A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s8.117

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.