Kalidasa's date

[Swaminathan Madhuresan]

>
> PS: Not only Kalidasa is radical by name, he also brings Southern
> poetic traditions into full flowering in Sanskrit. George Hart's
> thesis and book: Relations bet. IA and Dravidian literatures
> says that Tamil sangam poetry traditions and Hala's saptasati
> are the first love poems in India. This poetics describing
> love situations, first available from the Dravidian South,
> is used effectively by the great Kalidasa.

  Not just that Kalidasa employs southern ethos in love poetry,
  he penned a masterpiece, kumarasambhava, honoring basically a
  Tamil god, Murukan/vElOn/skanda/subrahmanya. The Pallava
  imagery of Somaskandamurti is found 99.9% in the present day
  Tamil Nadu and the remainder in its cultural sphere.
  Somaskanda imagery where the baby skanda-murugan, just learning to
  stand up, in the safety  of the space between his graceful, mighty
  parents sitting on a couch is shown only Pallava panels and Chola
  bronzes. Somaskanda reminds us of Kumarasambhava and Appar's
 `nam kaDambanaip peRRavaL  pangin2an2'. Interesting that we find
  several coins, sculptures of Subrahmanya only around Kumaragupta's
  reign and in those Guptan Kings' honor, Kalidasa might have created
  Kumarasambhava. After this, Subrahmanya is disappearing anywhere else
  except Tamil lands, both in letters or art, for the last 1500 years.

  SM

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