Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/151

146 probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.

More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in the Vikramorvaçī a proof of Kālidāsa's having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D. 499) on the score that in the Raghuvaṅça he refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in the Vikramorvaçī refers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in the Raghuvaṅça and the Kumārasambhava to the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms like ucca and even jāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior to A.D. 350 is indicated by such passages.

Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa's Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhasa, while his Mahārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Mahārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuries A.D. He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription of A.D. 634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D. 620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi's Mandasor Praçasti of A.D. 473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to about A.D. 413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the