saw the Emperor at Delhi and told him that he had ceased to reign. The East India series of coins hegan from that year. Kalidasa puts the Emperor of Magādha exactly in this situation. In the great assembly of the princes of India at the Svayam bara of Indumati in Vidarbba, the first place of honour is accorded to the King of Magādha. But there is the significant espression : कामं नृपाः सन्तु सहमशोडन्ये । ज्योतिट तिचन्दमसवरात्रिः॥ “Let there be thousand other kings, but the Earth is possessed of a king because of him ; just as there may be thousands of stars, but the night would be called luminous only when the moon is there.” This clearly gives the king of Magādha a precedence over the rest of the kings of India, and the fact that Indumati was taken to him first of all, shows that his position was undisputed. But Kalidasa takes care not to describe him as a military leader, but as a man fond of sacrifices, and describes his capital as * great city. (10) In Southern India the Pandya capital was Madura and the Cola capital was Uragapura or Uraiara which is at present & suburb of Trichinopoly on the Kaveri. But Kalidasa makes the Pandyas the masters of Uragapura, and nowhere in his works mentions the Cholas. These two powers from the beginning of their existence in remote antiquity, long before Asoka, were at war with each other. But we know from Sewell's works, that their hostilities became acute from the beginning of the third century and at the end of the struggle the Cholas lost their kingdom and their capital. Vincent Smith says that about 575 A.D., the Pandyas, the Cholas and the Cheras equally felt the power of a newly-rising kingdom, viz., that of the Pallavas. But the Cholas were not at their old place, for Yuan Chwang says that he found the Cholas a weak race at Cudduppa, nearly 300 miles north of Trichinopoly. The fact that Kālidāsa does not mention the Pallavas shows that he flourished before the Pallavas had risen to power, but at the time when the Cholas had lost their capital B a in their struggle with the Pandyas. Historical researches have not yet been able to fix with exactitude the time when Uragapura fell into the hands of the Pandyas. But as the struggle continied for foir centuries frɔn the beginning of the third, it may be inferred that they lost it in the 4th century of that struggle, for in the beginning of the 6th century we find them 300 miles away from their home. (11) In the Kumāra Sambhava which will be proved later on to have preceded the Raghuvamsa Kālidāsa describes the condition of lotuses in a reservoir of water when its embankment fails. In Bengal, tanks are made by excavations, but in countries where there are many plateaux, vast reservoirs of water are often formed by throwing up an embankment on one side, when the other sides are formed by highlands. There is a historical reservoir of this kind at Girnar. Its embankment was thrown op by a nephew of Chandragupta Maurya in the 4th century B. C. That embankment give way in about 150 A.D. and it was repaired by the Saka King Rudrādaman, but it gave way again about 475 A.D. and was repaired by an officer of the Gupta Emperor. The affair made a deep impression on the people of Gujrat and Malwa, and Kálidāsa describes the scene in a simile in the Kumāra Sambhava. It was most likely a recent event when Kalidasa described it. (12) In the 16th canto of Raghuvamsa Kālidesa describes the desertion of Ayodhyā and its re-peopling by Kusa. Rapson in his work on Indian coins says that the Guptas had three Capitals, viz., (i) Pātaliputra, (ii) Ayodhyā and (iii) Ujjain. Their own province was Magādha from which they extended their conquest towards the west. They conquered Hindustban and made Ayodhyā their second capital and then conquered Malwa, and made Ujjain their third capital. It is not a fact that they deserted one capital for another, but they had all the three at one and the same time. It is most probable that on the advance of the Huns Ayodhyā and Ujjain were both deserted and the Guptas had recourse to Pâtaliputra, their earliest capital. This desertion was seen by Kálidāsa, for he describes it very vividly and perhaps he saw it even after its re-peopling. The fact that it was re-peopled is proved by the statement in Bana's Harsacarita that it continued the 'pilkhana' (elephant stable) of Harsa and that it was presided over by a scion of the Gupta family called Skanda Gupta, who came in 606 to Harsa at Thaneswar immediately after the latter's accession to the throne and gave him a good deal of advice in state-craft. (13) There is no doubt that the reign of Skanda Gupta of the Imperial Gupta dynasty was the most popular, the most progperous and the most brilliant in the history of that dynasty. It is also a fact that he loved Malwa and spent much of his time at Ujjain. Kālidāsa describes a temple of Skanda on a hill named Devagiri situated on the road leading from Ujjain to Mandāsore. This deity is still worshipped at the same Devagiri as Khande Rao which is a vernacular form of Skanda. It contains the statues of Skanda on horse back which shows that in the mind of the man who consecrated that temple, the deity Skanda and the Emperor Skanda were one and the same. Kālidāsa was of the same mind, for otherwise the glorious description of what now is an obscure temple cannot be accounted for. To those who know the Indian custom, it is well known that no temple is dedicated to a living man. It is only shortly after his death that temples are dedicated to him. This Skanda temple was therefore erected after the death of Skanda Gupta to commemorate him and so Kālidāsa, who was a devoted follower of Siva, describes this temple as dedicated to Siva's son in a manner worthy of the unspent genius of a young poet. (14) There were poets before Kálidāsa and these were great poets too; there were poets after Kálidāsa and there were great poets too, but none of them describes the Himalaya so minutely and so lovingly as Kālidāsa bas done. He describes every part of the Himalayas both lengthwise and crosswise ; both in the lower regions and in the higher regions. Did he enjoy any special facilities to travel in the Himalayas ? We in the twentieth century cannot imagine that he did ; but in one of his inscriptions Yasodharmadeva proclaims it as one of his glorious acts, that he has made the Himalayas accessible. In fact none but a great conqueror, whose empire extended from the Western Seas to the Brahmaputra and from the Himalayas to Mahendragiri, who conquered territories unknown to the Guptas and Hunas, could make Himalayas accessible. Kalidasa took full advantage of this aocessibility of the Himalayas in bis Raghuvamsa, for in that work he describes it lengthwise, he describes the different strata of the Himalayas and even goes beyond it to fight with the primitive people of Tibet who did not know the use of iron but fought with stones. Bana the court poet of Harsavardhana was a scholar and a travelled man. His travels are detailed in the Harsacarita. Three hundred men travelled in his train. In his Kadambari be traverses many of the countries described by Kālidāsa in his Meghadūta -Ujjain, Dasapura and the Himalayas. But his description of the Himalayas is absolutely vague. He gives us no details. His Himalaya is more a creation of his own fancy than the result of his observations. This evidently shows that the Himalayas were not so accessible, even though his patron was a mighty monarch, as in the time of Kalidasa. Bbaravi, too, who preceded Kalidāsa, had occasion to describe the Himalayas but only a part of it. His description also shows that he did not see much of the Himalayas. It was Kālidāsa alone who saw the Himalayas and described them in all their glory. (15) The regions to the south of Narmadā were inhabited by the ancient race Haibayas. Kārttavrēyyarjuna was the legendary hero of this race. Their capital was Māhismati which Mr. Pargiter identified with Mandhata on the Narmada. It is said that they gained ascendancy in that region about the third century A.D. They often held the great fort of Kalinjar. They had an era called the Chedi Era or the Traikūtaka Era with its epoch falling in the year 249 or 250 A.D. Kālidāsa not only mentions the Haihayas bordering on the sea, but he even mentions the city of Trikūta situated in the Mabādeva Hills of the Satpura range. The city was so called because there were in its neighbourhood three high peaks. From a statement in the fourth canto of Ragbuvamsa, we learn that Raghu captured the city and made the three peaks serve the purpose of pillars of victory. In the July number of the Indian Antiquary for 1913 is given the subst:nce of an inscription dated 608 of Buddharāj, son of Sankaragana of the Haihaya race who were still disputing the supremacy of the Deccan with the Chalukyas of Badami. So the Haihayas were powerful rulers on the other side of the Narmadā for the whole of the 6th century. (16) Mathurā was a very ancient city. It was in the very heart of the Gupta Empire. Yet Kālidāsa speaks of an independent kingdom in Mathurā. He couldn't say so until after the dismemberment of the Gupta Empire by the Huna invasion. From an inscription deciphered by Bhagavan Lāl In traji in the ninth volume of the Indian Antiquary, we come to leirn that a dynasty of kings was reigning there for several generations. The ninth king of that dynasty set up an inscription which on Palæographical grounds is placed by Bhagavan Lal Indraji in the eighth century A.D. Count ng backward the establishment of the kingdom would fall about the time of the fall of the Gupta Empire. The founder of the dynasty was Fakka, a South Indian name. He seems to have come from Southern India, where the Kadamvas were always friendly to the Guptas. Kalidāsa says that the dynasty was called Nipa dynasty, which, if Sanskrit lexicography is to be believed, means Kadamva dynasty. (17) Kalinga is a country mentioned twice by Kalidāsa, once in connection with the conquests of Raghu and once more in connection with the Royal assemblage at Vidarbha. The Puranas tell us that about the middle of the fifth century A.D. a powerful man, named Gūha, established the kingdom of Kalinga and left it to his posterity. His dominions extended all along the Orissa coast down to the Käveri. (18) Kálidāsa speaks of Anga as a powerful kinglom, the Rājā of which was in rank and honour second only to the king of Magādha. The country was famous for its elephants and for its rich literature on elephants. In Harsacarita we find King Sasanka ruling in this region about 600 A.D. His other |