Ancient India’s greatest poet-dramatist, "the Shakespeare of India"
The summit of ancient Indian Sanskrit literature, often called "the Shakespeare of India." His play Shakuntala tells how a king’s love for a forest maiden is forgotten through a curse and at last restored — its diction ornate, its feeling deep and tender. When it was rendered into a European language in the eighteenth century, it left Goethe and others awestruck. His long poem Meghaduta has a banished demigod send a message to his beloved by a passing cloud, writing all the rivers and mountains of India into a lover’s longing — the height of the Sanskrit poetic imagination.
When Shakuntala reached Europe, Goethe, having read it, wrote a poem of praise: if one wanted a single word to hold at once spring blossom and autumn fruit, heaven and earth, it would be "Shakuntala." An ancient Indian drama, a thousand years on, crossing language and continent, could still win the heart of the West’s greatest poet — such is the power of great literature.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.