By Sagar
Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Dec 29: There is strong evidence to back up the claim that legendary 5th century Sanskrit dramatist and poet Kalidasa was born in Orissa, scholars and officials of the Orissa Sahitya Akademi suggest.
The Akademi has in the last few years published several books showing evidence of the poet’s link to the state.
The legacy of Kalidasa however is shrouded in uncertainty, and has so far been claimed by writers from 16 regions including Kashmir and Ujjain, said Ravi Rai, production officer of the state Sahitya Akademi. “Ujjainis has been very vocal in suggesting Kalidasa’s local origin in absence of any authentic proof of his date of birth. But lately, our scholars have found evidences of the influence of Oriya culture in Kalidasa’s writings, especially in Meghdoot,” Rai said.
Dr Surendra Kumar Mishra, a Sanskrit professor from Puri, has been busy looking for traces of Oriya culture in literary classics. “There are 22 broad points, discovered after thorough research on Kalidasa’s writings, based on which we can say Kalidasa belonged to Orissa,” Mishra told Orissa Post.
“Ramgiri, which is in Orissa, finds mention in Meghdoot,” Mishra continues. “The marriage customs in the book are unique to Oriya culture. Even the description of the way the cloud hovers over the mountainside is similar to the topography of Orissa,” he says.
For long, scholars have speculated that Kalidasa may have lived either near the Himalayas, or in the vicinity of Ujjain, or in Kalinga. The three speculations are respectively based on Kalidasa’s description of Himalaya in Kumarasambhavam, the expression of his love for Ujjain in Meghdoot, and his eulogy of a Kalingan emperor in Hemagada in Raghuvamsa. Most of these assumptions are based on topographic descriptions, rural folklore and the region’s fauna and flora.
But now, Oriya literature scholars have been finding evidences of Oriya culture and topography in other works such as Meghdoot, which traditionally had been claimed by Ujjainis.
Among the books published on Kalidasa’s Oriya origin by the Sahitya Akademi, two books which have become quite popular are Kalidasa and Orissa, and Influence of Oriya Culture in Kalidasa’s Writings.