Shakuntala’s story first appears in Adi Parva of Mahabharata. She is the daughter of Rishi Vishwamitra and the apsara Menaka. She is abandoned but brought up by Rishi Kanva. King Dushyanta visits Kanva’s ashram and falls in love with her. He marries her in a ‘gandharva vivaah’ – a love marriage without rituals. He promises to take her back to the Kingdom but does not keep the promise. Shakuntala confronts Dushyanta in the royal court alongwith her son. Dushyanta refuses to recognize them, fearing public censure. An Asariri (divine voice) testifies the truth, and all is well. The son is named Bharata, cherished by the universe – from the root ‘bhr’, to nourish.
Our country carries the same name – Bharat, that nourishes knowledge. Kalidasa introduces new dramatic elements – Dushyanta is cursed to forget his wife, Shakuntala misplaces the ring he gave and cant make him remember. She gets back the ring, Dushyanta remembers her on seeing it and apologises. The image is Raja Ravi Varma’s iconic Shakuntala.
Source : Nityananda Mishra, you tube video on etymology of Bharat.

Nala & Damayanti story is in Mahabharat’s Vana Parva. Yudhistira laments that there is no king more ill-fated than him. Rishi Brihadashva narrates the story of Nala to Yudhishtira. Damayanti and Nala fall in love upon hearing about each others’ qualities. They marry even though all divinities covet her. The Devas send Kali (time) to ruin Nala. Kali induces Nala’s brother to challenge him to dice. Nala loses the kingdom and all wealth. He separates from Dayamanti hoping that she is better off without him. He serves as a cook and charioteer to the king of Ayodhya. Damayanti survives severe hardships and reaches her parents. She hears that Nala is in Ayodhya. She arranges a Swayamvara in short notice which ensures that only with the help of Nala as a charioteer, the king of Ayodhya can reach in time. Nala and Damayanti reunite and Nala also wins back his kingdom.
The story has been immensely popular in history. There are more than thirty poems, twenty-five plays, fourteen prose works in Sanskrit on the story. The Tamil Sangam classic, Silapptikaram features the story. The image is Nala Damayanti by MV Dhurandhar from Ravi Verma press.

In Bhasa’s best work, Svapnavāsavadattā (“Vāsavadattā’s Dream”), Vasavadatta gives up her position as a queen for her husband. She participates in a plot to get her husband married to Padmavati, a Magadhan princess, so that he can regain his lost kingdom. She watches the King grieve for her as he is led to believe that she has died in a fire. Cruelly, she is also tasked with making arrangements for the wedding and serving as a maid to Padmavati. Eventually everything settles down happily.
Bhāsa (2nd-3rd cent CE) is the earliest known Sanskrit dramatist. His work was known through allusions by other writers. In 1912, 13 of his plays were found. His influence is seen in the works of Kālidāsa (5th cent CE), who imitated and improved upon his literary motifs.
Most of his dramas are ingenious adaptations of the epics. He was the first to portray Duryodhana and Karna sympathetically. Bhāsa deviated from the norms by portraying battle scenes and killings on the stage.
Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bhasa

The play is a historical fiction about the love story of Prince Agnimitra and Malavika, a noble woman captured by robbers and made a palace servant. They overcome political upheavals and the displeasure of Agnimitra’s other wives. The one facilitating the romance is Vidushak – a comedian character staple in many modern Indian stories & films. The hero is Pushpamitra’s son – reference to Pushyamitra, who founded the Sunga dynasty in 185BCE by assassinating the last Mauryan king at a military parade.
Kalidasa’s third great romantic drama is ‘Vikramorvasiyam’, based on the Rig Vedic story of Pururava & Urvashi. The image is Raja Ravi Varma’s painting depicting Pururava & Urvashi.
Source: GC Jhal, ‘Kalidasa – A Study’

Mrichchakatikam means ‘The Little Clay Cart.’ It is an original story and is not based on historical or religious traditions. Sudraka is likely a Gupta era writer who completed an unfinished play of Bhasha.
Charudatta is a married Brahmin merchant who ends up impoverished due to his generosity. Vasantsena, a courtesan with a heart of gold, is trying to escape the evil intentions of a local grandee. They help each other and fall in love in the process. He keeps her jewels safe. She offers a little gold-plated clay cart to his child who does not have any other toy. The name of the play comes from this toy.
The villain traps both and they are about to be killed. A revolution unseats the king and his officials, including the villain. The new king saves the hero and heroine, who reunite.
This is perhaps the only Sanskrit play (besides Bhasha’s incomplete ‘Charudattam’, that it is based on) with a courtesan as heroine.
Source : Course Material of Lucknow University

The play describes the crisis that the Guptas face after Samudragupta. The play is available as fragments in other works.
In the play, the elder son of Samudragupta, Ramagupta, is besieged by Sakas. He agrees to hand over his wife Dhruvadevi for peace. The younger brother Chandragupta and his soldiers disguise themselves as the queen and her women retainers. They enter the Saka camp and defeat the surprised Sakas.
Chandragupta then kills Ramagupta, marries Dhruvadevi and ascends the throne as the famous Vikramaditya. The two were originally in love but she was constrained to marry his elder brother.
There is a disagreement about this narrative of the play. However, latter copperplate inscriptions of Rashtrakuta dynasty prove the events. They criticize Chandragupta’s character for not only killing his elder brother but marrying his widow.
Jaishankar Prasad’s Hindi play, ‘Dhruvaswamini’ depicts the queen as the leader against the foreign Sakas and was an inspiration for our freedom struggle.
Source: V Raghavan, ‘The Social Play in Sanskrit’, 1966 Lecture

Amarushataka ("The Hundred Verses of Amaru") is one of the most celebrated works of classical Sanskrit love poetry (shringara kavya). It is traditionally attributed to the poet Amaru. It consists of approximately 100 independent lyrical verses (muktakas). Unlike grand romantic epics, each verse captures a fleeting moment of human intimacy: the wounded pride of a lover (mana), secret glances, stolen kisses, the longing of separation, or the tenderness of reconciliation. The poems are especially admired for their subtle portrayal of the emotional complexities of romantic relationships.
An intriguing legend connects these with Adi Shankaracharya. According to later traditional accounts, Shankaracharya defeated the scholar Mandana Mishra in a philosophical debate but was subsequently questioned by Mishra's wife, Ubhaya Bharati, on kama (love and sensual experience). Being a celibate monk, Shankaracharya is said to have entered the body of the deceased King Amaru through his yogic powers, experiencing the pleasures and responsibilities of worldly life before returning to answer her questions. Some versions of the legend consequently attribute the Amarushataka to Shankaracharya himself. There is no reliable historical evidence establishing Shankaracharya's authorship.
Sources
A.N.D. Haksar, My Shameless Heart: Love Lyrics of Amaru Shatakam, Madhaviya Shankara Digvijayam.

Malati-Madhava is an original (prakarna) story. Some of the settings resemble popular horror films. Under political pressure, Malati was engaged to marry the King’s minister.
Malati gets abducted by wicked tantrics. She is taken to a cremation ground as human sacrifice. Madhava visits the same cremation ground to sell human flesh to ghouls in an effort to save Malati. He hears Malati’s cries, defeats the tantrics and frees Malati.
Madhava’s friend disguises himself as a girl to fool the minister and helps the lovers escape.
The disciple of a pious Buddhist nun uses mystical powers to unite the lovers.
Bhavabhuti (7th-8th cent ) hailed from Vidarbha. He is the most influential Sanskrit writer after Kalidasa. He wrote in a highly stylized form. He avoided humour and combined romance, horror, and heroism to create a unique style.
The image is a 17th cent Basohli Pahari painting depicting Malati & Madhava.
Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bhavabhuti

Natika is a light romantic drama in four acts – a normal play had 10 acts. The great 7th cent CE scholar emperor, Harsha Vardhana of Kannauj wrote two - ‘Ratnavali’ & ‘Priyadarshika.’
King Udayana wants to marry Ratnavali to fulfill a royal prophecy. Ratnavali is shipwrecked, loses her memory, and enters Queen Vasavadatta’s service. She falls in love with Udayana through a series of secret meetings and palace intrigues. A palace fire eventually reveals her as a princess, leading to their marriage. ‘Priyadarshika’ shares a similar storyline around Udayana and the princess of Anga.
Harsha’s plays established his reputation as a sophisticated dramatist of elegance and entertainment. The image is Harsha’s signature from the Banskhera inscription of 628CE.
Source: https://theliteraryscholar.com/nagananda-by-harsha-analysis/

Banabhatta was at the court of Harsha and wrote his definitive biography with his son. They also wrote ‘Kadamabari’, a masterpiece of prose romance. It is a complex, nested-frame love story involving the Gandharva princess Kadambari, Prince Chandrapida and their friends across multiple incarnations. There are so many sub plots that the heroine makes an appearance almost at the halfway mark.
While scholars hesitate to call it a novel, it is one of the earliest works globally, to have features of a modern novel –storytelling that has a long but continuous narrative and which explores the complexities of character rather than just events.
Because of this reason, Kadambari became the generic name for a novel in Marathi & Kannada.
The image is Raja Ravi Verma’s Kadambari playing sitar.
Source : Wikipedia, https://literariness.org/2019/03/21/modern-novels-and-novelists/

Dandin was the court poet in the Pallava kingdom of South India in the 7th-8th century. His ‘Dasakumaracharitam’ is a collection of coming-of-age stories of ten young men—prince of Magadha and his noble friends, exiled after a defeat. It portrays the low life - thieves, gamblers, corrupt officials, and courtesans, with a realistic description of human flaws.
The writing is clever – in the 7th chapter, the narrator temporarily loses the use of his lips due to passionate kissing. Therefore Dandin writes the chapter as a lipogram—completely avoiding any labial consonants (p, ph, b, bh, m).
The women characters in his work have great agency. Even if a fraction of the portrayal was true, then women in ancient India were unlike how we perceive them to have been. Some say that these stories resemble the depiction in Ajanta cave paintings.
Source: The Statesman, 17th Feb 2022, Review of Vasanthi Srinivasan’s ‘Virtue & Human Ends’

Bilhana & Kalhana are the two best medieval historians of India and both were from Kashmir. Kalhana wrote the definitive history of Kashmir. Bilhana’s portrayal of the Chalukya king Vikramaditya is legendary. Bilhana was a travelling writer and he ended up at the Chalukya court.
He wrote ‘Chaurapancasika’ – fifty verses of the (love) thief. A tutor falls in love with his student, a royal princess. When the king finds out, he imprisons the tutor. In prison, the tutor laments about his unrequited love. Each verse begins with the refrain ‘adyapi’ which means ‘I still remember her’ or ‘even now’.
The great Edwin Arnold named his translation, ‘An Indian Love Lament’.
Source : https://memoirsofindia.com/product/sir-edwin-arnold-the-chaurapanchasika/