The Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa

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Raghuvamsa, a sargabandha mahākāvya ascribed to Kalidasa, consists of 1557 verses in 19 cantos. After the Mahabharata, the Raghuvamsa is the first epic in which the art of poetic composition in Sanskrit touched its highest peak. The Raghuvamsa presents the paradox of human existence and successfully captures the entire panorama of human development, its rise and fall. The Raghuvamsa underscores the principle that the immortal and blissful soul is the only reality of human life and all sensual pleasures are short-lived and ephemeral. The present publication is a critical edition of the epic based on eleven manuscripts and five editions.

Rewa Prasada Dwivedi (b.1935) the editor, who retired as Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit, was an eminent teacher and scholar of Sanskrit literature besides being known as a Sanskrit poet with a modern sensibility. The present work testifies to his competence in the textual criticism of Kālidāsa's works. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1991, Kalpavalli Award in 1993, Vacaspati Award in 1997 and the Sriveni Award in 1999.

GREAT classics of literature spring from profound depths in human experience. They come to us who live centuries later in vastly different conditions as the voice of our own experience. They release echoes within ourselves of what we never suspected was there. The deeper one goes into one's own experience facing destiny, fighting fate, or enjoying love, the more does one's experience have in common with the experiences of others in other climes and ages. The most unique is the most universal. The dialogues of the Baddha or of Plato, the dramas of Sophocles, the plays of Shakespeare are both national and universal. The more profoundly they are rooted in historical traditions, the more uniquely do they know themselves and elicit powerful responses from others. There is a timeless and spaceless quality about great classics.

Kalidasa is the great representative of India's spirit, grace and genius. The Indian national consciousness is the base from which his works grow. Kalidasa has absorbed India's cultural heritage, made it his own, enriched it, given it universal scope and significance. Its spiritual direction, its intellectual amplitude, its artistic expressions, its political forms and economic arrange- ments, all find utterance in fresh, vital, shining phrases. We find in his works at their best a simple dignity of language, a precision of phrase, a classical taste, a cultivated judgment, an intense poetic sensibility and a fusion of thought and feeling. In his dramas, we find pathos, power, beauty, and great skill in the construction of plots and delineation of characters. He is at home in royal courts and on mountain tops, in happy homes and forest hermitages. He has a balanced outlook which enables him to deal sympathetically with men of high and low degree, fishermen, courtezans, servants. These great qualities make his works belong to the literature of the world. Humanity recognizes itself in them though they deal with Indian themes. In India Kalidasa is recognized as the greatest poet and dramatist in Sanskrit literature. While once the poets were being counted, Kalidása as being the first occupied the last finger.

**Contents and Sample Pages**