SOURCE: "Kalidasa and the Attitudes of the Golden Age," in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 96, No. 1, January-March, 1976, pp. 15-26.

Ingalls is an American educator and critic specializing in the study of Sanskrit literature. In the following essay, he examines Kalidasa's milieu, noting the manner in which the spirit of the author's age is reflected in his thought and artistry.

Within a few years of A.D. 320 there arose in northeast India a dynasty of rulers which was to produce what some scholars have called the Indian Golden Age. Whether the Gupta Empire deserves that title is a matter of aesthetic and moral judgment. I shall not hide my own judgment in the matter, but I shall concern myself chiefly with the facts on which a judgment must be based.

Within the first seventy years of their accession the Guptas succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole of...