कुमारसम्भवम् (महाकवि कालिदास - संस्कृत मूल एवं हिन्दी अनुवाद)

( 3 ) As has already been remarked, the problem of Kalidasa’s date (2) His Date is by no means an easy one, and it is nothing more than conjectures that we can take recourse to To sum up the various theories on the subject we may divide them into two main groups The adherents of the one hold that he flourished in the first century B C and was a contemporary of king Vikramâditya, the founder of the famous Vikrama Era, while the followers of the other, put him in the fifth or sixth century A D The arguments advanced by the former group may be summed up as follows — 1 The state of the law of inheritance and the severe penalty for theft and other crimes, as referred to in the Shâkuntala, point to the state of society and law as it existed prior to the Christian Era 2 Similarities in the works of Ashwaghosha, a Buddhist philosopher and poet of the first century A D and Kâlidâsa lead one to place the latter before the former, because the possibility is that Ashwaghosha borrowed from Kâlidâsa and not vice versa 3 A medallion discovered at Bhitâ, near Allahabad, on which is engraved a scene of two maidens watering plants and a king chasing a deer, and which is held to belong to the first century B C is considered by some scholars to represent the scene of the first act of the Shâkuntala Hence the drama must have been composed before it 4 Vatsabhatti, the author of the Mandasor inscription (472 A D ) draws help from the poetry of Kâlidâsa, therefore, Kâlidâsa must have lived prior to the beginning of the fifth century A D