Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa

Appendix

3. [Passages from the manuscript of “The Seasons — I: Its Authenticity” that Sri Aurobindo did not include in the published version.]

The Seasons [1]

Early and immature work of a great poet of which the authenticity is not put beyond doubt by definite external evidence, is always the especial joy of scholars, for it gives an opening to the spirit of denial which is the lifebreath of scholastic criticism. To show original scholarship by denying what the past has believed, is easy and congenial, but to establish one’s originality by positive and helpful criticism is not so readily done. No one has suffered more in this respect at the hands of European scholars than Kalidasa, about whom we have no external evidence until the artificial revival of Sanscrit literature in the later centuries of the first millennium of the Christian era. Some