Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s8: Lyric Poetry

A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s8

Language
English

Lyric Poetry

v3.c35.s8.1

³ Samples of Indian lyric in German translation are found among others in Th. Aufrecht, Blüthen aus Hindustan, Bonn 1873 and Beiträge zur Kenntnis indischer Dichter, ZDMG 36, 1882, 361 ff. and in Ind. Stud. 17, 1885, 168 ff; L. von Schroeder, Mangoblüten, Stuttgart 1892; Joh. Hertel, Indische gedichte, Stuttgart 1900; J. J. Meyer, Kāvyasaṁgraha, Leipzig, Lotusverlag, [Indische Gedichte aus vier Jahrtausenden in deutscher Nachbildung von Otto von Glasenapp, etc. Berlin 1925; P. E. Pavolini, Poeti d'amore nell' India, Florenze, 1900, and S. K. De, Treatment of Love in Sanskrit Literature, Calcutta 1929.]

v3.c35.s8.2

Lyric is the oldest Indian poetical composition known to us. The hymns to the gods and the sacrificial and magical songs of the Veda are the oldest of the extant Indian poetical compositions. Although the Vedas are essentially religious, we find in them considerable amount of secular leanings. The Uṣas-hymns and the love-spell ballads sometimes remind us of the later lyric and the hymns referring to war magic in the Atharvaveda sound almost like very old war songs. Centuries later we find gems of lyrical poems full of deep sentiments, religious fervour and such internal natural feeling that for all the time has become special characteristic of Indian poetry in the songs of monks and nuns in Buddhist literature. We come by a love-song too in a Buddhist Sutta and find traces of a drink-song in a Buddhist Jātaka¹. In the Aṇuogadārasutta of the Jaina canons some love-songs have been quoted as illustrations of sentiments in poetry². The Jaina monk Hemacandra, in a narrative of the Pariśiṣṭaparvan has preserved for us match-songs to the accompaniment of the lute after the style of the Schnaderhüpfel of Germany.

v3.c35.s8.3

¹ See above II, 79 ff.; transl. 101 ff.; 32, trans. 42 (Dīghanikāya 21) and 116, transl. p. 143 (Jātaka 512).

v3.c35.s8.4

² Weber, Indische Stud. 16, 154 ff.; Hertel, Ausgewählte Erzählungen aus Hemacandras Pariśiṣṭaparvan, p. 204 ff.

v3.c35.s8.5

The history of Indian metrics too makes it clear that love-lyrics were not only cultured early in India but also that they had developed a high degree of skill and poetic merit³. We have before us a fragment of the composition of the grammarian Patañjali, and that has been beautifully translated into German by Th. Aufrecht:—

v3.c35.s8.6

³ See above, p. 28, transl. p. 32. [Partly quoted under Pāṇini I, 3, 48.]

v3.c35.s8.7

*api vijahīhi dṛḍhopagūhaṁ tyaja navasaṁgamabhīruvallabham* ।
*aruṇakarodgama eṣa vartate varatano saṁpravadanti kukkuṭāḥ* ॥
“Loose the arms, that encircle closely about me;
Bashful darling, I must let thee go;
Heareth thou, the cry of the waking cock;
And how shines forth the red morning sun⁵.”

v3.c35.s8.8

⁵ [5. The proper translation would be:

v3.c35.s8.9

The oldest love-song certainly must not have been composed in Sanskrit, but in popular languages. And it is why that a greater part of the Indian lyric poetry belongs to Prākrit literature. But in old Indian literature, however, a few traces of real folk-songs are preserved for us in Prākrit lyric poems. The great bulk of even Prākrit lyrics too certainly belongs to ornate court poetry, exactly as the whole of Sanskrit lyric. The ornate metres originated first of all on the soil of the latter, whilst the popular and the Prākrit poetry

v3.c35.s8.10

⁴ Ujjvaladatta's Commentary on the Uṇādisūtras, ed., London 1859, p. 150. Cf. Weber, Ind. Studien 8, 172 f.; Jacobi, ZDMG 48, 445.

v3.c35.s8.11

“Away with hard embrace; leave the husband who is timid in respect of the union that is recent. It is dawn: O beautiful-limbed girl, loudly declare the cocks.”]

v3.c35.s8.12

employed mainly the simple Āryā metre, the proper metre for melodious songs¹.

v3.c35.s8.13

¹ The Āryā metre was first taken into Sanskrit poetry from Prākrit poetry; see Jacobi, ZDMG 40, 1886, 336 ff. There is an inscription that proves the existence of lyric poetry in old Prākrit: see Lüders, Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen, p. 62.

v3.c35.s8.14

Fortunately for us there is preserved in the Sattasaī² or the "Seven Hundred Stanzas" of Hāla Sātavāhana a collection of Prākrit songs, that gives us a nice representation of the way in which the people in ancient India sang about pleasure and sorrow of love. As Prākrit was not a popular language, but probably a literary dialect formed on the model of and in conscious imitation of the spoken popular dialects, these Prākrit lays are not in fact folk-songs in the real sense of the word, but probably popular models of imitated creations of Indian ornate poets, who strove not only for describing the life and acitivity, above all the life of love, but would also reflect in the feelings and sentiments of the country girls and country lads, the herdsmen and cowherdesses, the female gardener, miller's wife, the hunter and the labourer. In this collection of songs (according to A. Wilbrandt) "the peaceful and private life of the Indian people, particularly in village and in nature, is described in songs and is sung; then these quatrains were intended to be sung. All the landscapes, the seasons and the pleasure and pain of weather play their part; but there is always the urging of the heart. Feelings that are most tender and most sensuous are often frankly expressed; the tender feeling dominates. It is not a man who often speaks, but it is a female voice that we hear in it more and more; the women who speak are old, young, friend, mother, daughter and aunt. They speak to young men and girls who are in love, to other girls or to their ownselves. They probably talk about so many things, yet the theme of the talk is always love.”

v3.c35.s8.15

² The Sanskrit rendering of this title, that is in Prākrit, is Saptaśatī. Other titles are: Gāthāsaptaśatī, Gāthākośa, Saptaśataka. Edition and German translation by A. Weber, AKM. V. 1870; VII, 1881; cf. ZDMG 26, 1872, 735 ff.; 28, 1874, 345 ff.; Ind. Stud. 16, 1883, and Deutsche Rundschau, vol. 42, 1885, p. 223 ff. The translations of Weber are wholly literal and have nothing of poetical reproduction. Specimens of meterial translation have been given by H. Brunnhofer, Über den Geist der indischen Lyrik, Leipzig, 1882, p. 24 ff., and G. Meyer, Essays und Studien, Strassburg 1885, p. 289 ff. Brunnhofer has mostly doubled the small stanzas and he has rather composed his own poems on the basis of those of India, whilst Meyer has often made his rendering more compact than the Indian poem from the stanzas of Hāla. Adolph Wilbrandt has done the best (in a small selection on 32 stanzas published in the "Neuen Freien Presse" in Vienna on April 19, 1899 and in a second selection of 62 stanzas as published in Vol. 87, 1900 in the "Westermanns Illustrierten Monatschriften); here the Indian stanzas have literally and faithfully been reproduced, and yet the translation is a poetical reproduction. The text with the commentary of Gaṅgādhara-bhaṭṭa has also been published in Km. 21, 1889. [The śatakas IV-VII with Haritāmrapītāmbara's commentary have been published by Jagadish Lāl Shāstri, Lahore 1942; Text with an elaborate introduction and Marāṭhī trans. by Jogalekar, Poona 1956. Cf. Keith, HSL. p. 223 ff.]

v3.c35.s8.16

Generally each of the stanzas is complete in itself; only now and then two or three such stanzas are combined to form one song. In the most concised form, in a few words a sentiment is expressed, a lament is made or the pleasure of the highest sensuous charms of love is described. A small picture, very often drawn with a few strokes from actual life, is brought in. There we hear the words of a damsel in love who gives expression to her feeling of anguish on account of love or to her longings. She requests the moon to touch her with the same ray-hands with which she had touched also her lover who is tarrying in a distant land. As in the whole of Indian love lyrics¹, so in these songs too, the wailing of the husband or of the beloved always occurs, likewise the longing of a man living in a distant place for his beloved staying in a foreign land. So a traveller speaks to the cloud to thunder over his head as much as it likes, but it should not kill his beloved. A woman counts on the fingers of her hands and feet the days that her husband has been away and weeps because there remains no finger for counting further (307). A young woman says:—

v3.c35.s8.17

¹ The same is still the case with popular poems in India; See *F. Rosen*, die Indrasabhā des Amānat. Leipzig 1892, p. 28, where as an example has been quoted the fine Indian song :

v3.c35.s8.18

*kallaṁ kila kharahiao pavasiīhi piotti suṇṇaï jaṇammi* ।
*taha vaḍḍha bhaavaï ṇise jaha se kallaṁ via ṇa hoi* ॥
“They say that my hard-hearted husband is going away early in the morning tomorrow; sacred night, please extend theyself, that there never comes the dawn.”
(Transl. according to A. Wilbrandt).

v3.c35.s8.19

“My husband went out in search of gold, and my house became desolate: he found no gold and has not returned back: and my hair has become silver.”
Km. 1, 46.

v3.c35.s8.20

Another woman addresses her female friend in the following words:—

v3.c35.s8.21

*ajjaṁ pi tāva ekkaṁ mā māṁ vārehi piasahi ruantiṁ* ।
*kalliṁ uṇa tammi gae jaï ṇa muā tā ṇa rodissaṁ* ॥
“O dear friend, only till today, only upto this day, do not prevent me from weeping. In case I do not die when it is morning and he is away I shall weep no more¹.” (Trans. according to Wilbrandt.)

v3.c35.s8.22

¹ Km. 6, 2.

v3.c35.s8.23

What tenderness springs forth from the following picture:— The beloved husband has returned back home, but the wife does not decorate hereself for his reception, since she does not like to hurt her unfortunate lady-neighbour, whose lover is still on his sojourn. She further sings many pathetic little songs in her continuous separation. A young farmer, whose wife is dead, asks the room to restore his former amorous pleasures, as the hiding place of his stolen property. The deepest is the idea expressed in a few words, that according to the translation of Wilbrandt can be rendered as:—

v3.c35.s8.24

“When of the two, who have grown up closely together gradually for a long time in pleasure and pain, one dies, that one lives, but that (one who lives) is dead².”
*samasokkhadukkhaparivaḍḍhiāṇaṁ kāleṇa rūḍdhapemmāṇaṁ* ।
*mihuṇāṇaṁ maraï jaṁ taṁ khu jīaï iaraṁ muaṁ hoï* ॥

v3.c35.s8.25

² Km. 2, 42. Weber compares with this stanza (142) the beautiful expression from Bhavabhūti's Mālatīmādhava. “He, about whom one who loves him thinks, is not dead”.

v3.c35.s8.26

The following little song shows that the husband in a foreign land is not always an object of lamemtation for the wife left by him at home:—

v3.c35.s8.27

“About me, the night, that is unkind, envelops everything;
Away is (my) husband, vacant is my house;
I am afraid; they may hence abduct me away;
So, O Darling, for my protection, please come in³.”
(Translation according to that of G. Meyer; Km. 4, 35).

v3.c35.s8.28

³ Literal transl. of the stanza:—Of the couple, who have deep love developed (for each other), who have grown.... ]

v3.c35.s8.29

The following song too sings the secret love:—

v3.c35.s8.30

*coriaraasaddhālui mā putti bbhamasu andhaārammi* ।
*ahiaaraṁ lakkhijjasi tamabharie dīvasīhavva* ॥
> “O girl, I caution you,
> If you meet (your lover) in the dark,
> The glitter will betray you,
> Since your beautiful eyes are sparkling.”
>> (Transl. according to that of Meyer, Km. 5, 15)

v3.c35.s8.31

It is understood that in many songs the theme is about the quarrel and skirmishes of the lovers. Here are two examples:—

v3.c35.s8.32

*de suaṇu pasia ehṇiṁ puṇo vi sulahāī rūsiavvāiṁ* ।
*esā maacchi maalañchaṇujjalā galaï chaṇarāī* ॥
> “Can’st you quarrel still in the morning;
> Do you yet have in mind there will be dawn again;
> This illuminated full-moon night,
> In amorous sport, please let it pass.”
>> (Translated according to G. Meyer, Km. 5, 66);
> “When the stars were fading, I wanted to rebuke him,
> I wanted to show my wrath and displeasure,
> I wanted to scold him too;
> And all, as you liked, you girl,
> When I must not look at him.”
>> (Transl. according to that of A. Wilbrandt 743).

v3.c35.s8.33

The following strophe Weber 498, Km. 5, 98) presents a charming picture in its simplicity :

v3.c35.s8.34

*muhapecchao paī se sāvi hu saviseṣadaṁsaṇummaiā* ।
*dovī kaatthā puhaïṁ amahilapurisaṁ va maṇṇanti* ॥
> “He looks at her deeply into her face;
> She is sunk in his vision;
> Thus looking at each other in great joy.
> As if for them they were all alone in the world¹.”

v3.c35.s8.35

¹ W. has translated into a German verse as above. The translator’s rendering would be:—

v3.c35.s8.36

In other songs the pleasures of love and beauty of youth have been depicted in glowing but in westerners’ taste in altogether voluptuous colours. The bosom bulging out of the bodice has been compared with the moon rising

v3.c35.s8.37

> “Her husband was looking at her face;
> She too was maddened by gazing at him :
> The two, who had attained their goal,
> Seemed to feel as if the earth was deviod of women and men.”

v3.c35.s8.38

out from the clouds. The breasts of the female miller that have become dusty with flour are the two swans that have hidden their faces inside lotuses. In these songs often we find talk about bitings and scratchings as well. The crescent of the moon covered in the glue of the evening redness of the sky is compared with the nail-scratch on the bosom of a young damsel shimmering through red silk garment. They bring before our eyes the picture of family-life too. The angry wife is obliged to smile when her little son with a jerk climbs on the back of her husband who has fallen at her feet. A pregnant woman, asked about her health,* just casts her glance gently at her lover. A woman is enchanted to see the first little tooth of her child and shows it to her husband. In many stanzas (407, 449, 635) we find references to burning of widows: While on one hand we find these pictures in which the village scenes prevail by far, we find on the other songs that belong to the city harem life, and there are many stanzas (thus 887f.) that can outright be designated as songs about courtesans.

v3.c35.s8.39

In addition to these pictures from life of man we find in other songs pictures from nature . We find here a description of the summer midday or a touching picture of the rainy season or of the autumn in four small lines. We see bees hovering about buds and blossoms. We meet with thunderstorms. The pictures from the life of beasts are not rare. We find a pair of elephants in love, a bull and a cow in love, a monkey and a she-monkey in a funny situation. Shot with the arrow of a hunter, a she-antelope gazes for a long time at her consort. At one place we find a peacock licking the dew-drops deposited over the blades of grass, and at another cranes with their curved neck sitting motionless, whilst they are obliged to hang their wings after it has rained. Often the picture is just a comparison. The clouds are dispersed—the Vindhyā mountain spreads out its mantle. Or the earth bedecked with yellow flowers looks as if monks (with their yellow cowls) had sunk into the earth out of veneration for Buddha¹.

v3.c35.s8.40

¹ "The commentators try to find in each of these stanzas, an erotic meaning or some similar sense, although they have nothing to do with erotics. Western scholars need not follow them always, even when they too often are correct."

v3.c35.s8.41

We find a number of aphorisms in the Sattasaī. In one of these aphorisms it has appropriately been said that a miser utilizes his wealth to the same extent as a wanderer his own shadow. Other sayings describe the evils of the world. Thus it is said that it is no wonder that noble people are so rare in the world : the earth does not have so many geese as there are cranes. Another stanza (704) praises the deaf and the blind [Km. 7. 95]: *dhaṇṇā bahirā andhā te ccia jīanti māṇuse loe* । *ṇa suṇanti pisuṇavaaṇaṁ khalāṇã ṛddhiṁ ṇa pekkhanti* ॥

v3.c35.s8.42

“Happy are the deaf and the blind,
Who alone truly live in the world;
Since they hear not the harsh words
And do not see the prosperity of the ignoble.”

v3.c35.s8.43

Lastly there are a number of verses in this collection that have been brought in torn out from some other context; may be, they belong to some epic or dramatic composition, as for example the verses of which the love between Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā or between Śiva and Pārvatī is the theme; or when it is said about captive women that they await rescue by some hero; or when the theme is more suitable for a narrative (as a type of fairy-tale verse), as for in the lines told about women abducted by robbers or as in those written about an unfaithful wife, who feigns scorpion-bite for the purpose of being carried to the house of her paramour for obtaining medicine (Km. 237).

v3.c35.s8.44

The motely contents of “seven hundred stanzas” already point to the fact that here we do not have before us the work of a single writer, but that of a compiler. On the other hand, however, the songs show such a striking unified characteristic that we can in no case consider Hāla, to whom is attributed the collection, merely a compiler of an anthology, but rather a gifted redactor, who made the selection with dexterity and skill and probably gave to the stanzas the final poetical form for the first time. So is explained by the introductory stanza No. 3:—“From innumerable musical strophes, Hāla, the friend of poets, has made the collection of seven hundred beautiful (literally provided with alaṃkāras or means adornment) stanzas”¹. Bāṇa too found in Hāla something more than a compiler, when in the introduction to his Harṣacarita (verse 14) he says—"Sātavāhana (i.e. Hāla) with his beautiful songs composed in 101 faultless metres has built up an imperishable charming store, as (a king, an inexhaustible treasure, not collected from villages) with diamonds (of unadulterated purity)². A tradition is that Bhāratī, the goddess of poetry, stayed for one and a half-day in the camp of Sātavāhana and generated taste in all people from the lowest down to the elephant-drivers and horse-grooms for Prākrit poetry and the king made his selection of 700 stanzas out of what they composed. Perhaps it will not be audacious to assume that this tradition just means that the king in fact made a collection of the songs from the mouth of the people and out of them made a selection of 700 stanzas and gave them a literary form³.

v3.c35.s8.45

¹ [ 1. The stanza reads : *satta sattāiṃ kaïvacchaleṇa koḍīa majjhaārammi |* *hālena viraïāiṃ sālaṃkārāṇa gāhāṇaṃ ||*

v3.c35.s8.46

² The expression *agrāmya* "not boorish" is used intentionally for the purpose of conveying the meaning that although the poems belong to rural life, yet they are not "vulgar, crude". The verse has two meanings, hence the bracketed words in the translation.

v3.c35.s8.47

³ Peterson (Kādambarī Ed., Introd. p. 74 ff.) propounds the theory that Hāla had himself mainly composed the stanzas of the Sattasaī. In the commentaries written in later centuries, the Sattasaī is treated altogether as an anthology and in it we find names of writers of individual stanzas. In respect of these names, however, the manuscripts differ very much from one another: most of them give names only in the beginning of the work and then stop. The commentaries of the Vulgata give 112 names, Bhuvanapāla gives 384. In the Km. edition the names of probable authors too are given in the gāthānukramaṇikā. Yet in many cases the names are wanting, and often Hāla himself is mentioned as the author. In the opinion of W. these names are quite unreliable. A different view is that of Pischel (Grammatik der Prākrit Sprachen § 13), who concludes from the names given that the Sattasaī presupposes a very rich Prākrit literature, in which women also had their contributions.

v3.c35.s8.48

In the purāṇas⁴, Hāla appears as the seventeenth in the list of Āndhra- or Āndhrabhṛtya-rulers, all of whom bore the epithet Sātavāhana or Śālivāhana as their family title and who ruled in the Deccan from the middle of the 3rd century B.C. down to the beginning of the 3rd century A. D.⁵. Since Hāla¹ appears in the list approximately in the middle, he must have lived in the first or second century A.D. The correctness of this tradition is supported also by the fact that almost all the inscriptions of the Āndhra kings are in Prākrit². Besides the repeated mention of the names of the Vindhya-hills and of the Godāvarī in the anthology lends further support to the view that the work of its compilation was done in the north-eastern part of the Deccan, and the Āndhras ruled just in the same region.

v3.c35.s8.49

⁴ F. E. Pargiter, The Purāṇa Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, Oxford 1913, pp. 36, 71.

v3.c35.s8.50

⁵ According to R. G. Bhandarkar (Early History of the Deccan. 2nd Ed., Bombay 1895, 31 ff., 36 ff.), the Āndhras ruled from 73 B. C. upto 218 A.D., according to Smith (ZDMG 56, 1902, 649 ff. and Early History 207 ff., 215 ff.) from 240 or 230 B.C. to 225 A.D., [according to K. P. Jayaswal. JBORS, 16, 1930, pp. 258ff. and 278 ff. from 213 B. C. upto 238 A.D.]

v3.c35.s8.51

¹ Weber, who thinks that Sattasaī must have been written in the 3rd century A. D. at the earliest and in the 7th century A.D. at the latest, is of the opinion that since the word Hāla means "ploughman", the collection got this name from the country songs. Smith, ZDMG 56, 660 f. places him in about 60 or 70 A.D.

v3.c35.s8.52

² Like Vikramāditya, who has been made the central point of Sanskrit literature, the name of Sātavāhana later got associated with the whole of Prākrit poetry of later years. But since Sātavāhana (or Śālivāhana) is the family-title of all the Āndhra kings, all the traditions that refer to King Sātavāhana (e.g. in the Kathāsaritsāgara and in Prabandhacintāmaṇi) do not have any historical value. The Jainas have naturally made him a Jaina Saint. Cf. Ras. S. V. N. Maṇḍalik in JBRAS 10, 1873, 127 ff.

v3.c35.s8.53

The Sattasaī has come down to us in not less than 6 different recensions, and this points to its extraordinary popularity. These recensions differ from one another not only in respect of the form of the text and the order of stanzas, but also in that of the textual subject-matter. Only 430 verses are found in all the different recensions. From its appearance it seems that the collection originally had much of uniform character and bore the stamp of an independent work in a certain sense and it received all the form and character of a colourful anthology of Prākrit poems, first of all in the hands of the copyists, who collected Prākrit verses from miscellaneous sources and increased the bulk of the incomplete manuscript with their own collections. When we speak of the Sattasaī as a work perhaps written in the 2nd century A.D. we mean by it only the basic stock of the text. At the most only the stanzas that are found in all the recensions can be considered to belong to such a high antiquity³.

v3.c35.s8.54

³ On the high antiquity of the Prākrit lyrics in general see also Konow, GGA, 1894 476 f. and Karpūramañjarī, p. 192 f.

v3.c35.s8.55

Daṇḍin states that Māhārāṣṭrī is the "best Prākrit" and this supports the view that the Sattasaī is the oldest work written in the Māhārāṣṭrī dialect, and this points also to its far remote antiquity⁴.

v3.c35.s8.56

⁴ Māhārāṣṭrī is the dialect of Mahārāṣṭra, the land of the Marāṭhas, in whose, metropolis, Pratiṣṭhāna, the Āndhra-kings resided. Since the work is written in musical stanzas (gāhā=gāthā) the linguistic form of the dialect has become problematic. In the dramas too the musical stanzas are always in the Māhārāṣṭri dialect. Cf. G. Garrez in JA, p. 6, part XX, 1872, 197ff. and Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen §§ 2 and 12 f.

v3.c35.s8.57

The great popularity of the work as well as uncertainty of the text is proved not only by its different manuscripts and recensions, but also by the large number of quotations from Hāla found in works of poetics. A majority of such quotations found in these works are not traceable in any of the known recensions¹. The manner in which the rhetoricians quote Hāla, although he is not a Sanskrit poet, proves the high respect that the Sattasaī enjoyed at the hands of the scholars of poetics².

v3.c35.s8.58

¹ Cf. Weber’s edition, introduction, p. XLIII ff. The same writer in Ind. Stud. 16, 202 ff. has given a list of the alaṁkāras employed in the Sattasaī.

v3.c35.s8.59

² Ānandavardhana, particularly selects his examples for suggested meaning, irony etc. from the Sattasaī, see Dhvanyāloka I, 4; II, 35; III, 16; 39.

v3.c35.s8.60

The dramas and anthologies show that Prākrit lyrics existed also in later times. Hemacandra in his Prākrit grammar cites a number of beautiful little stanzas in the Apabhraṁśa dialect³. We do not know the time when they were composed. But in their nature they differ so little from the songs of Sattasaī that some specimens are given here :

v3.c35.s8.61

³ R. Pischel, Materialen zur Kenntnis des Apabhraṁśa, AGGW, N. F. Vol. V, No. 4, Berlin 1902. (On Apabhraṁśa lyrics of Jainas and Buddhists, see Jacobi—Sanatkumāracaritam, Introduction p. XVIII ff.).

v3.c35.s8.62

*biṭṭie maï bhaṇiya tuhuṁ mā karu vaṅkī diṭṭhi* ।
*putti sakaṇṇī bhallī jiva maraï hiaï païṭṭhi* ॥
“O girl, I told you do not send side-glances at me ; for those glances entering into the heart (of others) kill them as a spear with sharp bent edge” (VIII, 4, 330).
*vippiaāraü jaï vi piu to vi taṁ āṇahi ajju* ।
*aggiṇa daddhā jaïvi gharu to teṁ aggiṁ kajju* ॥
“Friend, bring to me today my beloved, though he has offended me; for one has to do with fire even though it has burnt one’s house.” (VIII, 4, 343).
*bhallā huā ju māriā bahiṇi mahārā kantu* ।
*lajjejjaṁ tu vayaṁsiahu jaï bhaggā ghara entu* ॥
“It was well, O sister, that my husband was killed (in battle). I would have been put to shame in the

v3.c35.s8.63

presence of my friends if he had returned home defeated.” (VIII, 4, 351).

v3.c35.s8.64

*vrāsu mahārisi eu bhaṇaï jaï suisatthu pamāṇu ।*
*māyahaṁ calaṇanavantāhaṁ divi divi gaṅgā ṇhāṇu ॥*

v3.c35.s8.65

“Vyāsa, the great sage, tells that if the Vedas and śāstras are to be regarded as authoritative, then those who salute the feet of their mothers get the merit of bathing in the Gaṅgā everyday (VIII, 4, 399).

v3.c35.s8.66

Not from the Prākrit lyrics, but parallel with it, developed the Sanskrit lyrics. But since we know about the famous prized Buddhist songs of Aśvaghoṣa only in heresays, and about those of Mātṛceṭa only in fragments¹ and as only a few stanzas of Bhāsa's songs are found available to us in anthologies, for us, the first great lyric poet of Sanskrit is Kālidāsa. In his epic and dramatic poems Kālidāsa is more or less a lyric writer, and probably the best pieces that he composed in the form of musical poems are contained in many portions of his epics and particularly in his dramas. Kālidāsa is always at the summit of his art in places where he has depicted sentiment and where nature-description and human-feelings are mixed up together in pictures. His most famous lyric poem, however, is the Meghadūta “the Poem of the Cloud-Messenger”², that is counted by Indians among his great epics (mahākāvyas). It can be designated as an "epic inasmuch as the lyric stanzas are clothed in an epic form. The subject-matter is as follows:—

v3.c35.s8.67

¹ See above II, 203, 211 f., transl. 258-9, 271 ff.

v3.c35.s8.68

² The exact title is (*meghadūtaṁ kāvyam*). Commonly the title is given as the Meghadūta, the “Cloud-Messenger”. Editions: by J. Gildemeister (with Latin Glossary), Bonn 1841; with critical notes and vocabulary by A. F. Stenzler, Breslau 1874; with the commentary of Mallinātha by N. B. Godabole and K. P. Paraba, 2nd Ed. Bombay 1886, NSP. The best edition is that of E. Hultzsch with the excellent and oldest commentary of Vallabhadeva and a Sanskrit-English vocabulary, London 1911. Translations:—in English verses by H. H. Wilson, Calcutta 1813, with numerous interesting parallels from Classical and English poetry, that the translator gives in his notes. The second edition (1843) is reprinted as a supplement to the very valuable German prose translation with notes by C. Schutz, Bielefeld 1859. (Wilson's translation has again been published in his works, vol. 4.). Metrical German translations of Max-Müller (Königsberg 1847); of E. Meier, Die Klassischen Dichtungen der Inder, III, 90 ff.; of L. Fritze (Chemnitz 1879), with the help of a manuscript of the prose translation of Stenzler); very much free and abridged by Max Müler in the “Bühne and Welt”, V, 1, 1903, p. 17 ff. French by A. Guerinot, Paris 1902. An anonymous English translation in the Pandit, Vol. II. English prose translations of Jacob, Pathak and Nandargikara have been mentioned by Hultzsch, ibid p. XIV. [With Dakṣiṇāvartanātha's commentary, ed. T. Gaṇapati Śāstri, TSS. 1919; with Pūrṇasarasvati's commentary, ed. K. V. Krisnamacharya, Shrirangam 1909; with the comms. of Mallinātha and Caritravardhana, ed Nārāyaṇa Śāstri Khiste, Vārāṇasī, 1931; Eng. trans. G. J. Somayāji Madras 1934.]

v3.c35.s8.69

A Yakṣa, i.e. a class of celestial beings who are in the service of the god Kubera, had offended his master by some dereliction in the discharge of his duty, and for this his lord banished him for a year. He is obliged to leave his home and wife and to wander in the Rāma-hill in the south. In the eighth month of his banishment, just in the beginning of the rainy season, he sees a thundering cloud, that is moving from the south towards his homeland that was in the north; then he implores the cloud to convey his message to his aggrieved wife separated from him. He accurately describes to the cloud the path that he will have to traverse to reach his home in the Kailāsa hill, where in the city of Alakā is situated his castle, in which his wife is sorrowing all alone. This offers the poet a great opportunity to describe nature in a splendid manner. With particular affection he tarries when he describes his own native town Ujjayinī and Alakā, the city of the Yakṣas. The poet throughout fills our mind with wonder with his forceful pictures and similes. The black cloud spreads along the stream that resembles the pearl-band of the earth, in the middle of which shines forth a black saphire. The Kailāsa, with its snow-covered peaks resembling water-lilies, rises up in the sky and looks every night like the thundering laughter of Śiva¹. The city of Alakā, that is situated by the side of the Kailāsa hill, down which flows the river Gaṅgā, resembles a damsel lying in the lap of her lover (the hill, with her garment (the Gaṅgā) hanging down. The mansions surrounded by the clouds in the rainy season are comparable with a woman’s dark hairs interwoven with a net of pearls. After the Yakṣa has

v3.c35.s8.70

¹ Indian poets always describe laughter as white. We may approximately say: "Like the white shining teeth of loudly laughing Śiva", although the whiteness does not belong only to the white teeth, but perhaps rather also to the face that is shining on account of her laugh.

v3.c35.s8.71

accurately described to the cloud the city and his castle, he begins to describe the beauty of his wife, as he imagines her after the prolonged separation. And lastly he communicates the text of the message that he should convey with his thundering voice to his beloved. He asks him to speak to her how he always anxiously thinks about her:---

v3.c35.s8.72

*śyāmāsvangaṁ cakitahariṇaprekṣite dṛṣṭipātaṁ*
*gaṇḍacchāyāṁ śaśini śikhināṁ barhabhāreṣu keśān* ।
*utpaśyāmi pratanuṣu nadīvīciṣu bhrūvilāsān*
*hantaikasthaṁ kvacidapi na te bhīru sādṛśyamasti* ॥
*tvāmālikhya praṇayakupitāṁ dhāturāgaiḥ śilāyām*
*ātmānaṁ te caraṇapatitaṁ yāvadicchāmi kartum* ।
*asraistāvanmuhurupacitairdṛṣṭirālipyate me*
*krūrastasminnapi na sahate saṅgamaṁ nau kṛtāntaḥ* ॥
“Perhaps I may see in the priyaṅgu creeper thy body, thy glance in the look of an amazed antelope, the shade of thy temple in the moon, thy lock of hairs in the tail of a peacock, the sport of thy eye-brows, in the slender waves of the river; but alas, O timid one, thy resemblance is not available in obeity at one place.”
“Very often when I desire to paint thee in saffron colour over a slab of stone, showing thee in an angry pose in our quarrel of love, and to make myself fall upon thy feet (in order to apease thee), my vision gets obstructed with long deposited tears : the cruel god of fate does not tolerate our union even there¹.”
*bhūyaścāha tvamapi śayane kaṇṭhalagnā purā me*
*nidrāṁ gatvā kimapi rudatī sasvanaṁ viprabuddhā* ।
*sāntarhāsaṁ kathitamasakṛtpṛcchataśca tvayā me*
*dṛṣṭaḥ svapne kitava ramayankāmapi tvaṁ mayeti* ॥
“He further says—once when you were although clinging to my neck (on the bed), you fell asleep and then woke up with a cry for some reason or other; and when I asked you repeatedly (the reason of that), you said with a suppressed smile — you rogue, I saw you, in my dream, frolicking with some other woman².”

v3.c35.s8.73

¹ Translation into English from German by Max Muller.

v3.c35.s8.74

² Translation into English from German by L. Fritze.

v3.c35.s8.75

Goethe, who had known about the "Cloud-Messenger" through Wilson's translation expressed his admiration for the poem in the "Zahmen Xenien" in the following verse:

v3.c35.s8.76

"Was will man denn vergnüglicheres wissen !
Sakontala, Nala, die muss man küssen;
Und Megha-Dūta, den Wolkengesandten,
Wer schickt ihn nicht gern zu seelenverwandten¹ !"
"What more pleasant, shall we know,
Than Śakuntalā, Nala, that we must kiss;
And Megha-Dūta, the cloud-messenger,
Who is there who will not like to send him to his soul !"

v3.c35.s8.77

¹ About Meghadūta in the Noten und Abhandlungen zum Divan (Jubiläumsausgabe, Vol. 5, p. 360) Goethe says: "The first acquaintance with such a work always makes an epoch in our life". And in the article "Indische und Chinesische Dichtung" (Vol. 37, p. 210) he speaks in praise of the poem that it "describes purely human relationship". Cf. also P. Th. Hoffmann, Der indische und der deutsche Geist, p. 28 ff., 46.

v3.c35.s8.78

Alexander von Humboldt² praises "the admirable trueness to nature" with which the first advent of the cloud in the beginning of the rainy season is described in the Meghadūta. L. W. Schroeder³ vouchsafes the value of the poem as "a treasure of unestimable value" and G. Meyer⁴ describes it as "the most beautiful bewailing of a yearning lover, that one can read."

v3.c35.s8.79

² Kosmos II, 40. He compares his own lovely description of the advent of the rainy season in the tropics of America in his "Ansichten der Natur" (2nd Ed. 1826, I, 33 ff.), that he wrote before he had read Kālidāsa's Meghadūta.

v3.c35.s8.80

³ ILC 548 ff.

v3.c35.s8.81

⁴ Essays und Studien II, 99.

v3.c35.s8.82

As regards the Indians themselves they have all the time esteemed the poem as a piece of extraordinarily high value. It is a thing that points to the circumstances in which the text has not come down to us in an unmutilated form, and that in it verses got interpolated already quite early⁵.

v3.c35.s8.83

⁵ The history of the text is given clearly in the edition Hultzsch. On textual criticism see also Macdonell, JRAS 1913, 176 ff. and Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, p. 238 ff.

v3.c35.s8.84

The fame of the Meghadūta in India is proved also by the extraordinarily numerous imitations of the poem in later-day Indian literature. So is the poet Dhoi, the writer of Pavanadūta¹ or Wind-Messenger” in which a Gandharva girl sends her message by the wind to King Lakṣmaṇasena, whom she loves. Another imitation, that is rather slavish, of the Meghadūta is the poem Śukasaṁdeśa² of a poet Lakṣmīdāsa, in which a parrot takes the place of the cloud. [Then there is one Bhramarasandeśa “The Bee-Messenger of Vāsudeva.]

v3.c35.s8.85

¹ Edited by M. Chakravarti in JASB. N. S. 1, 1905, 41-71. See above p. 56, Pischel. H. L. 33 ff. and Aufrecht, ZDMG 54, 1900, 616 ff., where nine more imitations of the Meghadūta are enumerated. A second poem with the title Pavanadūta by a poet Vādicandra Sūri has been published in Km., Part XIII, 9-24. [On Dhoi, see Vidhuśekhara Bhattacharya, IHQ, 2, 1926, p. 878 ff ]

v3.c35.s8.86

² Edited by Mahārāja Rāmavarmā of Travancore in the JRAS 1884, 401 ff., where is provided a complete list of other similar imitations (Sandeśas, i.e., messages). The work is well-known in Malabar; see Rāmavarmā, JRAS, 1910, 638.

v3.c35.s8.87

Haṁsadūta of Rūpagosvāmin (16th century), Padāṅkadūta of Kṛṣṇaśarman Sārvabhauma (written in 1723 A.D.), two different poems bearing the title Uddhavadūta, one of an unknown poet and the other of a poet Mādhava, who probably lived in the 17th century, are devoted to the love of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa³. More important than these and seemingly later imitations, in spite of their age, are the Jaina poems Pārśvābhyudaya and Nemidūta⁴ already mentioned before. The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa was not only translated into Singhalese even by the Buddhists of Ceylon but was also imitated by them⁵. The fame of Kālidāsa extended upto Tibet as well and we have a Tibetan translation of the Meghadūta, probably written in the 13th century A.D. included in the Tanjūr¹.

v3.c35.s8.88

³ Cf. Eggeling, Ind. Off. Cat. p. 1467 ff; Haeberlin 374-400, 401-409. 323-347, 348-373. In the Padāṅka or Kṛṣṇapadāṅkadūta have been described the bewailings of a cowherdess, who discovered the footprint of Kṛṣṇa in the grove and is reminded thereby of her absent lover. In the Manodūta the poet Viṣṇudāsa makes his own mind the messenger for the purpose of giving expression to his own feeling of devotion to Viṣṇu; see Ind. Off. Cat. p. 1470. Another poem bearing the same title and composed by Vrajanātha (1758) is not really an imitation of Meghadūta. It describes the message that Draupadi sends to Lord Kṛṣṇa, while her garment is being removed from her body; see Km., Part XII, pp. 84-130; Krishnamacharya 128 f. There are number of verses in the Jātaka No. 297 (cf. Pischel, HL, 28 note), in which an impaled man gives a passing crow a love-complaint to his beloved: they are neither imitation nor prototype to these "messages", but are interesting parallels to these.

v3.c35.s8.89

⁴ See above, II, 338, transl. p. 512.

v3.c35.s8.90

⁵ In Singhalese there is “Peacock-Messenge” (14th century) and a number of other “Messages”; see Geiger, Literatur und Sprache der Singhalesen (Grundriss 1,10), p. 9; Hultzsch, loc. cit. p. VIII f.

v3.c35.s8.91

¹ The Tibetan translation of Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, according to the red and black Tanjūr, has been published and rendered into German by H. Beckh (Supplement to ABA 1906). Cf. G. Huth, SBA 1895, 268 f., 281 ff., and Beckh, Ein Beitrag zur Textkritik von Kālidāsas Meghadūta, Diss., Berlin 1907.

v3.c35.s8.92

With regard to the numerous other lyric poems that are attributed to Kālidāsa, it is doubtful whether the name of the great poet is correctly associated with them. Of them the Ṛtusaṃhāra² "Short description of the Seasons", on account of its antiquity, as also on account of its language and poetical perfection may possibly be easily included in the works of the great poet³. In this poem the series of six seasons—the summer, the rains, the autumn, the winter, the time of frost and the spring—are described in splendid colours. These descriptions with their delicate observation of nature, lovely sketches about the happiness of animals and plants and glowing and often luxuriant presentation of amorous pleasures in each of these seasons are probably worthy of Kālidāsa. This conclusion will be confirmed by some probes according to the beautiful translation of P. V. Bohlen:—

v3.c35.s8.93

² W. Jones had published the text in Calcutta in 1792; P. von Bohlen has published it with Latin and German metrical translations Lipsiae 1840. Of mediocre merit is the translation of A. Hoefer, Indische Gedichte, I, 65 ff. With the commentary of Maṇirāma, the text has been published in Bombay NSP. 1906. [P. Bohlen's German translation has recently been published by H. Kreyenborg in the Insel Bücherei No. 280].

v3.c35.s8.94

³ The authenticity of the Ṛtusaṃhāra is often likewise doubted as already stated. J. Nobel (ZDMG 66, 1912, 275 ff; 73, 1919, 194 ff.; JRAS 1913, 401 ff.) is the last scholar to doubt its authenticity, whilst A. B. Keith (JRAS 1912, 1066) has defended it. A. Gawroński (The digvijaya of Raghu and some connected problems, p. 29, note 3) refutes the authorship of this poem to Kālidāsa. However, it is, generally admitted that the Ṛtusaṃhāra is already imitated in the Mandasor-inscription (472 A.D.) (see Kielhorn, NGGW 1890, 251 ff.), therefore, it must have been of a time not far from the works of Kālidāsa. That Ṛtusaṃhāra, in many respects differs from the other poems of Kālidāsa can be easily explained from the fact, that it belongs to some other class. However, the circumstance that the Ṛtusaṃhāra is nowhere cited in the works of rhetorics speaks against its authenticity; see Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, p. 240 ff. In the beginning of the 18th century A.D. Viśveśvara, in his poem Ṣaḍrtuvarṇana, has already imitated it (see Krishnamacharya 128) [Hillebrandt, Kālidāsa p. 66 ff., considers the Ṛtusaṃhāra as "the earliest work of Kālidāsa written in the days of his youth. See also S. K. De, JRAS 1927, pp. 109-10].

v3.c35.s8.95

From the description of the summer:

v3.c35.s8.96

1 *mṛgāḥ pracaṇḍātapatāpitā bhṛśaṁ*
*tṛṣā mahatyā pariśuṣkatālavaḥ* ।
*vanāntare toyamiti pradhāvitā*
*nirīkṣya bhinnāñjanasannibhaṁ nabhaḥ* ॥
2 *ravermayūkhairabhitāpito bhṛśaṁ*
*vidahyamānaḥ pathi taptapāṁśubhiḥ* ।
*avāṅmukhojjihmagatiḥ śvasanmuhuḥ*
*phaṇī mayūrasya tale niṣīdati* ॥
3 *tṛṣā mahatyā hatavikramodyamaḥ*
*śvasanmuhurdūravidāritānanaḥ* ।
*na hantyadūrepi gajān mṛgeśvaro*
*vilolajihvaścalitāgrakesaraḥ* ॥
4 *viśuṣkakaṇṭhāhṛtasīkarāmbhaso*
*gabhastibhirbhānumatānutāpitāḥ* ।
*pravṛddhatṛṣṇopahatā jalārthino*
*na dantinaḥ kesariṇopi bibhyati* ॥
5 *tṛṣākulaiścātakapakṣiṇāṁ kulaiḥ*
*prayācitāstoyabharāvalambinaḥ* ।
*prayānti mandaṁ bahudhāravarsiṇo*
*balāhakāḥ śrotramanoharasvanāḥ* ॥
6 *sadāmanojñaṁ svanudtsavotsukaṁ*
*vikīrṇavistīrṇakalāpaśobhitam* ।
*sasambhramāliṅganacumbanākulaṁ*
*pravṛttanṛtyaṁ kulamadya barhiṇām* ॥
7 *nipātayantyaḥ paritastaṭadrumān*
*pravṛddhavegaiḥ salilairanirmalaiḥ* ।
*striyaḥ suduṣṭā iva jātavibhramāḥ*
*prayānti nadyastvaritaṁ payonidhim* ॥
8 *payodharairbhīmagabhīranisvanais-*
*taḍidbhirudvejitacetaso bhṛśaṁ* ।
*kṛtāparādhānapi yoṣitaḥ priyān*
*pariṣvajante śayane nirantaram* ॥

v3.c35.s8.97

1. “Tormented by the blazing sunshine, the deer with dried palate on account of intense thirst, beholding the powdered collyrium-like sky and thinking it to be water, have run to another forest.”

v3.c35.s8.98

2. “Incessantly scorched by the rays of the sun, heating with the heated sand on the path, the snake with his hood turned downward, not moving in an oblique manner, panting again and again, rests under (the shadow of) the plumes of a peacock."

v3.c35.s8.99

3. "The king of the animals, deprived of his valour and endeavour by excessive thirst, with his quivering mane, lolling tongue, yawning mouth and panting again and again, does not kill even the elephants that are not far away."

v3.c35.s8.100

4. "The tuskers who have oozed out water-drops through their dried throat, tormented by the rays of the sun, suffering from increased thirst, desiring water, do not fear even the lions."

v3.c35.s8.101

5. "Asked by the flocks of cātaka birds, tormented by thirst, the clouds, bending down with the weight of water, showering rains in torrents and producing sounds aggreeable to the ear, are moving slowly."

v3.c35.s8.102

6. "Always sounding charmingly, eager for the lovefeast, looking beautiful with outstretched luxuriant plumage, the flock of peacocks, anxious for embrace and kiss, has now got engaged in dance."

v3.c35.s8.103

7. "The rivers with turbid water, with increased speed, throwing down trees (standing) on their banks, are fast running to the sea, as wanton women, exhibiting amorous gestures."

v3.c35.s8.104

8. "The women, repeatedly tormented with flashes of lightening and the clouds thundering terribly and deeply, incessantly embrace on their bed even their guilty lovers."

v3.c35.s8.105

It is further doubtful whether the Śṛṅgāratilaka¹ "Decoration of Love", a small collection of stanzas with erotic theme, can be attributed to Kālidāsa. The following little song demonstrates that this anthology too contains beautiful stanzas :

v3.c35.s8.106

¹ Published in Haeberlin 14-17 (21 stanzas), in Kālidāsar Megha-dūta et Śriṅgāratilaka ex rec. J. Gildemeisteri, Bonnae 1841 (23 stanzas) and as an appendix to the edition of the Ṛtusaṁhāra, Bombay NSP 1906 (31 stanzas). Śrṅgārarasāṣṭaka, (Haeberlin 510 ff.), which also is attributed to Kālidāsa, is merely a compilation of erotic verses, of which the verse No. 4 might be of Kālidāsa and the verse No. 7 is taken from the Kumārasambhava.

v3.c35.s8.107

*indīvareṇa nayanaṁ mukhamambujena*
*kundena dantamadharaṁ navapallavena*।
*aṅgāni campakadalaiśca vidhāya vedhāḥ*
*kānte kathaṁ ghaṭitavānupalena cetaḥ* ॥²

v3.c35.s8.108

² Mangoblüten, p. 11. [German metrical transl. by L. v. Schroeder.]

v3.c35.s8.109

“Having made thy eyes with blue lotus, the face with blue lotus, the teeth with Jasmine, the lower lip with a tender shoot, the limbs with leaves of campaka, tell me then, O beloved, how did the creator form thy heart with a slab of stone.”

v3.c35.s8.110

Of the religious hymns, the authorship of which is attributed to Kālidāsa, a mention may be made of one Śyāmalādaṇḍaka¹, the famous stotra of the Goddess Durgā, with its greater part in prose and of hymns Sarasvatīstotra and Maṅgalāṣṭaka² translated into Tibetan in the Tanjūr.

v3.c35.s8.111

¹ Published in Km., Part I, 8 ff.

v3.c35.s8.112

² F. W. Thomas in JRAS 1903, 785ff. The Maṅgalāṣṭaka is preserved in Sanskrit inscriptions as well; see Aufrecht, Leipzig No. 450 f.

v3.c35.s8.113

In several manuscripts, Ghaṭakarpara³, “The Broken Jar” too is attributed to Kālidāsa. It is a poem of 22 elegantly rhyming stanzas, in which a young damsel, at the advent of the rains, gives expression to her feeling of anxiety for her husband, who is away, and sends to him her greeting through the clouds — hence a counterpart of the Meghadūta. The poem has obtained this title from the fact that the poet in its last verse offers to carry water in a broken jar to any poet who may surpass him in the matter of rhyming. Rückert⁴ has rightly said that had this “broken vessel” been a German one, it would not have been even worth picking up at all”, and that in respect of rhyming the water did not reach the Nalodaya. It is certain that the work is not of Kālidāsa. Frequently it is ascribed to a poet Ghaṭakarpara, who (according to the fashion of Persian poets) inscribed his name in the concluding stanza⁵.

v3.c35.s8.114

³ Edited, translated (into German), imitated and annotated by G. M. Dursch, Berlin 1828; Haeberlin 120 ff.; French by Chézy in JA 1823, II, 39 ff.; German by Hoefer, Indische Gedichte II, 129 ff., and P. V. Bohlen, Das alte Indien, Königsberg 1830, 380 ff.; cf. Eggeling, Ind. off. Cat. VII, p. 1427 f.

v3.c35.s8.115

⁴ Jahrbücher für Wissenschaftliche Kritik 1829, I, 521 ff. Some verses have also been translated into German. See also Rückert-Nachlese I, 217.

v3.c35.s8.116

⁵ Ghaṭakarpara’s name appears among the “nine jewels” of Vikramāditya (see above p. 46), a thing that in any case proves that the poem enjoyed certain reputation in India, as is shown also by its large number of commentaries (see Aufrecht CC s. v.). Nītisāra (Haeberlin 504 ff.) a collection 21 didactic stanzas, too is attributed to Ghaṭakarpara.

v3.c35.s8.117

The famous Amaruśataka¹ or "The Hundred Stanzas", of the poet Amaru² must not have been altogether of an age very far from the time of Kālidāsa. Next to Kālidāsa there is hardly any lyric poet who is esteemed by Indians and is referred to as a model by poeticians as Amaru. Ānandavardhana in his poetics quotes the song-stanzas of Amaru as a proof that a poet can in single stanzas convey so much of sentiment that each of them appears like an independent poem in miniature³. And another teacher of poetics says: "A single stanza of the poet Amaru equals a hundred great poems". A proof of the popularity of Amaru's "Hundred"⁴ is also the uncertainty of its text. The four recensions deviate from one another in the matter of the number of verses and their order of sequence. Besides we find in anthologies verses of Amaru that are not found in our śataka, whilst conversely verses of our Amaruśataka are attributed to other poets in anthologies⁵.

v3.c35.s8.118

¹ The name occurs also in the forms Amaruka, Amarū, Amarūka.

v3.c35.s8.119

² R. Simon (Kiel 1893) has edited the Amaruśataka in its different recensions with an introduction and extracts from commentaries. Its supplement in ZDMG 49, 1895, 577 ff. Published with the commentary of Arjunadeva in Km. 18. [An edition with Hindi translation and commentary, Bombay 1914].

v3.c35.s8.120

³ Dhvanyāloka III, 7 (Jacobi's German transl. p. 81 f.)

v3.c35.s8.121

⁴ The actual number of verses in MSS and in commentaries varies between 90 and 115. The Km. edition has 102 strophes, and there are 7 pariśiṣṭas, containing further 61 verses, that have been collected partly from commentaries and MSS and partly from Alaṅkāraśāstras and anthologies. [See S. K. De, Padyāvalī. p. 184].

v3.c35.s8.122

⁵ Only 51 verses are common to all the recensions. None of them is in a position to claim to contain the original text. Simon has based his edition on the text of the South Indian recension just on practical grounds. According to Aufrecht (ZDMG 27, 7 f.) the verses composed in the Śārdūlavikrīḍita metre only belong to the original collection; but there are only 61 stanzas, among those that are there, that have this metre (in Rec. I and III). H. Weller believes (according to a private communication) to have been able to prove that the rec. III is the earliest. That was the view of Bühler (ZDMG 47, 1893, p. 94), since this rec. is attested by the oldest commentator Arjunavarman (between 1215 and 1218). [The different recensions are:—South Indian (Comm. Vemabhūpāla and Rāmānandanātha); Bengal (Ravicandra); West Indian that was used by Arjunavarman; and the mixed recension (Rāmarudra, Rudramadeva). For specimens, with translation, see S. K. De Treatment of Love in Sans. Lit., Calcutta 1929, p. 28 f.; HSL, pp. 158 ff. C. R. Narasimha Śarmā—Studies in Sanskrit Literarure, Mysore, 1936 pp. 1-30.]

v3.c35.s8.123

About the time of Amaru we know nothing except that Ānandavardhana (about 850 A.D.) refers to him first of all by his name, whilst Vāmana (Circa 800) cites a verse from Amaruśataka¹ without naming its author. Almost nothing is known about the biography of Amaru. A tale narrated by some of the commentators and by the author of the so-called biography of Śaṅkara (Śaṅkaradigvijaya) goes to say that the real writer of the Amaruśataka is nobody other than the famous Vedānta philosopher Śaṅkara. It is said there that with the help of magic he entered into the body of the Kashmiri king Amaru and had intercourse with the latter’s hundred wives for the purpose of gaining first-hand knowledge of modes of love. As a proof of his knowledge of the science of erotics, he composed the śataka². In the opinion of W. this tale is historical to the extent that it suggests that Amaru was a resident of Kashmir (as meant by Simon), as a king of the name of Amaru is wholly unknown there.

v3.c35.s8.124

¹ Amaru 16, 30 (II. Rec.) and 89 in Vāmana III, 2, 4; IV, 3, 12, V, 2, 8.

v3.c35.s8.125

² Ravicandra, the author of the commentary Kāmadā, attempts to prove the authorship of the great philosopher even by explaining the verses as having two meanings, and that in addition to the erotic sense, each of them has also a theosophical idea conveyed in it. This commentary was published in Calcutta 1808. Cf. Kathavate, Report p. 14; Eggeling, Ind. Off. Cat. p. 1520 ff.

First 125 of 244 passages. Read on

Linked texts (62)