1. Kālidāsa in Kuntaka’s treatment

Kālidāsa has a special place in Kuntaka’s world of literature. Kuntaka has selected the maximum number of verses from Kālidāsa. Kuntaka objectively analyses the verses and works of Kālidāsa. Kuntaka’s genius as a literary critic is clearly revealed in his analysis of Kālidāsa. Thus it is very essential to look into Kuntaka’s observations on Kālidāsa to assess his critical acumen.

Kālidāsa occupies a unique place in the history of Sanskrit and world literature. He has won world wide fame as a poet and a playwright. There is no trustworthy information about the personal history of this eminent scholar. However large number of works are ascribed to him, depending on his ideas and style of writings, the works ascribed to him by some modern scholars are two mahākāvyas like Raghuvaṃśa, Kumārasambhava, two khaṇḍakāvyas like Meghadūta, Ṛtusaṃhāra and three dramas like Abhijñānaśākuntala, Vikramorvaśīya and Mālavikāgnimitra. Kālidāsa’s compositions reveal his all-round proficiency in the field of knowledge like Purāṇas, Epics, Prosody, Arthaśāstra, Grammar, Medicine etc. Like the poems of Wordsworth, the compositions of Kālidāsa also have intense relation between man and nature. Another specialty of Kālidāsa is that he presents familiar stories with his own innovations. For instance in Raghuvaṃśa, besides describing the tale of Rāma, the poet has given detailed description of kings like Dilīpa, Raghu, Aja etc. Vālmīki has already depicted the life of Rāma beautifully in Rāmāyaṇa. Moreover his brilliant and sole depiction of the minor story of Śākuntala found in Mahābhārata into a beautiful drama is also gorgeous. There is no stop-gap for him in the literary world.

Even when Kuntaka chose to criticize him, he does not hide his deep sense of admiration towards the poet. Kuntaka has selected 94 verses from Kālidāsa. It is notable that among the works of Kālidāsa, Kuntaka does not cite any verse from Ṛtusaṃhāra and Mālavikāgnimitra. The reason for the avoidance of Mālavikāgnimitra and Ṛtusaṃhāra is not very explicit. There are some controversies regarding Kālidāsa’s authorship of Ṛtusaṃhāra. Some other scholars considered Ṛtusaṃhāra as the first and immature work of Kālidāsa. Likewise Mālavikāgnimitra is considered as the first drama written by Kalidasa. Mālavikāgnimitra and Ṛtusaṃhāra happen to be the least cited works of Kālidāsa in Sanskrit poetics. Moreover other masterpieces of Kālidāsa offer great scope for citations due to the beauty of verses and depth of theme. May be because of these reasons obviously Kuntaka followed the masterpieces of Kālidāsa. This shows that Kuntaka is very particular in choosing examples for each situations of his work. Among the 94 verses, 48 are from Raghuvaṃśa, 20 from Kumārasambhava and 12 verses from Abhijñānaśākuntala. Kuntaka has also selected 9 verses from Vikramorvaśīya and 5 verses from Meghadūta.

The poetic works like Śṛṅgāraprakāśa, Sāhityadarpaṇa have cited verses from all the works of Kālidāsa except Ṛtusaṃhāra. Moreover Ānandavardhana and Mammaṭa also take numerous instances from the master poet except from Ṛtusaṃhāra and Mālavikāgnimitra. It is seen that lot of instances are taken from the works of Kālidāsa to explain the sentient object as non sentient one and vice versa. One of the beautiful instance cited by Kuntaka from Meghadūta is ‘the darkness that can pierce through the needle’. This is one of the beautiful instances taken by Kuntaka to explain metaphorical figurativeness. Kuntaka always stands in a high position than any other rhetorician. Unlike other poeticians who quote any small portion to illustrate some techniques of expressions, Kuntaka cites larger segments from Kālidāsa and goes deeper into the philosophy and aesthetics of Kālidāsa.

Kuntaka does not cite many instances for compositional figurativeness from Kālidāsa, through which the entire assessment of the work is possible. Either he may think the instances cited for contextual figurativeness are enough to bring forth overall beauty of the work or according to him there is no need to assess the works of Kālidāsa as a whole because every sensitive reader is aware of its entire beauty. Kuntaka suggests that choice of proper title of a work is also considered as one of the varieties of compositional figurativeness and cites the name Abhijñāśākuntala for it. Kuntaka uses his compositional figurativeness once in the works of master poet to suggest the beauty of the title Abhijñāśākuntala. It seems that Kuntaka would like to bring forth the essence of Kālidāsa as a poet of the use of beautiful figures of speech or tender style. It is well known that Kālidāsa is known as the poet of tender style. For proving this Kuntaka cites large number of verses from Kālidāsa for explaining various figures of speech and different varieties of tender style.