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