THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

KalidasaONCE in the long history of poetry theGreat Powers who are ever working the finest energies of natureinto the warp of our human evolution met together and resolvedto unite in creating a poetical intellect and imaginationthat, endowed with the most noble and various poetical gifts capablein all the great forms used by creative genius, should expressonce and for all in a supreme manner the whole sensuous planeof life, its heat and light, its vigour and sweetness. And since toall quality there must be a corresponding defect, they not onlygifted the genius with rich powers and a remarkable temperamentbut drew round it the necessary line of limitations. Theythen sought for a suitable age, nation and environment whichshould most harmonise with, foster and lend itself to his peculiarpowers. This they found in the splendid and luxurious cityof Ujjayini, the capital of the great nation of the Malavas, whoconsolidated themselves under Vikramaditya in the first centurybefore Christ. Here they set the outcome of their endeavour andcalled him Kalidasa. The country of Avanti had always played aconsiderable part in our ancient Aryan history for which the genius,taste and high courage of its inhabitants fitted it; and Ujjayinitheir future capital was always a famous, beautiful and wealthycity. But until the rise of Vikrama it seemed to have been disunitedand therefore unable to work out fully the great destinyfor which the taste, genius, force marked it out. Moreover thetemperament of the nation had not fitted it to be the centre ofAryan civilisation in the old times when that civilisation waspreponderatingly moral and intellectual. Profoundly artistic andsusceptible to material beauty and the glory of the senses theyhad neither the large, mild and pure spiritual and emotional temperamentof the eastern nations which produced Janaka, Valmiki,and Buddha nor the bold intellectual temperament, heroic,ardent and severe of the central nations which producedDraupadi, Bhima, Arjuna, Bhishma, Vyasa and Srikrishna;