BY THE INDIANS. 89 



poetry. In the Vedas, it is seldom possible to assign the 

 particular locality whence the sacred sages derive their inspi- 

 ration ; in the heroic poems, on the contrary, the descriptions 

 are mostly individual, and attached to particular localities, 

 and are animated by that fresher life which is found where 

 the writer has drawn from impressions of which he was him- 

 self the recipient. Bama's journey from Ayodhya to the 

 capital of Dschanaka, his sojourn in the primeval forest, and 

 the picture of the hermit life of the Panduides, are all richly 

 coloured. 



The name of the great poet Kalidasa, who nourished at 

 the highly polished court of Yikramaditya, contempora- 

 neously with Virgil and Horace, has obtained an early and 

 extensive celebrity among the nations of the west : nearer 

 our own times, the English and German translations ot 

 Sacontala have further contributed, in a high degree, to the 

 admiration so largely felt for an author, whose tenderness of 

 feeling, and rich creative imagination, claim for him a dis- 

 tinguished place among the poets of all countries ( 60 ) . The 

 charm of his descriptions of nature is seen also in the lovely 

 drama of " Vikrama and Urvasi," in which the king wanders 

 through the thickets of the forest in search of the nymph 

 Urvasi; in the poem of "The Seasons/' and in "The 

 Meghaduta," or Cloud Messenger." The last named poem 

 paints, with admirable truth to nature, the joyful welcome 

 which, after a long continuance of tropical drought, hails 

 the first appearance of the rising cloud, which shews that 

 the looked-for season of rains is at hand. The expres- 

 sion, "truth to nature/' which I have just employed, can 

 alone justify me in venturing to recal, in connection with 

 the Indian poem, a sketch r of the commencement % of the 



