A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s8.14

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.”