Kalidasa probably lived in the fifth century of the Christian era.
This date, approximate as it is, must yet be given with considerable
hesitation, and is by no means certain. No truly biographical data are
preserved about the author, who nevertheless enjoyed a great
popularity during his life, and whom the Hindus have ever regarded as
the greatest of Sanskrit poets. We are thus confronted with one of the
remarkable problems of literary history. For our ignorance is not due
to neglect of Kalidasa's writings on the part of his countrymen, but
to their strange blindness in regard to the interest and importance of
historic fact. No European nation can compare with India in critical
devotion to its own literature. During a period to be reckoned not by
centuries but by millenniums, there has been in India an unbroken line
of savants unselfishly dedicated to the perpetuation and exegesis of
the native masterpieces. Editions, recensions, commentaries abound;
poets have sought the exact phrase of appreciation for their
predecessors: yet when we seek to reconstruct the life of their
greatest poet, we have no materials except certain tantalising
legends, and such data as we can gather from the writings of a man who
hardly mentions himself.

One of these legends deserves to be recounted for its intrinsic
interest, although it contains, so far as we can see, no grain of
historic truth, and although it places Kalidasa in Benares, five
hundred miles distant from the only city in which we certainly know
that he spent a part of his life. According to this account, Kalidasa
was a Brahman's child. At the age of six months he was left an orphan
and was adopted by an ox-driver. He grew to manhood without formal
education, yet with remarkable beauty and grace of manner. Now it
happened that the Princess of Benares was a blue-stocking, who