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“What went on in the mind of the master (Kalidasa, author of Shakuntala) as he pulled the strings of his play we cannot know; but in his comedies we see him as a gentle cynic for whom all the world was a stage and the men and women on it players.”*
Today there is a growing awareness of the need of the West for understanding and appreciation of the East. The present broad theme of UNESCO, which was adopted in 1956 at the UNESCO Conference in Delhi, India, was “mutual appreciation East and West”. The UNESCO Conference recognized that perhaps the greatest potential for areas of agreement lies in the respective cultures of the East and the West. The technological superiority of the West — and the previous colonial status of many of the countries of the Middle and Far East — accounts in large measure for the fact that Asian peoples for many generations have been studying and becoming acquainted with the art and science and culture of the West. In the interest of understanding in a greatly diminished world, it behooves the peoples of the West to familiarize themselves and to become acquainted with the classics of the Far East and Middle East.
Although there can be no disputing that both East and West are alike through having a common basis in humanity, the oriental classics present very real challenges. Some