Page:The Beginning of Hindu Culture as World-power (A.D. 300-600).djvu/61

 imagination. Hindu Culture found its best expression in the mind and art of Kâlidâsa. For the complete view of Indian life and thought, therefore, one should turn to Kâlidâsan literature. And to do justice to it one must apply the same Method of Literary Criticism as is used in the interpretation of Dante, Shakespeare, Vondel and Goethe as exponents of their times. A part of my remarks on the Raghu-vamsam of Kâlidâsa made elsewhere* may be repro- duced in this connexion:

"It is impossible to study it from cover to cover without noticing how profoundly the greatest poet of Hindusthân has sought to depict this Hindu ideal of synthesis and harmony between the positive and the transcendental, the bhoga (enjoyment) and tyâga (renunciation). Raghu-vamsam is the embodiment of Hindu India in the same sense that Paradise Lost is the embodiment of Puritan England. The grand ambitions of the Vikramadityan era, its colossal energies, its thorough mastery over the things of this world, its all- round economic prosperity and brilliant political position, its Alexandrian sweep, its proud and stately outlook, its vigorous and robust taste are all graphically painted in this national epic, together with the "devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow," the " light that never was on sea or land," the sanyâsa, vairâgya, ahimsâ, yoga, preparation for the other world, the idea of nothingness of this world, and the desire for mukti or the perpetual freedom from bondage.

This antithesis, polarity or duality has not, however, been revealed to us as a hotchpotch of hurly-burly and