Love in Hindu Literature by Benoy Kumar Sarkar first published in 1916. LOVE between man and woman has always been a theme of Hindu poetry. With Kalidasa, the Shakespeare or Goethe of classical Sanskrit literature, (who flourished in the first half of the fifth century in the reign of Chandragupta II, one of the Indian Charlemagne), love between the sexes was a principal motif of his epic, lyric and dramatic works.