Selected Episodes from Raghuvamśam ON RAGHU'S LINE Of kings who were untainted from their birth, Who toiled until there was success, who ruled the earth to the sea, Whose car-track reached to heaven; Who duly worshipped the sacred fire, who gave to every guest according to his wish, whose punishments were in proportion to the crimes, who were watchful at the proper time; Who sought wealth that they might give it away, whose words were measured for the sake of truth, who sought victory for glory's sake, and for offspring took unto them their wives; Page-37 Who, in chil

Introduction I Kālidāsa: his life, time, works and genius It has been rightly pointed out by C. R. Devadhar that, "Kālidāsa is both famous and unknown".1 Nothing definite can be said about Kālidāsa's life, place of birth, and the time to which he belonged, for Kālidāsa himself, like many other great Indian authors, did not give any hint about himself. He was much more interested in highlighting and elaborating upon the themes chosen by him for his work, rather than speaking anything about himself. That is why his life-history as it comes down to us through different traditional sources, is usually full of popular anecdotes and interesting stories about him. One

Published by Shubhra Ketu Foundation and The Mother's Institute of Research This monograph is part of a series on Value-oriented Education centered on three values : Illumination, Heroism and Harmony. The research, preparation and publication of the monographs that form part of this series are the result of the work and cooperation of several research teams of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research (SAIIER) at Auroville. General Editor: KIREET JOSHI Author of this monograph: Prof. G.C.Nayak, M.A.(Alld.), PH.D. (Bristol) Art work: Auroville Press Publishers Printed at Auroville P

Illumination, Heroism and Harmony Preface The task of preparing teaching-learning material for value-oriented education is enormous. There is, first, the idea that value-oriented education should be exploratory rather than prescriptive, and that the teaching-learning material should provide to the learners a growing experience of exploration. Secondly, it is rightly contended that the proper inspiration to turn to value-orientation is provided by biographies, autobiographical accounts, personal anecdotes, epistles, short poems, stories of humour, stories of human interest, brief passages filled with pregnant meanings, reflective short essays written in well-chiselled

Appendices Passages from the writings of Sri Aurobindo on Kalidasa "Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development of the human soul, types and exponents also of the three great powers which dispute and clash in the imperfect and half-formed temperament and harmonise in the formed and perfect. At the same time their works are pictures at once minute and grandiose of three moods of our Aryan civilisation, of which the first was predominatingly moral, the second predominatingly intel