{"id":72,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=72"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:41","slug":"28-the-age-of-kalidasa-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/28-the-age-of-kalidasa-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-28_The Age of Kalidasa.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nThe Age of Kalidasa<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nV<\/font>ALMIKI<\/font><\/b>, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the
\nessence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they
\nwould still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems
\nare types and exponents of three periods in the development of
\nthe human soul, types and exponents also of the three great
\npowers which dispute and clash in the imperfect and half-formed
\ntemperament and harmonise in the formed and perfect. At the
\nsame time, their works are pictures at once minute and grandiose
\nof three moods of our Aryan civilisation, of which the first was
\npredominatingly moral, the second predominatingly intellectual,
\nthe third predominatingly material. The fourth power of the
\nsoul, the spiritual, which can alone govern and harmonise the
\nothers by fusion with them, had not, though it pervaded and
\npowerfully influenced each successive development, any separate
\nage of predominance, did not like the others possess the whole
\nrace with a dominating obsession. It is because, conjoining in
\nthemselves the highest and most varied poetical gifts, they at the
\nsame time represent and mirror their age and humanity by their
\ninterpretative largeness and power that our three chief poets
\nhold their supreme place and bear comparison with the greatest
\nworld-names, Homer, Shakespeare and Dante.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt has been said truly that the Ramayana represents an ideal
\nsociety and assumed illogically that it must therefore represent
\nan altogether imaginary one. The argument ignores the alternative of a real society idealised. No poet could evolve entirely out
\nof his own imagination a picture at once so colossal, so minute
\nand so consistent in every detail. No number of poets could do
\nit without stumbling into fatal incompatibilities either of fact or
\nof view, such as we find defacing the Mahabharata. This is not
\nthe place to discuss the question of Valmiki’s age and authorship. This much, however, may be said that after excluding the
\nUttarakanda which is a later work, and some amount of interpolation for the most part easy enough to detect, and reforming<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nthe text which is not unfrequently in a state of truly shocking confusion, the Ramayana remains on the face of it the work of a
\nsingle, mighty and embracing mind. It is not easy to say whether
\nit preceded or followed in date Vyasa’s epic; it is riper in form
\nand tone, has some aspects of a more advanced and mellow culture, and yet it gives the general impression of a younger humanity and an earlier, less sophisticated and complex mind. The
\nnature of the poem and much of its subject-matter might at least
\njustify the conclusion that Valmiki wrote in a political and social
\natmosphere much resembling that which surrounded Vyasa. He
\nlived, that is to say, in an age approaching the present disorder
\nand turmoil, of great revolutions and unbridled aristocratic
\nviolence, when the governing chivalry, the Kshatriya caste, in
\nits pride of strength was asserting its own code of morals as the
\none rule of conduct. We may note the plain assertion of this
\nstandpoint by Jarasandha in the Mahabharata and Valmiki’s
\nemphatic and repeated protest against it through the mouth of
\nRama. This ethical code was, like all aristocratic codes of conduct, full of high chivalry and the spirit of
\nnoblesse oblige<\/i>, but a
\nlittle loose in sexual morality on the masculine side and indulgent
\nto violence and the strong hand. To the pure and delicate moral
\ntemperament of Valmiki, imaginative, sensitive, enthusiastic,
\nshot through with rays of visionary idealism and ethereal light,
\nthis looseness and violence were shocking and abhorrent. He
\ncould sympathise with them, as he sympathised with all that was
\nwild and evil and anarchic, with the imaginative and poetical side
\nof his nature, because he was a universal creative mind driven
\nby his art-sense to penetrate, feel and re-embody all that the
\nworld contained; but to his intellect and peculiar emotional
\ntemperament they were distasteful. He took refuge therefore in
\na past age of national greatness and virtue, distant enough to be
\nidealised, but near enough to have left sufficient materials for a
\ngreat picture of civilisation which would serve his purpose \u2014 an
\nage, it is important to note, of grandiose imperial equipoise such
\nas must have existed in some form at least, since a persistent
\ntradition of it runs through Sanskrit literature. In the framework of this
\nimperial age, his puissant imagination created a marvellous picture of the human world as it might be if the actual and<\/font><\/p>\n

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\nexisting forms and materials of society were used to the best and
\npurest advantage, and an equally marvellous picture of another
\nnon-human world in which aristocratic violence, strength, self-will, lust and pride ruled supreme and idealised or rather colossalised. He brought these two worlds into warlike collision by
\nthe hostile meeting of their champions and utmost evolutions
\nof their peculiar character-types, Rama and Ravana, and so
\ncreated the Ramayana, the grandest and most paradoxical poem
\nin the world which becomes unmatchably sublime by disdaining
\nall consistent pursuit of sublimity, supremely artistic by putting
\naside all the conventional limitations of art, magnificently dramatic by disregarding all dramatic illusion, and uniquely epic by
\nhandling the least as well as the most epic material. Not all perhaps can enter at once into the spirit of this masterpiece; but
\nthose who have once done so, will never admit any poem in the
\nworld as its superior.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMy point here, however, is that it gives us the picture of an
\nentirely moralised civilisation, containing indeed vast material
\ndevelopment and immense intellectual power, but both moralised and subordinated to the needs of purity of temperament and
\ndelicate ideality of action. Valmiki’s mind seems nowhere to be
\nfamiliarised with the high-strung intellectual gospel of a high
\nand severe Dharma culminating in a passionless activity, raised
\nto a supreme spiritual significance in the Gita, which is one great
\nkey-note of the Mahabharata. Had he known it, the strong
\nleaven of sentimentalism and feminity in his nature might well
\nhave rejected it; such temperaments when they admire strength,
\nadmire it manifested and forceful rather than self-contained.
\nValmiki’s characters act from emotional or imaginative enthusiasm, not from intellectual conviction; an enthusiasm of morality actuates Rama, an enthusiasm of immorality tyrannises over
\nRavana. Like all mainly moral temperaments, he instinctively
\ninsisted on one old established code of morals being universally
\nobserved as the only basis of ethical stability, avoided casuistic
\ndevelopments and distasted innovators in metaphysical thought
\nas by their persistent and searching questions dangerous to the
\nestablished bases of morality, especially to its wholesome ordinariness and everydayness. Valmiki, therefore, the father of our<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nsecular poetry, stands for that early and finely moral civilisation
\nwhich was the true heroic age of the Hindu spirit.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe poet of the Mahabharata lives nearer to the centre of
\nan era of aristocratic turbulence and disorder. If there is any
\nkernel of historic truth in the story of the poem, it records the 
\nestablishment of those imperial forms of government and society
\nwhich Valmiki had idealised. Behind its poetic legend it celebrates and approves the policy of a great Kshatriya leader of men
\nwho aimed at the subjection of his order to the rule of a central imperial Power
\nwhich should typify its best tendencies and control or expel its worst. But while Valmiki was a soul out of harmony with its surroundings and looking back to an ideal past,
\nVyasa was a man of his time, profoundly in sympathy with it,
\nfull of its tendencies, hopeful of its results and looking forward
\nto an ideal future. The one might be described as a conservative
\nidealist advocating return to a better but departed model, the
\nother is a progressive realist looking forward to a better but
\nunborn model. Vyasa accordingly does not revolt from the aristocratic code of morality; it harmonises with his own proud and
\nstrong spirit and he accepts it as a basis for conduct, but purified
\nand transfigured by the illuminating idea of the niskāma karma<\/i>.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut, above all, intellectuality is his grand
\nnote; he is profoundly interested in ideas, in metaphysics, in ethical problems;<\/font> 
\n<\/font>he subjects morality to casuistic
\ntests from which the more delicate moral tone of Valmiki’s spirit shrank; he boldly erects above
\nordinary ethics a higher principle of conduct having its springs
\nin intellect and strong character; he treats government and
\nsociety from the standpoint of a practical and discerning statesmanlike mind, idealising solely for the sake of a standard. He
\ntouches, in fact, all subjects and whatever he touches he makes
\nfruitful and interesting by originality, penetration and a sane and
\nbold vision. In all this he is the son of the civilisation he has
\nmirrored to us, a civilisation in which both morality and material
\ndevelopment are powerfully intellectualised. Nothing is more
\nremarkable in all the characters of the Mahabharata than this
\npuissant intellectualism; every action of theirs seems to be impelled by an
\nimmense driving force of mind solidifying in character and therefore conceived and outlined as in stone. This<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\norgiastic force of the intellect is at least as noticeable as the impulse of moral or immoral enthusiasm behind each great action
\nof the Ramayana. Throughout the poem the victorious and
\nmanifold mental activity of an age is prominent and gives its
\ncharacter to its civilisation. There is far more of thought in action
\nthan in the Ramayana, far less of thought in repose; the one
\npictures a time of gigantic creative ferment and disturbance; the
\nother, as far as humanity is concerned, an ideal age of equipoise,
\ntranquillity and order.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMany centuries after these poets, perhaps a thousand years
\nor even more, came the third great embodiment of the national
\nconsciousness, Kalidasa. There is a far greater difference between
\nthe civilisation he mirrors than between Vyasa’s and Valmiki’s.
\nHe came when the daemonic orgy of character and intellect
\nhad worked itself out and ended in producing at once its culmination and reaction in Buddhism. There was everywhere noticeable a petrifying of the national temperament, visible to us in the
\ntendency to codification; philosophy was being codified, morals
\nwere being codified, knowledge of any and every sort was being
\ncodified; it was on one side of its nature an age of scholars,
\nlegislators, dialecticians, philosophical formalisers. On the other
\nside, the creative and aesthetic enthusiasm of the nation was
\npouring itself into things material, into the life of the senses, into
\nthe pride of life and beauty. The arts of painting, architecture,
\nsong, dance, drama, gardening, jewellery, all that can administer
\nto the wants of great and luxurious capitals, received a grand
\nimpetus which brought them to their highest technical perfection. That this impetus came from Greek sources or from the
\nBuddhists seems hardly borne out: the latter may rather have
\nshared in the general tendencies of the time than originated them,
\nand the Greek theory gives us a maximum of conclusions with
\na minimum of facts. I do not think, indeed, it can be maintained
\nthat this period, call it classical or material or what one will, was
\nmarked off from its predecessor by any clear division: such a
\npartition would be contrary to the law of human development.
\nAlmost all the concrete features of the age may be found as separate facts in ancient India: codes existed from old time; art and
\ndrama were of fairly ancient origin, to whatever date we may<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nassign their development; physical Yoga processes existed almost
\nfrom the first, and the material development portrayed in the
\nRamayana and Mahabharata is hardly less splendid than that
\nof which the Raghuvamsha is so brilliant a picture. But whereas
\nbefore, these were subordinated to more lofty ideals, now they
\nprevailed and became supreme, occupying the best energies of
\nthe race and stamping themselves on its life and consciousness.
\nIn obedience to this impulse the centuries between the rise of
\nBuddhism and the advent of Shankaracharya became \u2014 though
\nnot agnostic and sceptical, for they rejected violently the doctrines of Charvak \u2014 yet profoundly scientific and outward-going
\neven in their spiritualism. It was therefore the great age of formalised metaphysics, science, law, art and the sensuous luxury which
\naccompanies the arts.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nNearer the beginning than the end of this period, when India
\nwas systematising her philosophies and developing her arts and
\nsciences, turning from Upanishad to Purana, from the high
\nrarefied peaks of early Vedanta and Sankhya with their inspiring
\nsublimities and bracing keenness to physical methods of ascetic
\nYoga and the dry intellectualism of metaphysical logic or else to
\nthe warm sensuous humanism of emotional religion, before its
\nfull tendencies had asserted themselves, in some spheres before
\nit had taken the steps its attitude portended, Kalidasa arose in
\nUjjayini and gathered up in himself its present tendencies while
\nhe foreshadowed many of its future developments. He himself
\nmust have been a man gifted with all the learning of his age, rich,
\naristocratic, moving wholly in high society, familiar with and fond of life in
\nthe most luxurious metropolis of his time, passionately attached to the arts, acquainted with the sciences, deep in
\nlaw and learning, versed in the formalised philosophies. He has
\nsome notable resemblances to Shakespeare; among others his
\nbusiness was, like Shakespeare’s, to sum up the immediate past
\nin the terms of the present: at the same time he occasionally informed the present with hints of the future. Like Shakespeare
\nalso he seems not to have cared deeply for religion. In creed he
\nwas a Vedantist and in ceremony, perhaps, a Shiva-worshipper,
\nbut he seems rather to have accepted these as the orthodox forms
\nof his time and country, recommended to him by his intellec-<\/font><\/p>\n

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\ntual preference and aesthetic affinities, than to have satisfied
\nwith them any profound religious want. In morals also he
\naccepted and glorified the set and scientifically elaborate ethics
\nof the codes, but seems himself to have been destitute of the
\nfiner elements of morality. We need not accept any of the
\nribald and witty legends with which the Hindu decadence
\nsurrounded his name; but no unbiased student of Kalidasa’s
\npoetry can claim for him either moral fervour or moral
\nstrictness. His writings show indeed a keen appreciation of high
\nideal and lofty thought, but the appreciation is aesthetic in its
\nnature: he elaborates and seeks to bring out the effectiveness
\nof these on the imaginative sense of the noble and grandiose,
\napplying to the things of the mind and soul the same aesthetic
\nstandard as to the things of sense themselves. He has also the
\nnatural, high, aristocratic feeling for all that is proud and great and
\nvigorous, and so far as he has it, he has exaltation and sublimity; but aesthetic grace and beauty and symmetry sphere in
\nthe sublime and prevent it from standing out with the bareness
\nand boldness which is the sublime’s natural presentation. His
\npoetry has therefore never been, like the poetry of Valmiki and
\nVyasa, a great dynamic force for moulding heroic character or
\nnoble or profound temperament. In all this he represented the
\nhighly vital and material civilisation to which he belonged.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nYet some dynamic force a poet must have, some general
\nhuman inspiration of which he is the supreme exponent; or else
\nhe cannot rank with the highest. Kalidasa is the great, the
\nsupreme poet of the senses, of aesthetic beauty, of sensuous emotion. His main achievement is to have taken every poetic element,
\nall great poetical forms and subdued them to a harmony of artistic perfection set in the key of sensuous beauty. In continuous
\ngift of seizing an object and creating it to the eye he has no rival
\nin literature. A strong visualising faculty, such as the greatest
\npoets have in their most inspired descriptive moments, was with
\nKalidasa an abiding and unfailing power and the concrete presentation which this definiteness of vision demanded, suffused with
\nan intimate and sovereign feeling for beauty of colour and beauty
\nof form, constitutes the characteristic Kalidasian manner. He
\nis besides a consummate artist, profound in conception and<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nsuave in execution, a master of sound and language who has
\nmoulded for himself out of the infinite possibilities of the Sanskrit
\ntongue a verse and diction which are absolutely the grandest,
\nmost puissant and most full-voiced of any human speech, a language of the Gods. The note struck by Kalidasa when he built
\nSanskrit into that palace of noble sound, is the note which meets
\nus in almost all the best works of the classic literature. Its characteristic features of style are a compact but never abrupt brevity,
\na soft gravity and smooth majesty, a noble harmony of verse,
\na strong and lucid beauty of chiselled prose, above all, an epic
\nprecision of phrase, weighty, sparing and yet full of colour and
\nsweetness. Moreover, it is admirably flexible, suiting itself to
\nall forms from the epic to the lyric, but most triumphantly to the
\ntwo greatest, the epic and the drama. In his epic style Kalidasa
\nadds to these permanent features a more than Miltonic fullness
\nand grandiose pitch of sound and expression, in his dramatic
\nan extraordinary grace and suavity which makes it adaptable to
\nconversation and the expression of dramatic shade and subtly
\nblended emotion.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWith these supreme gifts Kalidasa had the advantage of
\nbeing born into an age with which he was in temperamental sympathy and a civilisation which lent itself naturally to his peculiar
\ndescriptive genius. It was an aristocratic civilisation, as indeed were those
\nwhich had preceded it, but it far more nearly resembled the aristocratic civilisations of Europe by its material
\nluxury, its aesthetic tastes, its polite culture, its keen worldly
\nwisdom and its excessive appreciation of wit and learning.
\nReligious and ethical thought and sentiment were cultivated
\nmuch as in France under Louis XIV, more in piety and profession than as swaying the conduct; they pleased the intellect
\nor else touched the sentiment, but did not govern the soul. It
\nwas bad taste to be irreligious, but it was not bad taste to be sensual or even in some respects immoral. The splendid and luxurious courts of this period supported the orthodox religion and
\nmorals out of convention, conservatism, the feeling for established order and the inherited tastes and prejudices of centuries,
\nnot because they fostered any deep religious or ethical sentiment.
\nYet they applauded high moral ideas if presented to them in<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\ncultured and sensuous poetry much in the same spirit that they
\napplauded voluptuous description similarly presented. The ideals of morality
\nwere much lower than of old; free drinking was openly recognised and indulged in by both sexes; purity of life was
\nless valued than in any other period of our civilisation. Yet the
\nunconquerable monogamous instinct of the high-class Hindu
\nwoman seems to have prevented promiscuous vice and the disorganisation of the home which was the result of a similar state
\nof society in ancient Rome, in Italy of the Renascence, in France
\nunder the Bourbons and in England under the later Stuarts.
\nThe old spiritual tendencies were also rather latent than dead,
\nthe mighty pristine ideals still existed in theory, \u2014 they are
\noutlined with extraordinary grandeur by Kalidasa, \u2014 nor had
\nthey yet been weakened or lowered to a less heroic key. It was
\na time in which one might expect to meet the extremes of indulgence side by side with the extremes of renunciation; for the
\ninherent spirituality of the Hindu nature finally revolted against
\nthe splendid and unsatisfying life of the senses. But of this phase
\nBhartrihari and not Kalidasa is the poet. The greater writer lived
\nevidently in the full heyday of the material age, and there is no
\nsign of any setting in of the sickness and dissatisfaction and disillusionment
\nwhich invariably follow a long outburst of materialism.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe flourishing of the plastic arts had prepared surroundings
\nof great external beauty of the kind needed for Kalidasa’s poetic work. The
\nappreciation of beauty in Nature, of the grandeur of mountain and forest, the
\nloveliness of lakes and rivers, the charm of bird and beast life had become a
\npart of contemporary culture. These and the sensitive appreciation of trees and
\nplants and hills as living things, the sentimental feeling of brotherhood with
\nanimals which had influenced and been encouraged by Buddhism, the romantic mythological world still
\nfarther romanticised by Kalidasa’s warm humanism and fine
\npoetic sensibility, gave him exquisite grace and grandeur of background and scenic variety. The delight of the eye, the delight of
\nthe ear, smell, palate, touch, the satisfaction of the imagination
\nand taste are the texture of his poetical creation, and into this he
\nhas worked the most beautiful flowers of emotion and intellec-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\ntual or aesthetic ideality. The scenery of his work is a universal
\nparadise of beautiful things. All therein obeys one law of earthly
\ngrace; morality is aestheticised, intellect suffused and governed
\nwith the sense of beauty. And yet this poetry does not swim in
\nlanguor, does not dissolve itself in sensuous weakness; it is not
\nheavy with its own dissoluteness, heavy of curl and heavy of eyelid, cloyed by its own sweets, as the poetry of the senses usually
\nis. Kalidasa is saved from this by the chastity of his style, his aim
\nat burdened precision and energy of phrase, his unsleeping artistic vigilance.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAs in the Ramayana and Mahabharata we have
\nan absorbing intellect-impulse or a dynamic force of moral or immoral
\nexcitement driving the characters, so we have in Kalidasa an intense hedonistic
\nimpulse thrilling through speech and informing action. An imaginative pleasure in all shades of thought and
\nof sentiment, a rich delight of the mind in its emotions, a luxuriousness of ecstasy and grief, a free abandonment to amorous
\nimpulse and rapture, a continual joy of life and seeking of beauty
\nmark the period when India, having for the time exhausted the
\npossibilities of soul-experience attainable through the spirit
\nand the imaginative reason, was now attempting to find out the
\nutmost each sense could feel, probing and sounding the soul-possibilities in Matter and even seeking God through the senses.
\nThe emotional religion of the Vaishnava Puranas which takes, as its type of the
\nrelation between the human soul and the Supreme, the passion of a woman for her lover, was already developing. The corresponding Tantric development of Shaivism may
\nnot yet have established itself fully; but the concretisation of the
\nidea of Purusha-Prakriti, the union of Ishwara and Shakti, from
\nwhich it arose, was already there in the symbolic legends of the
\nPuranas and one of these is the subject of Kalidasa’s greatest
\nepic poem. The Birth of the War-God<\/i> stands on the same height
\nin classical Sanskrit as the Paradise Lost<\/i> in English literature:<\/font> 
\n<\/font>it is the masterpiece and magnum opus<\/i> of the age on the epic
\nlevel. The central idea of this great unfinished poem, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, typified in its original idea the union
\nof Purusha and Prakriti, the supreme Soul and dynamic Nature
\nby which the world is created; but this type of divine legend was<\/font><\/p>\n

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\nused esoterically to typify also the Nature-Soul’s search for and attainment of God and something of this conception pierces
\nthrough the description of Parvati’s seeking after Shiva. Such
\nwas the age of Kalidasa, the temper of the civilisation which produced him; other poets of the time expressed one side of it or
\nanother, but his work is its splendid integral epitome, its picture
\nof many composite hues and tones. Of the temperament of that
\ncivilisation the Seasons<\/i> is an immature poetic self-expression,
\nthe House of Raghu<\/i> the representative epic, the Cloud-Messenger
\n<\/i>the descriptive elegy, Shacountala<\/i> with its two sister love-plays
\nintimate dramatic pictures and the Birth of the War-God<\/i> the
\ngrand religious fable. Kalidasa, who expressed so many sides
\nand faces of it in writing, stands for its representative man and
\ngenius, as was Vyasa of the intellectual mood of Indian civilisation and Valmiki of its moral side.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt was the supreme misfortune of India that before she was
\nable to complete the round of her experience and gather up the
\nfruit of her long millenniums of search and travail by commencing a fourth and more perfect age in which moral, intellectual
\nand material development should be all equally harmonised and
\nall spiritualised, the inrush of barbarians broke in finally on her
\nendless solitary tapasyā<\/i> of effort and beat her national life into
\nfragments. A preparation for such an age may be glimpsed in
\nthe new tendencies of spiritual seeking that began with Shankara
\nand continued in later Vaishnavism and Shaivism and in new
\nturns of poetry and art, but it found no opportunity of seizing
\non the total life of the nation and throwing it into another mould.
\nThe work was interrupted before it had well begun; and India
\nwas left with only the remnants of the culture of the material age
\nto piece out her existence. Yet even the little that was done
\nafterwards proved to be much; for it saved her from gradually
\npetrifying and perishing as almost all the old civilisations of Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, petrified and perished, as the material
\ncivilisation of Europe, unless spiritualised, must before long petrify and perish. That there is still an unexhausted vitality in her,
\nthat she yet nourishes the seeds of rebirth and renewal, we owe
\nto Shankara and his successors and the great minds and souls
\nthat came after them. Will she yet arise, new-combine her past<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nand continue the great dream where she left it off, shaking off,
\non the one hand, the soils and filth that have grown on her in her
\nperiod of downfall and futile struggle, and re-asserting, on the
\nother, her peculiar individuality and national type against the
\ncallow civilisation of the West with its dogmatic and intolerant
\nknowledge, its still more dogmatic and intolerant ignorance, its
\ndeification of selfishness and force, its violence and its ungoverned Titanism? In doing so lies her one chance of salvation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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The Age of Kalidasa   VALMIKI, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}