Hyderabad territory which, however, came into the possession of the later Vākāṭakas so that the tradition centering round Kālidāsa was woven into the poetic composition long after his return from the Vākāṭaka court. The real author most probably flourished in the reign of some later Vākāṭaka ruler, who included into his composition a few stray verses which Kālidāsa might have uttered at both the courts-at the court of the suzerain power as state poet and state official and at the court of the vassal where he went as ambassador. Anyhow this author must have lived earlier than Rājaśēkhara (10th century A.D.) as the latter quotes one verse from this poem.

       It was during the period that Pravarasēna was on the Vākāṭaka throne and Kālidāsa was an ambassador sent to his court by the suzerain, Chandra-Vikramāditya, that the Vākāṭaka ruler must have composed his celebrated poem Sētubandha, also called Daśamukhavadha or Rāvaṇavadha under the inspiration, probably with the help of Kālidāsa. Even Kalhaṇa mentions vaguely a tradition about this work of Pravarasēna when he says that the latter constructed the ‘Great Bridge’ (Bṛihat-sētu) built on the Vitastā. This Bṛihat-sētu cannot be a physical construction, as understood by him and also by the translator, but must be taken to be the
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¹ The scholar who first made Kālidāsa a contemporary of the Guptas is R.G. Bhandarkar (JBBRAS., Vol. XX, pp. 399-400). He was followed by M. M. Chakravarti in JRAS., 1903, pp. 183 ff. and 1904, pp. 158 ff.; and by B. C. Majumdar, ibid., 1909, pp. 731 ff.
² JBORS., Vol. I, pp. 197 ff.
³ The Birth-place of Kālidāsa (Delhi University Publications, No. 1).
⁴ Aufrecht’s Catalogus Catalagorum, Pt. I, p. 448.