Ujjayini Ujjayin : capital of the kingdom of Avanti (later known as Mālwā); it is one of the seven holy cities of India, being the site of periodical Kumbha Melas. When the nation, says Sri Aurobindo, “fell from its old pure moral ideality and heroic intellectualism…the centre of its culture and national life began to drift westward… [&] finally found its true equilibrium in the beautiful and aesthetic city of Ujjayini which the artistic and sensuous genius of the Mālavās had prepared to be a fit and noble capital of Hindu art, poetry and greatness throughout its most versatile and luxurious age. That position Ujjayini enjoyed until the nation began to crumble under the shock of new ideas & new forces & the centre of gravity shifted southwards to Devagiri of the Jadhavas….” [SABCL 3:215; s/a Mālavās & Kālidāsa]
... else to the warm sensuous humanism of emotional religion, before its full tendencies had asserted themselves, in some spheres before it had taken the steps its attitude portended, Kalidasa arose in Ujjayini and gathered up in himself its present tendencies while he foreshadowed many of its future developments.* _______________ *Sri Aurobindo, "The Age of Kalidasa", in Centenary Edition, Vol ...
... else to the warm sensuous humanism of emotional religion,—before its full tendencies had asserted themselves, in some spheres before it had taken the steps its attitude portended, Kalidasa arose in Ujjayini and gathered up in himself its present tendencies while he foreshadowed many of its future developments. He himself must have been a man gifted with all the learning of his age, rich, aristocratic ...
... Prema Nandakumar's ' 'Vasavadutta: A y in Sri Aurobindo Circle, Twenty-First Number (1965), pp. 48-81. Page 147 Invent some strong device and bring him to us A captive in Ujjayini's golden groves. Shall he not find there a jailor for his heart To take the miracle of its keys and wear them Swung on her raiment's border? Then he lives Shut up by her... diplomacy added to the fire of deceit and insult, and Queen Ungarica - who knows how unpredictable love could be - warns both her husband and daughter. Excellent to have made Vuthsa a captive in Ujjayini, but that is only like holding the Sun under the armpit: "What wilt thou do with it?" she asks Mahasegn. "Make it my moon", he answers; 77 had he not won Ungarica herself by force? What is it that ...
... is just what is needed by the Purānic time-scheme and by Indian tradition in general. The latter ranks Varāhamihira among the "nine jewels" of the court of the king whom it names Vikramāditya of Ujjayini and associates with the era of 57 B.C.' Varāhamihira himself, by declaring Śaka 427 to be the date of his earliest work Pānchasidhhāntikā, puts his composition in 124 B.C. according to the Śaka... (282-57=) 225 A.D. 3 The Malava Era, on the same assumption, first appears inscriptionally, by the specified year 461, in 404 A.D. 4 Varāhamihira, coming in c. 550 A.D. and himself associated with Ujjayini, could have used any of the three names. That he did not serves as a bit of a poser to modern historians. 5 The Purānic time-scheme requires the Śaka Era of 551 B.C. because it has to put ...
... The personages & scenery are those of Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound & the Witch of Atlas. But Kalidasa's city in the mists is no evanescent city of sunlit clouds; it is his own beautiful & luxurious Ujjayini idealised & exempted from mortal affection; like a true Hindu he insists on translating the ideal into the terms of the familiar, sensuous & earthy. For death and birth keep not their mystic ...
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