Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: What is the most famous work by Kalidasa?
Malwa was the centre of Sanskrit literature during and after the Gupta period. The region's most famous playwright, Kalidasa, is considered to be the greatest Indian writer ever. His first surviving play is "Malavikagnimitra" (Malavika and Agnimitra). Kalidasa's second play, his masterpiece, is the Abhijñānaśākuntalam, which tells the story of king Dushyanta, who falls in love with a girl of lowly birth, the lovely Shakuntala. The last of Kalidasa's surviving plays is "Vikramuurvashiiya" ("Urvashi conquered by valour"). Kalidasa also wrote the epic poems "Raghuvamsha" ("Dynasty of Raghu"), "Ritusamhāra" and "Kumarasambhava" ("Birth of the war god"), as well as the lyric "Meghaduuta" ("The cloud messenger").
The "Vatapi Ganapatim" hymn is composed in Sanskrit, the language of several Hindu scriptures, by Muthuswami Dikshitar. Dikshitar praises Vatapi Ganapati, as the elephant-headed god, who grants boons. The universe and the elements are said to be created by Ganesha. Ganesha is described as the remover of obstacles. He is worshipped by the sage Agastya and the god Vishnu. He resides in the Muladhara chakra and exists in four kinds of speech – Para, Pashyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari. The sacred Om is said to be his body. Ganesha's iconography is described. He has an elephant-head and curved trunk. The crescent moon adores his forehead. He holds a sugarcane in his left hand. He also carries a "pāśa" (noose), a pomegranate fruit, a guava fruit and other things. He has a large body. This form pleases his father Shiva and brother Kartikeya. The last line notes that Ganesha is pleased with the Hamsadhvani raga, indicating the raga in which the composition should be sung.
There is no historical evidence to show that these nine scholars were contemporary figures or proteges of the same king. Vararuchi is believed to have lived around 3rd or 4th century CE. The period of Kalidasa is debated, but most historians place him around 5th century CE. Varahamihira is known to have lived in 6th century CE. Dhanavantari was the author of a medical glossary (Nighantu); his period is uncertain. Amarasimha cannot be dated with certainty either, but his lexicon utilizes the works of Dhanavantari and Kalidasa; therefore, he cannot be dated to 1st century BCE, when the legendary Vikramaditya is said to have established the Vikrama Samvat in 57 BCE. Not much is known about Shanku, Vetalabhatta, Kshapanaka and Ghatakarpara. Some Jain writers identify Siddhasena Divakara as Kshapanaka, but this claim is not accepted by historians.
There is no historical evidence indicating that the nine scholars were contemporary figures or proteges of the same king. Vararuchi is believed to have lived around the third or fourth century CE. Although Kalidasa's lifetime is debated, most historians place him around the fifth century; Varahamihira is known to have lived in the sixth century. Dhanavantari was the author of a medical glossary (a nighantu), but his lifetime is uncertain. Amarasimha cannot be dated with certainty either, but his lexicon uses works by Dhanavantari and Kalidasa; therefore, he cannot be dated to the first century BCE (Vikramaditya is said to have established an era in 57 BCE). Little is known about Shanku, Vetalabhatta, Kshapanaka and Ghatakarpara. Some Jain writers identify Siddhasena Divakara as Kshapanaka, but this is not accepted by historians.
The oldest surviving work of Persian literary criticism after the Islamic conquest of Persia is "Muqaddame-ye Shahname-ye Abu Mansuri", which was written during the Samanid period. The work deals with the myths and legends of "Shahnameh" and is considered the oldest surviving example of Persian prose. It also shows an attempt by the authors to evaluate literary works critically.
The Epic of Gilgamesh () is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia that is often regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Bilgamesh (Sumerian for "Gilgamesh"), king of Uruk, dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur (). These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni, dates to the 18th century BC and is titled after its "incipit", Shūtur eli sharrī ("Surpassing All Other Kings"). Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later "standard" version dates from the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the "incipit" Sha naqba īmuru ("He who Saw the Abyss", in modern terms: "He who Sees the Unknown"). Approximately two thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.
The Odyssey (; "Odýsseia", in Classical Attic) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the "Iliad", the other work ascribed to Homer. The "Odyssey" is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, while the "Iliad" is the oldest. Scholars believe the "Odyssey" was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.
The idea is not new. Eustathius of Thessalonica recounted an ancient fiction in which both epics were composed by an Egyptian priestess, Phantasia; Samuel Butler, in "The Authoress of the Odyssey", attributed the "Odyssey" to a Sicilian woman between 1150 and 1050 BC; and Robert Graves in his novel "Homer's Daughter" made a similar proposal.
Scholars are divided on whether or when Sanskrit died. Western authors such as John Snelling state that Sanskrit and Pali are both dead Indian languages. Indian authors such as M Ramakrishnan Nair state that Sanskrit was a dead language by the 1st millennium BCE. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead". After the 12th-century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with the previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock.
This tablet is mainly an Akkadian translation of an earlier Sumerian poem, Gilgamesh and the Netherworld (also known as "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld" and variants), although it has been suggested that it is derived from an unknown version of that story. The contents of this last tablet are inconsistent with previous ones: Enkidu is still alive, despite having died earlier in the epic. Because of this, its lack of integration with the other tablets, and the fact that it is almost a copy of an earlier version, it has been referred to as an 'inorganic appendage' to the epic. Alternatively, it has been suggested that "its purpose, though crudely handled, is to explain to Gilgamesh (and the reader) the various fates of the dead in the Afterlife" and in "an awkward attempt to bring closure", it both connects the Gilgamesh of the epic with the Gilgamesh who is the King of the Netherworld, and is "a dramatic capstone whereby the twelve-tablet epic ends on one and the same theme, that of "seeing" (= understanding, discovery, etc.), with which it began."
The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the "Iliad" was composed slightly before the "Odyssey", and that Homeric formulae preserve older features than other parts of the poems.
Group C
Brahmagupta () (born , died ) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He is the author of two early works on mathematics and astronomy: the "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta" (BSS, "correctly established doctrine of Brahma", dated 628), a theoretical treatise, and the "Khaṇḍakhādyaka" ("edible bite", dated 665), a more practical text.
Hinduism and Buddhism were the prominent religions of southeast Asia in the 1st millennium CE, prior to the Islamic conquest that started in the 14th century. The Hindus prevailed in Bali, Indonesia and they have two types of Hindu calendar. One is a 210-day based Pawukon calendar which likely is a pre-Hindu system, and another is similar to lunisolar calendar system found in South India and it is called the Balinese saka calendar which uses Hindu methodology. The names of month and festivals of Balinese Hindus for the most part are different, though the significance and legends have some overlap.
It is estimated that Homer's "Odyssey" was composed sometime in the 50-year period from 725 to 675 BC, and it is thought that it shows the influence of earlier oral poetic traditions of different peoples. In the "Odyssey" the episodes that are placed on the Black Sea, which would include the cyclops story, appear to incorporate parts of the Gilgamesh tradition, as well as the Caucasian myths of a one-eyed monster. There are striking parallels between Homer's story and the Caucasian stories of Urzmaeg, where the hero outwits a one-eyed giant, and blinds him with a torch. It is thought that the Caucasian myths probably came to the Greeks through the epic Anatolian song tradition.
Tamils have strong attachment to the Tamil language, which is often venerated in literature as ""Tamil̲an̲n̲ai"", "the Tamil mother". It has historically been, and to large extent still is, central to the Tamil identity. Like the other languages of South India, it is a Dravidian language, unrelated to the Indo-European languages of northern India. The language has been far less influenced by Sanskrit than the other Dravidian languages, and preserves many features of Proto-Dravidian, though modern-day spoken Tamil in Tamil Nadu freely uses loanwords from Sanskrit and English. Tamil literature is of considerable antiquity, and is recognised as a classical language by the government of India. Classical Tamil literature, which ranges from lyric poetry to works on poetics and ethical philosophy, is remarkably different from contemporary and later literature in other Indian languages, and represents the oldest body of secular literature in South Asia.
Tamils have strong attachment to the Tamil language, which is often venerated in literature as ""Tamil̲an̲n̲ai"", "the Tamil mother". It has historically been, and to large extent still is, central to the Tamil identity. Like the other languages of South India, it is a Dravidian language, unrelated to the Indo-European languages of northern India. The Tamil language preserves many features of Proto-Dravidian, though modern-day spoken Tamil in Tamil Nadu freely uses loanwords from Sanskrit and English and vice versa. Tamil literature is of considerable antiquity, and is recognised as a classical language by the government of India. Classical Tamil literature, which ranges from lyric poetry to works on poetics and ethical philosophy, is remarkably different from contemporary and later literature in other Indian languages, and represents the oldest body of secular literature in South-east Asia.
Oak says that well-known western authorities on architecture including Ernest Binfield Havell, Mrs. Kenoyer and William Wilson Hunter have written that the Taj Mahal is built in the Hindu temple style, asserting that Havel says the plan of the ancient Hindu temple of Java, the Prambanan, is identical with that of the Taj Mahal. Also, he argues out that the octagonal shape of the Taj Mahal has a special Hindu significance, because Hindus alone have special names for the eight directions and the celestial guards assigned to them. He argues that the finial of the Taj Mahal is a trishula with a Kalasha, holding two bent mango leaves and a coconut, which is a sacred Hindu motif.
In the year 628, at an age of 30, he composed the "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta" (the improved treatise of Brahma) which is believed to be a revised version of the received "siddhanta" of the Brahmapaksha school. Scholars state that he incorporated a great deal of originality to his revision, adding a considerable amount of new material. The book consists of 24 chapters with 1008 verses in the ārya metre. A good deal of it is astronomy, but it also contains key chapters on mathematics, including algebra, geometry, trigonometry and algorithmics, which are believed to contain new insights due to Brahmagupta himself.
Elephant-headed females appearing in the "Puranas" are demonesses or cursed goddesses. In a tale about Ganesha's birth, the elephant-headed demoness Malini gives birth to Ganesha after drinking the bath-water of Parvati, Ganesha's mother. In "Skanda Purana", Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is cursed to have an elephant head, which she gets rid of by pleasing the god Brahma by penance. These are not called Vinayaki and are remotely linked to Ganesha as a mother (Malini) or a consort (Lakshmi in some icons). The "Harivamsa", "Vayu Purana" and "Skanda Purana" also describe elephant-faced Matrikas ("Mothers"), "graha"s (seizers) and "gana"s, who bear names like Gajananā ("elephant-faced"), Gajamukhi ("elephant-faced") and Gajasya ("elephantine"). However, Krishan relates these Matrikas to Jyeshtha, the goddess of misfortune who is described as elephant-faced.
Basse's most famous poem is his "enormously popular sixteen-line elegy on Shakespeare":
Kalidasa, now a renowned poet, is one of the astadiggajas (eight great poets including Daṇḍin) in the court of King Bhoja (Srinivasa Murthy), much to the ire of the elder poet Musuri Krishnamurthy. Bhoja pleads with his dear friend Kalidasa to write a "charama geethe" (burial song) for him. Kalidasa refuses, since Bhoja is sure to die once he hears the song. Vidyadhare assumes the name Kaladhare, rests at a prostitute Ratnakala's home and catches Kalidasa's attention. Vidyadhare is pleased to see her husband, but Kalidasa is unaware of his former life. Kalidasa composes his best work "Abhignaanashaakuntala" with romantic interests on Vidyadhare.
Nanne Choda famous work is Kumara Sambavam in Telugu. This work is believed to be composed in 10th century before Nannaya's Mahabaratha. Others place Nannechoda between the period of Nannaya and Tikkana. Kumara Sambavam is not the translation of Kalidasa's work of the same name. But Nannechodudu has drawn inspiration from Kalidasa's work as well as other stories of the Saivaite literature. 
He has dedicated his work to Jangama Mallikarjuna, who was his guru.
Some scholars, including M. Srinivasachariar and T. S. Narayana Sastri, believe that all the works attributed to "Kalidasa" are not by a single person. According to Srinivasachariar, writers from 8th and 9th centuries hint at the existence of three noted literary figures that share the name Kalidasa. These writers include Devendra (author of "Kavi-Kalpa-Lata"), Rajashekhara and Abhinanda. Sastri lists the works of these three Kalidasas as follows:Sastri goes on to mention six other literary figures known by the name "Kalidasa": Parimala Kalidasa alias Padmagupta (author of "Navasahasanka Charita"), Kalidasa alias Yamakakavi (author of "Nalodaya"), Nava Kalidasa (author of "Champu Bhagavata"), Akbariya Kalidasa (author of several "samasya"s or riddles), Kalidasa VIII (author of "Lambodara Prahasana"), and Abhinava Kalidasa alias Madhava (author of "Sankshepa-Sankara-Vijayam").
Kannada epic poetry mainly consists of Jain religious literature and Lingayat literature. Asaga wrote "Vardhaman Charitra", an epic which runs in 18 cantos, in 853 CE, the first Sanskrit biography of the 24th and last tirthankara of Jainism, Mahavira, though his Kannada language version of Kalidasa's epic poem, "Kumārasambhava", "Karnataka Kumarasambhava Kavya" is lost. The most famous poet from this period is Pampa (902-975 CE), one of the most famous writers in the Kannada language. His "Vikramarjuna Vijaya" (also called the "Pampabharatha") is hailed as a classic even to this day. With this and his other important work Ādi purāṇa he set a trend of poetic excellence for the Kannada poets of the future. The former work is an adaptation of the celebrated Mahabharata, and is the first such adaptation in Kannada. Noted for the strong human bent and the dignified style in his writing, Pampa has been one of the most influential writers in Kannada. He is identified as "Adikavi" "first poet". It is only in Kannada that we have a Ramayana and a Mahabharata based on the Jain tradition in addition to those based on Brahmanical tradition.