A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.s4.7

c16.s4.7

Pictures of nature, sometimes as influenced by love, sometimes independently, are frequent and charming, echoing some of the thoughts of the *Therīgāthās* in which Buddhist nuns express their close observation of nature. Autumn, the rainy season, summer, and spring all evoke effective sketches; bees hover over flowers, the peacock and the crows enjoy the pelting rain, the female antelope seeks longingly her mate, male and female ape lend comedy. Gnomic sayings are not rare, and often very pithy; a miser’s money is as useful to him as his shadow to a traveller; only the deaf and the blind have a good time in the world, for the former do not hear harsh words, the latter do not see hateful faces. Other elements in the collection are fragments, dramatic or epic, or episodes of the folk-tale, as when we hear of a lady in captivity awaiting a rescuer, or women captured by robbers, or a naughty wife who pretends to be bitten by a scorpion in order to go to the house of the doctor who loves her. How far back go these fragments we do not know; our lower date for Hāla is purely speculative, though Bāṇa knew his collection, and even then we have no security for the existence even in Bāṇa’s time of any particular part.