When and where Kalidasa lived remains a mystery. He acknowledges no links with the Guptas; he may not even have coincided with them. Familiarity with Ujjain and telling descriptions of the lush Narmada valley suggest that he belonged to Malwa rather than Magadha. Tradition insists that he adorned the court of a shadowy King Vikramaditya whom chronology assigns to the first century BC. On internal evidence, however, he seems unlikely to have preceded the Guptas; and it may be significant that Vikramaditya was also one of the many epithets used by Samudra-Gupta.
