country or Milton in England, yet no man could write as he did without
hard and intelligent study. To begin with, he had a minutely accurate
knowledge of the Sanskrit language, at a time when Sanskrit was to
some extent an artificial tongue. Somewhat too much stress is often
laid upon this point, as if the writers of the classical period in
India were composing in a foreign language. Every writer, especially
every poet, composing in any language, writes in what may be called a
strange idiom; that is, he does not write as he talks. Yet it is true
that the gap between written language and vernacular was wider in
Kalidasa's day than it has often been. The Hindus themselves regard
twelve years' study as requisite for the mastery of the "chief of all
sciences, the science of grammar." That Kalidasa had mastered this
science his works bear abundant witness.

He likewise mastered the works on rhetoric and dramatic
theory--subjects which Hindu savants have treated with great, if
sometimes hair-splitting, ingenuity. The profound and subtle systems
of philosophy were also possessed by Kalidasa, and he had some
knowledge of astronomy and law.

But it was not only in written books that Kalidasa was deeply read.
Rarely has a man walked our earth who observed the phenomena of living
nature as accurately as he, though his accuracy was of course that of
the poet, not that of the scientist. Much is lost to us who grow up
among other animals and plants; yet we can appreciate his "bee-black
hair," his ashoka-tree that "sheds his blossoms in a rain of tears,"
his river wearing a sombre veil of mist:

Although her reeds seem hands that clutch the dress
To hide her charms;