The Pageant of Seasons

The Ṛtusaṁhāra is considered by many an early work by the poet Kalidasa. Located in the Gupta Age of classical culture, the pageant of seasons is instrumental in creating a national cultural geography and ecology styled in aesthetics and erotics. This edition of Kalidasa's text includes two displacements in time and place, first, the Bengal School artist Asit Kumar Haldar's translation made in the nineteen forties and, now, in our global times, a translation in English by the American scholar of Sanskrit and archivist at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Richard Hartz. These three imaginings of the cycle of seasons shows us a way to use the past to experience a present and build a future. The editor, Debashish Banerji, is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco and the author of "The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore" (Sage, 2010).