Kalidasa (active late 4th-early 5th century) was classical India's master poet and dramatist. He demonstrated the expressive and suggestive heights of which the Sanskrit language is capable and revealed the very essence of an entire civilization.

Nothing is known with certainty about the life of Kalidasa. Clearly later than the great Buddhist poet Asvaghosha (1st century), Kalidasa was celebrated as a major literary figure in the first half of the 7th century (the Aihole inscription, 634). The scholarly consensus outside India is that Kalidasa flourished in the time of Chandragupta II (reigned 380-413). A traditional Indian view would have it that he adorned Vikramaditya's court in the 1st century B.C. Although he was especially fond of the Gupta capital city, Ujjain (about 30 miles north of Indore in west-central India), there is no proof that he was born there. Kalidasa was a devotee of Siva, but there is no...