all. Here he must struggle with the truly
Himalayan barrier of language. Since there will never be many
Europeans, even among the cultivated, who will find it possible to
study the intricate Sanskrit language, there remains only one means of
presentation. None knows the cruel inadequacy of poetical translation
like the translator. He understands better than others can, the
significance of the position which Kalidasa has won in Europe. When
Sir William Jones first translated the _Shakuntala_ in 1789, his work
was enthusiastically received in Europe, and most warmly, as was
fitting, by the greatest living poet of Europe. Since that day, as
is testified by new translations and by reprints of the old, there
have been many thousands who have read at least one of Kalidasa's
works; other thousands have seen it on the stage in Europe and
America.

How explain a reputation that maintains itself indefinitely and that
conquers a new continent after a lapse of thirteen hundred years? None
can explain it, yet certain contributory causes can be named.

No other poet in any land has sung of happy love between man and woman
as Kalidasa sang. Every one of his works is a love-poem, however much
more it may be. Yet the theme is so infinitely varied that the reader
never wearies. If one were to doubt from a study of European
literature, comparing the ancient classics with modern works, whether
romantic love be the expression of a natural instinct, be not rather a
morbid survival of decaying chivalry, he has only to turn to India's
independently growing literature to find the question settled.
Kalidasa's love-poetry rings as true in our ears as it did in his
countrymen's ears fifteen hundred years ago.

It is of love eventually happy, though often struggling for a time
against external obstacles, that Kalidasa writes. There is nowhere in
his works a trace of that not quite healthy feeling that sometimes
assumes the name "modern love." If it were not so, his poetry could
hardly have survived; for happy love, blessed with children, is surely
the more fundamental thing. In his drama _Urvashi_ he is ready to
change and greatly injure a tragic story, given him by long tradition,
in order that a loving pair may not be permanently separated. One
apparent exception there is--the story of Rama and Sita in _The
Dynasty of Raghu_. In this case it must be remembered that Rama is an
incarnation of Vishnu, and the story of a mighty god incarnate is n