Great arts and literatures can cross the boundary of time. It may be Altamira Cave Paintings, or Tajmahal or the great literature like Srimad Bhagabat Geeta. I always wonder what makes some creation great, what makes some literatures immortal, which moves people far beyond of its time horizon and this is an attempt to find this answer.
Chronology of one or a group of life events makes a story. A story with the human feelings presented in an artistic manner makes a good literature. And when a good literature attempts to portrait the eternal Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram ( Truth, Divinity & Beauty ) creates a great literature.
There is very fine difference between a text and a literature, it is more easy to sense this for common people like me, than describe. I'll try to explain it taking help of a legendary story, which I used to hear from my parents. This is about Kalidasa, probably the greatest Indian writer of any epoch.
Kalidas was one of the great seven scholars ( nava ratna) of Vikramaditya, a great king of ancient India. Kalidas used to get some extra attention, respect and honor from the king, naturally other poets of the kingdom were not very happy about that, moreover Kalidas didn't come from a traditional pandit back ground, which made them more uncomfortable about his importance to the king. So one day they went to king challenging his quality as poet. Vikramaditya listen to their grievance and decided to short it out and informed next day morning will be a contest to judge the poetic quality of Kalidas.
So next day morning when council started, he call one representative from the protestors and called Kalidas. Then instruct them to write a line on whatever they can see through the window.
A dry wood was lying outside the window, taking the first chance the other poet most likely the name was Dandi, presented this line :
''suskam kastham tishthatygre'' ("dry wood resides in front").
Grammatically very correct, very much inline with the train of the literature for that time, when there was a tendency to combine multiple words together. Obviously very short and precise, so got a lot of praise from the hall.
So now its Kalidas's turn, so he starts reciting his creation,
''nirasa taruvara purato bhati'' ("a lifeless part of a tree appearing ahead"),
Everybody got stunned, a man who can describe a dry wood with such an poetic verse is undoubtedly great.
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