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A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s9: Gnomic and Didactic Poetry

A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s9

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English

Gnomic and Didactic Poetry

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Closely connected with lyrics is gnomic poetry. In many works lyric stanzas and didactic passages are blended into a single whole in such a way that one may be in doubt in the matter of grouping them. Perhaps Indians have not attained such perfect mastery in any sphere as in gnomic poetry. They have not more wonderfully succeeded in anything as in the art of giving brief and accurate expression to an idea in two lines. Most of the epigrams are written in the form of ślokas—and they describe accurately or often lay out a beautiful picture either from nature or with the help of a strikingly deep thought simile. Numerous narratives, aphorisms and statements in literature, however, also prove the existence of rich treasure of “nice saying” (*subhāṣita*), that has been stored up by Indians of all the ages¹. Nowhere else do these epigrams occur more beautifully and with greater grandeur than in the Sāvitrī-peom in the Mahābhārata. As we have already seen above, we find abudance of aphorisms also at other places in the Mahābhārata, both in the epic proper and in the didactic sections in particular². These epigrams are in no way always ‘conventional moral lessons’, but have reference partly to wordly wisdom (*artha*, *nīti*) and partly to duty (*dharma*)³. They are, very often, in fact, the sequel to extensive personal experience, and there is no sphere of human life that has not been touched by them. Even up to this day it is a necessary part of education to know suitable epigrammatic stanzas, that are fit to be quoted in appropriate places in course of conversation⁴. That it was so in earlier times too is proved by an aphorism quoted in anthologies⁵ :

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¹ Cf. e.g. Böhtlingk, Ind. Sprüche 2595, 3135, 4186, 4776, 7194: Manu 2, 239; Subhāṣitāvali 2349.

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² Cf. above I, 320 f., 323, 341, 359 ff., 376 f.; transl. p. 376 f., 380, 399, 416 f., 425 f.

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³ The term “Ethical Poetry” in Macdonell, Hist. of Sanskrit Literature 377 is not correct. In the Mahābhārata (e.g. V, 33-37) too wordly wisdom and moral lessons have been taught without distinguishing between them.

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⁴ “A man is not considered to be a learned person, probably rightly, unless be can quote at least a few of the poet’s famous epigrams that throw light on the question forming the topic of conversation, in which he participates” says the Indian Krishna Śāstri Bhatavadekar in his foreword to the collection of maxims published by him; see Pantschatantra, transl. by L. Fritze, p. XI f.

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“Wrongly we call tongue a tongue,
That knows not a beautiful term ;
It is a piece of flesh, stuck into the mouth,
For fear, lest a crow may detect it⁵.”

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⁵ Transl. into German by Fritze, Indische Spruche 387 (Böhtlingk, Ind. Sprüche 4776).

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The Indian poets had a fancy for inserting aphoristic stanzas throughout. We find them in the epic, in the prose novel and even in the drama. They form a component part of the Buddhist and Jaina religious literature¹, as also of the religious and mundane narrative literature. The Śunaḥśepa-legend of the Aitareyabrāhmaṇa points to the existence of aphoristic literature even in the Vedic age. The scientific literature on law and politics (dharmaśāstra and nītiśāstra) is so full of poetical aphorisms that drawing a line of demarcation between gnomic poetry and scientific literature is often difficult. Numerous epigrams, that were current in literary circles and whose authors in usual course would have been forgotten, were brought together in collections, preferably in śatakas or "centuries" and many authors themselves wrote the whole collections of epigrams. The lines of demarcation between compilation and self-composed poems were often obliterated because of the fact that the latter, in case they became popular, were mutilated and added to by copyists in course of time.

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¹ See above II, 26, 49, 60, 64 f., 84, 99, 116, 312 f., 343 f., 349 f.; transl. 34, 65, 76, 82 f., 108, 124, 144, 466 f. 562 f., 573 f.

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One of the most popular aphoristic collections is the one that is attributed to Cāṇakya², the minister of the Maurya king Candragupta. Cāṇakya is the model of the wise and clever minister. The authorship of the famous manual of polity, the Kauṭilīya-Arthaśāstra, is attributed to one Kauṭilya "crookedness". In the same way as all laws are traced back to Manu, the mythical first king, who has been made the author of not only of manual of morals and law but also of a large number of legal and moral maxims that have even been in circulation, all the teachings on polity and wordly wisdom are traced back to Cāṇakya, famous in legends, who has at last been made the author of a great collection of proverbs, that perhaps originally consisted only of the principles of polity (rājanīti), but in course of time, has assumed in the hands of copyists more and more the character of a variegated mixed collection of sayings. There are not less than seven different recensions of this work that appears under different titles in the manuscripts¹. There is nothing to think about the minister Cāṇakya being the real author of these wise sayings. It is also not correct at the same time to find in them "popular poerty" and to equate them with adages², that circulate from mouth to mouth, without being considered to have belonged to a single author. The proverbs originated rather in literary circles and partly they go back to works in literature and partly they were composed by the authors, whose names are forgotten. It is, however, assumed that we are not able to attribute a collection of this type to any definite period.

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² The name, rather the personality of Cāṇakya reminds us of Kaṇika, who appears in the Mahābhārata (I, 140) as a teacher of nītiśāstra and as a type of Macchiavelli.

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¹ Rājanītiśāstra, Cāṇakyarājanīti, Rājanītisamuccaya, Cāṇakyanīti Cāṇakyanītidarpaṇa, Vṛddhacāṇakya, Laghucāṇakya, Cāṇakyanītisāra. Cf. O Kressler, Stimmen indischer Lebensklugheit, where he investigates into the collection of aphoristic stanzas that are attributed to Cāṇakya and has translated them into German from one of the recensions. Leipzig, 1907 (Indica, edited by E. Leumann, Heft 4). Other editions: Haeberlin 312 ff.; J. Klatt, De trecentis Cāṇakyae poetae Indici sententiis. Diss. Halis Saxonum, Berol. 1873; Weber, Indische Streifen I 253 ff. und Monatsberichte der k. Akademie Berlin 1864, 400 ff. On the numerous Indian editions see Kressler, ibid, p. 38 ff. Cāṇakyasārasaṁgraha, a work, widely known among the Buddhists of Nepal, too is reported to contain 830 aphorisms (see Rājendralāla Mitra, Sanskrit Buddhist Lit. of Nepal, Calcutta, 1882, p. 282 f.) One Cāṇakyanītiśāstra is found also in the Tibetan Tanjūr; see G. Huth, SBA 1895, p. 275. The wisdom aphorisms of Sānāq (i. e. Cāṇakya) found in the Arabic work Sirāj al-Mulūk by at-Torṭūsi (12th century) are also probably based on Cāṇakyanītisāra; see Th. Zachariae in WZKM 28, 1914, 182 ff. The aphorisms have been repeatedly translated : so thus into Greek by D. Galanos, [See J van Manen, Foreward to the 2nd edition of Cāṇakyarājanītiśāstram, ed. by Iśvara Chandra Śāstri, Calcutta Or Ser., 1921, p. III], into English by Muir, Metrical Translations from Sanskrit writers; into German by Böhtlingk in the "Indischen Sprüchen." Cf. also G. M. Bolling, The Recension of Cāṇakya used by Galanos for his Ἐκ διαφορῶν ποιητῶν JAOS 1921 p. 49 ff. Rightly remarks Bolling that the last word has not yet been said with Kressler's book on the "Original Cāṇakya", since much of the materials for establishment of the text has not yet been used. [Another English transl. is by K. Raghunāthaji, Bombay, 1890].

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² As has been done by Kressler, ibid, p. 27.

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The form in which the collection has come down to us shows all the characteristic traits of Indian aphoristic poetry in general, including those in respect of variety of its contents. Although in its title there usually occurs the word rājanīti ("king's politics"), comparatively it contains few maxims on the art of administration. On the other hand, we find many common rules of conduct, that are as "Macchiavellistical" as the rules of administrative polity, in addition to numerous contribution. on the knowledge of human nature and life, on wealth and poverty, on fate and human activity, on women and lastly on all sorts of pedagogical, religious and ethical teachings. Only in a few cases in its contents we find groups of connected stanzas after so variegated passages jumbled up together. So in the verses VI, 15-22, where twenty things are enumerated that man should learn from animals, one from the loin, one from the heron, four from the cock, five from the crow, six from the dog and three from the donkey, one in the wholly seemingly compact "breviary of life". Likewise in the group of verses XI, 11-17, different types of Brāhmaṇas are enumerated. More often we find pairs of homogeneous verses. But in general each verse is a unified whole.

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Popular are the maxims in which different but a little similar things—many times not without humour—are named just for the sake of principle of enumeration, as we have found in the Aṅguttaranikāya and in the Thāṇaṁga. This sort of enumeration certainly became popular before it got extended to all over the work with such pedantry in the Buddhist and Jaina literatures. For example I, 9 f.:—"Not for a single day should a man stay at the place where five are not to be found: a rich man, a scholar, a king, a river and a physician. And man should not turn his step towards the place, where the five are not met with: means of livelihood, security, modesty, politeness, and generosity,". Or IV, 11: "One devotes himself to penance all alone, studies in the company of two, sings in the company of three, travels in the company of four, cultivates the field in the company of five and goes to the field of battle in the company of many". Or VII, 4: "One should show oneself satisfied in respect of three: in respect of his wife, in respect of his meal, in respect of wealth; in respect of three he should not feel satisfied:—in respect of study, penance and gifts". XVII, 19: "A king, a courtesan, Yama (the god of death), fire, a robber, a child, a beggar and as the eighth a village magistrate—all these do not perceive the grief of their neighbours". Often the point of the saying appears in the form of a superlative at the end of enumeration; So IV, 13: "vacant is the house of the childless man, vacant is the region in which there dwells no kinsman, vacant is the heart of the fool; and poverty is vacuum itself". Popular are the enumerations that are joined to catch-words or contain some sort of definition. For example IV, 14: "Poison is the book that has not been studied thoroughly, poison is the food that is not digested, poison is the knowledge to the poor and poison is a young girl for an old man"¹.

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¹ Wholly of the same type are the aphorisms of Bharata, that A. Schiefner (Mahākātjājana und König Tschaṇḍa—Pradjota, Mémoires, de l'Academie de St. Pétersbourg, Part XXII, No. 7, 1875, p. 54 ff.) has translated from Tibetan.

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Pictures and similes in epigrammatic poetry are always popular, and particularly numerous are the sayings in which the subjects spoken about are illustrated with the help of examples from nature. E.g. III, 14 f.; "Through a single nice tree, that is in blossom and smells well, the entire forest gets permeated with odour; likewise a whole family with a single noble son becomes 'fragrant', i. e. attains honour. With a single dry tree, that is set on fire, the entire forest gets into flame; likewise with a single bad son it gets burnt" i.e. comes to ruin"; V, 18: "With truth is sustained the earth, with truth glows the sun, with truth blows the wind : all rest on truth" XII; 7: "In the company of the noble the bad become noble, but the noble do not become bad in the company of the bad: the sweet smell that the flower emits makes the earthen vessel fragrant, but the flowers do not take the smell of the pot"².

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² All citations and translations are from the German renderings from Vṛddhacāṇakya of Kressler.

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If Cāṇakya is just a name, that has been used as the supporting pillar for gnomic poetry, Bhartṛhari, whose three śatakas or centuries—Śṛṅgāraśataka, Nītiśataka, and Vairāgyaśataka³, are included among the most famous works of Indian poetry, is a real poetic personality. This is shown particularly by the first of the three collections, the Śṛṅgāraśataka, "The Hundred on Love".

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³ Editions : Bhartriharis sententiae. . . ed., latine vertit et commentariis instruxit, P. a Bohlen, Berolini, 1883, Haeberlin, 143 ff. The Nītiśataka and Vairāgyaśataka of Bh., with Extracts from two Sanskrit commentaries, ed. by K. T. Telang, BSS No. 11, 1885. Subhāṣita-Triśatī of Bh. with the Commentary of Rāmacandra Budhendra, ed. P. Parab. Bombay 1902 NSP. Edition with Ṭīkā and Bhāṣāṭīkā of Gaṅgāviṣṇugupta and Khemārājāgupta, Bombay 1885.

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This, at the same time, is also a characteristic collection of erotic stanzas, like the Amaruśataka. Whilst the strophes of the Amaruśataka present to us pictures from amorous life the verses of the Śṛṅgāraśataka are expressive of general ideas about love and women. The Śataka begins with verses in which the pleasure of love and beauty of women, on one hand, and the force of love and its joys, particularly the change of seasons, on the other, are described. Then follow the verses in which the joy of love has been compared with the peace of mind, attained through penance and wisdom; and in the last quarter of the śataka the poet comes to realise more and more that wife is merely a sweet poison, just a snake lying on the way, and that love is merely an allurement that attracts one to wordly pleasures; whlist real happiness can be found only in renunciation of the world and in God (Śiva, Brahman). Now it is possible that these stanzas have been so arranged by an able compiler that they bring before us a picture of the oscillation of the Indian mind between sensuousness and renunciation of the world. It is possible that the same compiler, whilst he had added the Nītiśataka, “The Hundred of Wordly Wisdom” and the Vairāgyaśataka, “The Hundred of Renunciation of the World” to the Śṛṅgārśataka, he pursued the objective in the three “centuries” of selected maxims on the path of the wise, from sexual pleasure to virue and performance of duty and wished to describe as the highest goal, the renunciation of the world.

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But against this commonly accepted hypothesis that Bhartṛhari’s śatakas are merely anthologies¹ stand two strong facts. Firstly the unanimous and unbroken tradition of India. It is not suggested that a similar tradition has made Vyāsa the poet of the Mahābhārata and Cāṇakya the writer of the collection of sayings that are associated with his name. Vyāsa is an old sage, whom the people voluntarily made the author of old venerable texts, that were desired to be accorded a special religious status. Cāṇakya is a very famous chancellor who on account of his wisdom in administration has been made the carrier of all epigrams concerning statesmanship and afterwards also of those concerning wordly wisdom. But the name of Bhartṛhari is famous just as a writer of gnomic stanzas and as that of a grammarian : then the tales, that have got tagged to his name are of very late origin and perhaps originated in the first place on the basis of the epigrammatic stanzas that pass under his name. In the second place, not only the three śatakas, but rather the Śṛṅgāraśataka alone exhibits completely explicit physiognomy of the poet. The verses of the Śṛṅgāraśataka and also a majority of verses of both the other śatakas bear such definite individual traits, that J. J. Meyer could call Bhartṛhari “one right charactersistic brain of old India” that represents the “typical Hindu” in his wavering between glowing sensuality and asceticism and that H. Oldenberg², notwithstanding the fact that he doubts the authorship of Bhartṛhari and leaves the question “how far to him, an individual, does the definite personality correspond”, openly calls him an Indian living in a forest”. What is so especially a characteristic for Bhartṛhari, that is attainment of the renunciation of the world from pleasures of lust, has never been said so clearly as in the verse in which he says :

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¹ So Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, II, 174; v. Bohlen. Praefatio, p. viii of his edition: Aufrecht, Leipzig No. 417 (Sprüche von verschiedenen Dichtern, Welche in früher Zeit in drei sogenannten Zenturien Zusammengetsellt und einem Dichter Bhartṛhari Zugeteilt wurden) and CC., p. 397; Pathak, JBRAS 18, 348 (“Collection of elegant extracts for many of which Bh. was indebted to previous writers) and particularly Hertel, WZKM 16, 202 ff.; Tantrākhyāyika-Übersetzung I.S. 4, and LZB. 1907, 3 Aug.

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¹ Daśakumāracarita—Translation (German), p. 1 [^cont]: S. K. De, Treatment of Love in Sanskrit Literature, p. 33 ff.]

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² LAI p. 226.

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*yadāsīdajñānaṁ smaratimirasaṁcārajanitaṁ*
*tadā sarvaṁ nārīmayamidamaśeṣaṁ jagadabhūt* ।
*idānīmasmākaṁ paṭutaravivekāñjanadṛśāṁ*
*samībhūtā dṛṣṭistribhuvanamapi brahma manute* ॥
“When in the darkness of love,
Ignorant, I wandered about, I saw nothing,
Nothing in the wide world, but only women;
But just when I was cured of the blindness,
Through knowledge, the ointment for the eye,
Forthwith appeared all calmly over my eye,
And I saw in the world only one: Brahma³ !”

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³ Śṛṅgāraś. 98, translated into German by L. V. Schroe Mangobluten, p. 24.

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When, in the verse, in which he remarks that love and wisdom are the extremities of life, but represent the two paths to happiness, as he says:

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*saṁsāresminnasāre pariṇatitarale dve gatī paṇḍitānāṁ*
*tattvajñānāmṛtāmbhaḥplavalalitadhiyāṁ yātu kālaḥ kadācit* ।
*no cenmugdhāṅganānāṁ stanajaghanābhogasamsarginīnāṁ*
*sthūlopasthasthalīṣu sthagitakaratalasparśalolodytānām* ॥
“In this world, full of deceit, with vaccilating consequences,
There are two paths in which a mortal being delights:
He may drink in wisdom from religious writings either,
Or he may sink into the bosoms of young maidens.”

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Or rather more appropriately:—

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*kimiha bahubhiruktairyuktiśūnyaiḥ pralāpair*
*dvayamiha puruṣāṇāṁ sarvadā sevanīyam* ।
*abhinavamadalīlālalasam sundarīṇām*
*stanabharaparikhinnaṁ yauvanaṁ vā vanaṁ vā* ॥
“Why make words unnecessarily;
You can attain pleasure in two ways:
Either rejoice in the company of young damsels,
Or enjoy peace and tranquility by retiring into a forest¹.”

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¹ Śṛṅgāraśataka 19, 53, translated into German by P. V. Bohlen.

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Thence it seems likely that there existed on old work in the śatakas of Bhartṛhari, and possibly the Śṛṅgāraśataka has, at least apparently, retained the original order of stanzas, whilst the Vairāgyaśataka and more particularly the Nītiśataka, on account of inaccuracy and arbitrary action of the copyists, have, in fact, become more or less anthologies, of which only a small portion contains the genuine verses of Bhartṛhari.

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As yet it has not been possible to arrive at a decision with regard to the problem of the poet Bhartṛhari being identical with the grammarian Bhartṛhari, the author of a commentary on the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali and of the Vākyapadīya, a treatise on the philosophy of language. About this scholar Bhartṛhari the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing says that he was a faithful follower of Buddhism and became famous in the whole of India and died “forty years ago”. Since I-tsing wrote his report in 691 A.D., Bhartṛhari must have died in about 651 A.D². I-tsing, however, says nothing as to whether this grammarian was also the writer of the aphoristical stanzas, but he narrates a noteworthy story: He became a monk seven times in succession and returned to hearth each time. Once when he had already overcome his sensuous desires and had retired into a cloister he had to ask a young man to keep a vehicle ready for him outside the cloister and then he felt that even then he was not fit to become a monk. I-tsing has quoted also a verse in which Bhartṛhari rebukes himself on account of his inability to withstand the glamour of the world. On the basis of this report Max Müller¹ has presumed that the grammarian Bhartṛhari might have been also the poet of our śatakas. The fact is that the story about our poet narrated by I-tsing fits him very well. But on the other hand, it is remarkable that the Chinese pilgrim, who speaks so much about this man, has not directly mentioned the work on account of which his name has become famous in the whole of India, even though the grammatical and philosophical works mentioned by him have become almost extinct. Moreover, Bhartṛhari in the śatakas is not a Buddhist, but a declared devotee of Śiva in the Vedāntist sense². Now it is possible that Bhartṛhari was a Śaiva Brāhmaṇa, who was at first a court-poet³ and householder, became an adherent of Śaiva Vedānta, and lastly embraced Buddhism⁴. In this case we must assume that I-tsing did not either mention the śatakas or would not like to say anything about them, because they were written by the poet before he had embraced Buddhism. But this sort of hypothesis does not appear very probable after we take into consideration the very story told by I-tsing. In case it cannot be admitted that in the very indefinite statement of I-tsing on the works of Bhartṛhari there is also an allusion to the śatakas⁵, all that remains is to admit that I-tsing had merely heard about the works of the grammarian Bhartṛhari¹ and that the stories that were told him about Bhartṛhari related to a poet of this very name, who was the author of the śatakas. In that case this poet must have lived considerably before 650 A.D.².

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² I-tsing, A Record of Buddhist Religion, transl. by J. Takakusu, p. 178 ff.

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¹ Indien in seiner weltgeschichtlichen Bedeutung, p. 302 ff.; [India, what can it teach us? London 1883, p. 337. On the identity of the grammarian Bhartṛhari, see Barnett, JRAS, 1923, p. 422].

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² Cf. Telang, Introduction to his edition, pp. IX f., XXIII f. and E. La Terza in OC XII, Rome 1899, I, 201 ff.

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³ The numerous stanzas in the Vairāgyaśataka in which he has spoken about the disgust and humiliations of servants of princes point to his once having been a court-poet.

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⁴ According to K. B. Pathaka, JBRAS, 18, 1893, 341 ff., it is probable that Bhartṛhari, the grammarian might have been a Buddhist.

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⁵ When for example he says that the Bhartṛhariśāstra does not treat grammar only but also the principles of human life, and that in the book Peina, he describes the excellences of human principles.

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¹ It cannot be assumed that I-tsing had himself known this work. Besides his remarks are so very indefinite. See Bühler in Takakusu, ibid p. 225.

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² We cannot draw any conclusion, with regard to chronology, from the verses that Bhartṛhari has in common with other works (Tantrākhyāyika, Kālidāsa’s Śakuntalā, Viśākhadatta's Mudrārākṣasa), since we have no means to know if the relevant verses originally belonged to Bhartṛhari or not.

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The legends and stories that make Bhartṛhari a brother of the famous legendary king Vikramāditya are of no value for a biography of the poet. Merutuṅga, in his great collection of literary anecdotes³, narrates one such tale, and another one, the story of the wandering fruit is found in the commentary on the Nītiśataka (verse 2)⁴ where it serves to explain the verse:

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³ Prabandhacintāmaṇi, transl. by C. H. Tawney, p. 198.

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⁴ Also in the introduction to Siṁhāsānadvātriṁśikā and also in the Hindī rendering of the Vetālapañcaviṁśatikā; see Weber, Ind. Stud. 15, 210, 212 ff., 270 ff. and H. Oesterley, Baitāl Pachīsī’, p. 13 ff. 176.

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*yāṁ cintayāmi satataṁ mayi sā viraktā*
*sāpyanyamicchati sa janonyasaktaḥ* ।
*asmatkṛte ca parituṣyati kācidanyā*
*dhiktāṁca taṁca madanaṁca imāṁ ca māṁ ca* ॥
“She, about whom I think always: she likes me not;
She loves another man, who loves an other girl;
And yet there is another woman, who seeks my love:
Fie on her, on him; rebuke me and him and the god
of love.”

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Whilst these tales have clearly been fabricated to explain a single stanza or have been dragged in for this purpose, there are other tales that make Bhartṛhari a disciple of Gorakṣanātha, a Śaiva saint of th 15th century⁵. It still remains to be decided whether this is just a bold anachronism or if it has been said about a different Bhartṛhari.

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⁵ One of these tales has been dramatized in the Bhartṛharinirveda, see Gray, JAOS 25, 1904, 197 ff. A. V. W. Jackson in Ujjain had heard another, see JAOS 23, 1902, 313 f.

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Bhartṛhari probably is the first Indian poet, to have become famous in Europe. The Dutch Calvinist missionary Abraham Roger got the moral teachings of Bhartṛhari explained to him by a Brāhmaṇa Padmanābha and included them in his translation of this book "De open Deure tot het verborgen Heydendom", (The Open Door to Heathendom) published at Leiden in 1651¹. From this book Herder knew about the epigrammatic stanzas, from which he translated some selected ones into German². Since then more stanzas of Bhartṛhari have repeatedly been translated³. A few probes will go to show that the fame of Bhartṛhari is well justified :—

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¹ A. Roger's "Offne Tür zu dem verbborgenen Heydenthum, translated from Dutch into German, Nurnberg 1663, p. 459-536; "Dess Heydnischen Barthrouherri hundert Sprüche von dem Weg Zum Himmel; and hundert Sprüche von don vernünftigen Wandel unter den Menschen". That is, therefore, merely a translation of the Vairāgyaśataka and the Nītiśataka. The Brāhmaṇa it appears did not like to translate to him the "love-stanzas" on one or the other ground.

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² At first in 1792 in the "Gedanken einiger Brahmanen" (Herders sämtl. Werke 1828, Zur Litteratur und Kunst, Bd. 9, 141 ff.), also in the "Vermischten Stücken aus verschiedenen morgenländischen Dichtern", ibid p. 157 ff., some also in J. G. v. Herders, "Blumenlese aus morgenländischen Dichtern," Berlin 1818.

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³ A complete German metrical transation by P. von Bohlen, Hamburg 1835. selected Sayings translated by Rückert (Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes II, Göttingen 1837, p. 14 ff.; Rückert—Nachlese, I, 341 ff.), Hoefer. (Indische Gedichte, I, 141 ff.; II, 168 ff.), L. V. Schroeder (Mangoblüten 21 ff.; cf. Reden und Aufsätze, p. 163 ff.), E. Meier, Klassische Dichtungen der Inder, III, 75 ff.; included entirely in Böhtlingk, Indische Sprüche too. [English trans. by C. H. Tawney, "Two Centuries of Bhartṛhari, Calcutta 1877; and Ind. Ant. 4, 1875 and 5, 1876); by B. Hale Wortham, The Satakas of Bhartṛhari (Trübner Or. Series); into Greek by D. Galanos, Athens 1845, into French by Regnaud, 1875.]

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*nūnaṁ hi te kavivarā viparītabodhā*
*ye nityamāhurabalā iti kāminīnām* ।
*yābhirvilokataratārakadṛṣṭipātaiḥ*
*śakrādayopi vijitā abalā kathaṁ tāḥ* ॥
"Certainly such poets are a bit off,
As do always sing of the debility of woman;
With whose eye-glance even Indra and others get fettered,
How can she be called weak."
*tāvadeva kṛtināṁ hṛdi sphuratyeṣa nirmalavivekadīpaḥ* ।
*yāvadeva na kuraṅgacakṣuṣāṁ tāḍyate capalalocanāñcalaiḥ* ॥
"The torch of wisdom burns bright and clear
Only so long as beautiful eyes wink:
Thereafter it extinguishes quickly."
*kadarthitasyāpi hi dhairyavṛtter-*
*na śakyate dhairyaguṇaḥ pramārṣṭum* ।

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*adhomukhasyāpi kṛtasya vahner-*
*nādhaḥ śikhā yāti kadācideva* ॥

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“As the flame of light, even when turned down, goes up, So do the noble, even afflicted by fortune, aspire up.”

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*chinnopi rohati taruḥ kṣīṇopyupacīyate candraḥ* ।
*iti vimṛśantaḥ santaḥ na viplutā loke* ॥

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“Whether in trouble or in sorrow, Steady remain the noble : The moon, reduced to half, becomes full again; The roots of a tree, even after its fall, may push up again.”

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*śakyo vārituṁ jalena hutabhukchatreṇa sūryātapo*
*nāgendro niśitāṅkuśena samado daṇḍena gogardabhau* ।
*vyādhirbheṣajasaṁgrahaiśca vividhairmantraprayogairviṣaṁ*
*sarvasyauṣadhamasti śāstravihitaṁ mūrkhasya nāstyauṣadham* ॥

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“Fire can be restrained with water, With an umbrella, the heat of the sun, With a stick, the cow and the ass; An elephant is controlled with a sharp goad; Fever is checked with medicine, And snake-bite with incantations : Thus everything has its remedy, But wickedness alone has none.”

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*mahī ramyā śayyā vipulamupadhānaṁ bhujalatā*
*vitānaṁ cākāśaṁ vyajanamanukūloyamanilaḥ* ।
*sphuraddīpaścandro virativanitāsaṅgamuditaḥ*
*sukhaṁ śāntaḥ śete muniratanubhūtirnṛpa iva* ॥

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“The earth as the bed, The arm as the pillow, The sky , as the canopy, The zephir, the favourable breeze, Renunciation, the wife, The moon, the blazing lamp; A hermit sleeps in comfort, Like a king possessing great wealth.”

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*mātarmedini tāta māruta sakhe tejaḥ subandho jala*
*bhrātarvyoma nibaddha eṣa bhavatāmeṣa praṇāmāñjaliḥ* ।
*yuṣmatsaṅgavaśopajātatsukṛtodrekasphurannirmalo*
*jñānāpāstasamastamohamahimā līye pare brahmaṇi* ॥

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“Earth, thou art my mother, the atmosphere, the father,
And thou fire, my friend, the water, my relation,
And my brother, the ether, I address you with folded hands,
The merit that I attained in your company,
When I was living below on earth;
With the brilliant knowledge,
That I gained, as a consequence thereof,
Now I go to the other world, abandoning you all,
Love brother and friend, love well father and mother¹.”

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¹ Śṛṅgāraś. 10, 55; Nītiśa. 75, 84, Supplement 1; Vairāgyaś. 89, 96, according to the German transl. of P. v. Bohlen.

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Bhartṛhari has had his imitators till the most recent times. Inferior epigones have sought to surpass his skill in respect of more artificial metres and kāvya-style, but they have never attained the height of his thought, but have moved within the orbit of his model².

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² Rasiapaāsaṇa is an old Prākrit work of the type of Bhartṛhariśatakas. It consists of 400 gāthās composed by the Buddhist poet Vairocana. They (according to some probes that have been given by S. P. V. Raṅganāthasvami Aryavaraguru, JASB, N.S., 6, 1910, 167 ff.) contain original ideas.

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Similar to the Nītiśataka of Bhartṛhari is the Bhallaṭaśataka³ of the Kashmirian poet Bhallaṭa, who lived under King Śaṅkaravarman (883-902)⁴. The stanzas are composed in different metres. As an example an allegorical stanza is quoted below with translation:

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³ Published in Km. Part IV, p. 140 ff.

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⁴ According to Rājātaraṅgiṇī, 5, 204, where about this king it has been said that on account of his hatred for science he shunned important people. It was on account of this that a poet like Bhallaṭa lived in poverty. Verses written by him have been quoted under Aucityālaṅkāra in the Kāvyaprakāśa and in anthologies, see Peterson, JBRAS, 16, 167 ff. and Subh. 75 ff.; Aufrecht, ZDMG, 41, 488. The fact that a verse written by Ānandavardhana is found in our Bhallaṭaśataka shows that in this collection too stanzas written by other poets occur; see Jacobi ZDMG, 56, 1902, 405.

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*je jātyā laghavaḥ sadaiva gaṇanāṃ yātā na ye kutracit*
*padbhyāmeva vimarditāḥ pratidinaṁ bhūmau nilīnāściraṁ |*
*utkṣiptāścapalāśayena marutā paśyāntarīkṣe sakhe*
*tuṅgānāmuparisthitiṁ kṣitibhṛtāṁ kurvantyamī pāṁsavaḥ ||*
“The dust, light by nature, is deemed nought; day by day it is trampled beneath our feet and trodden into the ground;

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but see, dear friend, the fickle wind has tossed it high, and it settles now on the summit of the lofty mountains.¹”

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¹ [1. Keith, HSL, p. 232.]

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An imitation of Bhartṛhari's Vairāgyaśataka is the Śāntiśataka, “The Hundred of Peace of Soul²” of Śilhaṇa³, who also came from Kashmir, but carried his literary activities in Bengal. Some of his verses are found also in Bhartṛhari and one of his stanzas is found also in the Nāgānanda of Harṣadeva. A great majority of the verses are, however, such as are found in anthologies other then the Śāntiśataka. Since Silhaṇa himself says that he “wrote” (*vidadhe*) the work, in the opinion of W., he is to be considered as the author and not as a compiler of the aphoristic stanzas, in case he had no intention to cite accurately. The Śāntiśataka is a piece of pure religious poetry in which the hollowness of life and the grandeur of renunciation of the world and of the life of ascetics have been described in a considerably monotonous manner. Many of the stanzas of Bhartṛhari have not been borrowed verbatim, but they have been modified. Some of the alterations have been made on account of Bhartṛhari's considering Śiva as the Highest God and Silhaṇa's view being that Viṣṇu is the Supreme God. As in all other works of this type, the manuscripts differ from one another very strongly, so that it cannot be said with certainty as to which of the verses belong to the original collection and which have been interpolated⁴.

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² Edited with introduction, critical apparatus, German translation and notes by K. Schönfeld, Leipzig 1910. Cf. A. B. Keith, JRAS 1911, 257 ff. Also in Haeberlin 410 ff.

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³ The name is written differently. Pischel presumes that the author of the poem is Bilhaṇa, since this name is often written as Silhaṇa or as Cilhaṇa, and a verse of Bilhaṇa occurs in many MSS of the Śāntiśataka.

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⁴ One of the imitators of Bhartṛhari is Dhanadarāja, who wrote three śatakas in the year 1434 A.D. (published in Km., Part XIII, 1903, 33ff.). Janārdanabhaṭṭa wrote one Śṛṅgāraśataka and one Vairāgyaśataka (published in Km., Part XI, 1895, 133 ff., and Part XIII, 131 ff. Appaya Dīkṣita wrote one Vairāgyaśataka (edited in Km. Part I, 91 ff.). There is one Śṛṅgāratilaka written in ornate metres by one Narahari. It has been published in Km. Part XII, 1897, 37 ff. The name Narahari occurs so often as an author that it is not possible to determine his time. In 1220 A.D. one Narahari wrote a commentary on the Kāvyaprakāśa, see Peterson, Rep. IV, p. LXIX.

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Under the name of Nāgarāja, one of the kings of the Ṭāka-dynasty, is found one Bhāvaśataka¹, a kind of collection of riddles. In each verse it is said about some person that he would do this or that in certain situation; sometimes the reader is expected to conjecture why he did this or that; sometimes it is told at the end of the verse. Of indefinite age is the Upadeśaśataka² of Gumāni. In it common moral lessons are taught with the help of allusions to well-known myths and fables. Anyoktimuktālatā is another śataka, consisting of 108 ornate allegorical stanzas, of Śambhu, who lived in the court of King Harṣadeva (1089-1101 A.D.) of Kashmīr³.

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¹ Edited in Km., Part IV, 37 ff. Cf. Bhandarkar, Report 1882-83, p. 9 f. 198; Peterson, 3 Reports p., 21 f., 338 f. There is one Śṛṅgāraśataka also by Nāgarāja. His time is not definite. According to R. Schmidt, Das alte und moderne Indien, Bonn and Leipzig 1919, p. 184 Nāgarāja was merely the patron of the poet Bhāva, and not the author of the Śatakas.

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² Edited in Km., Part II, 1886, 21 f.

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³ Edited in Km., Part II, 61 ff. Śambhu’s poem Rājendrakarṇapūra (edited in Km. I, 22 ff.) is written for glorification of King Harṣadeva. A son of Śambhu has been mentioned by Maṅkha (Śrīkaṇṭhacarita 25, 97) among his contemporaries.

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Kusumadeva, a poet otherwise unknown, is the author of Dṛṣṭāntaśataka (or Dṛṣṭāntakalikā⁵; a collection of hundred proverbs, in which the wisdom-lesson, taught in the first line, has been illustrated with an example (dṛṣṭānta) in the second line, e.g. verse 10:

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⁵ Haeberlin 217 ff. In Vallabhadeva's Subhāṣitāvali, 287-307, have been quoted 21 stanzas from this collection (but not in the same sequence as it is in our text). Kusumadeva must, therefore, have been anterior to Vallabhadeva.

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*uttamaḥ kleśavikṣobhaṁ kṣamaḥ soḍhuṁ na hītaraḥ* ।
*maṇireva mahāśāṇagharṣaṇaṁ na tu mṛtkaṇaḥ* ॥
“Only the noble can bear the stroke of pain: jewel alone resists the pressure of grindstone, not the lime.”

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Smaller collections of proverbs—whether compilations or independent, poems, a thing that cannot be confirmed, are the Nītisāra, ascribed to Ghaṭakarpara, the Nīti-pradīpa of Vetālabhaṭṭa and the Nītiratna, ascribed to Vararuci¹. Vararuci is best known as the author of a Prākrit grammar, but in anthologies stanzas written by him too are found, and Rājaśekhara mentions him in the list of his predecessors¹. The following verses attributed to Vararuci in the Nītiratna are worthy of a good poet:—

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⁴ The Anyoktiśataka of Bhaṭṭa Vireśvara, edited in Km., V, 89 ff., the Anyāpadeśaśataka of Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita, edited in Km. VI, 1890, 143 ff. and another Śataka bearing the same title of Madhusūdana of Mithilā, edited in Km., Part IX, 1893, 64 ff. Subhāṣitanīvi (edited in Km. Part VIII, 1891, 151 ff.) of the Vedānta scholar Veṅkaṭanātha is a collection of subhāṣitas in twelve sections and twelve stanzas. The author is often referred to simply as Vedāntadeśika and probably lived between 1268 and 1376 A.D. : see Krishnamacharya, 48 f., 123 f. A collection of 94 stanzas is the Lokoktimuktāvali of Dakṣiṇāmūrti, published in Km., Part XI, 1895, 65 ff.

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¹ Text in the Haeberlin 502 ff., 526 ff., translated into German Böhtlingk, Indische Sprüche.

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¹ 2. He ascribes to him a poem Kaṇṭhābharaṇa “necklace”: see Peterson, JBRAS 17,59.

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*itaratāpaśatāni yathecchayā*
*vitara tāni sahe caturānana* ।
*arasikeṣu rasasya nivedanaṁ*
*śirasi mā likha mā likha mā likha* ॥
“O Brahman, do avenge so much as you will,
My all such actions as are wicked;
Yet write not this much, write not
The pass-word of fate, I implore you,
That those who have no taste,
May become poet, on their forehead.”
*saṁsāraviṣavṛkṣasya dve phale amṛtopame* ।
*kāvyāmṛtarasāsvāda ālāpaḥ sajjanaiḥ saha* ॥
“On the poison-tree of life,
There grow two nectar-like fruits;
Taste of nectar of poetry
And of talk with noble men.”
*kākasya cāñcuryadi hemayuktā*
*māṇikyayuktau caraṇau ca tasya* ।
*ekaikapakṣe gajarājamuktā*
*tathāpi kāko na ca rājahaṁsaḥ* ॥
“Even if the beak of a crow be plated with gold
And its fect decorated with rubies,
And its wings have pearls hanging from them,
It can still never become a flamingo.”

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Jagannātha’s Bhāminīvilāsa³ is partly lyric and partly gnomic. We have seen above that this author was a scholar of theory of poetics and likewise a lyrist¹. Like the Śatakas of Bhartṛhari, Bhāminī-Vilāsa too contains stanzas of which the theme oscillates between morality, erotics and renunciation of the world, and it is their common feature that the text of both of them is uncertain and the number of stanzas differs in different manuscripts. The first part, of which the number of stanzas varies between 100 and 130, contains moral lessons, of which many are allegorical². The second part, of which the number of stanzas varies between 101 and 184 as in the manuscripts, contains erotic verses. The third part, consisting of only 18 to 19 strophes, is an elegy on the death of a beloved wife. And the fourth (31 to 46 stanzas) contains verses on happiness of the soul, renunciation of the world and entry into the soul of the universe identified with Kṛṣṇa. Some probese may represent the nature of poetry of Jagannātha. :

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³ The title means: “The Sport of a Beautiful Woman” or “The Sport of Bhāminī”, in case *bhāminī* is to be taken as a proper noun. The text with French translation published by A. Bergaigne, Paris 1872 (Bibl. des hautes études I, 9); edited with a Sanskrit gloss by Lakshman Ramachandra Vaidya, Bombay 1887. (In the introduction Vaidya gives a list of the work of Jagannātha.) Trente stances du Bhāminī-Vilāsa accompagné-es de fragments du commentaire inédit de Maṇirāma, publ. et trad. par. V. Henry, Paris 1885. D. Galanos has translated into Greek 98 stanzas of the first book in his Ἰνδικῶν Μεταφράσεων Πρόδρομος (Athens 1845). P. v. Bohlen has published the third book and translated it into German in the supplement to his edition of the Ṛtusaṁhāra, Lipsiae 1840. The same book has been translated into German by A. Hoefer, Ind. Gedichte II, 141ff. [Editions also by Shivarama Mahadeva Paranjape, Poona, 1895, with introduction, English translation and notes; by B. G. Bal, Bombay 1895, with Sanskrit gloss and English translation; edited critically with his own commentary by Har Dutt Sharma, Poona 1935.]

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¹ See above, p. 30, 141.

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² Hence called also Anyoktivilāsa.

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*nairguṇyameva sādhiyo dhigastu guṇagauravān* ।
*śākhinonye virājante khaṇḍayante candanadrumāḥ* ॥
“Better it is to be without virtue;
Fie on the person who is possessed of merits;
Other trees remain flourishing,
While the sandal-trees are cut by man”. (I, 86)
*hariṇīprekṣaṇā yatra gṛhiṇī na vilokyate* ।
*sevitaṁ sarvasaṁpadbhirapi tadbhavanaṁ vanam* ॥
A house may be full with all the objects of enjoyment; but in case the housewife, with glances life those of a deer, is not visible there, it is not different from a forest”. (II, 154)

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*sarvepi tasmin vismṛtipathaṁ viṣayāḥ prayātā*
*vidyāpi khedakalitā vimukhībabhūva* ।
*sā kevalaṁ hariṇaśāvakalocanā me*
*naivāpayāti hṛdayādadhidevateva* ॥
“When all the objects of senses have been forgotten and learning acquired by exertion too has turned away its face from me (has left me), only the fawn-eyed lady, never disappears from my heart, like the deity presiding over it.” (III, 3)
*dhṛtvā padaskhalanabhītivaśātkaram me*
*yārūḍhavatyasi śilāśakalaṁ vivāhe* ।
*sā māṁ vihāya kathamadya vilāsinī dyām*
*ārohasīti hṛdayaṁ śatadhā prayāti* ॥
“My heart breaks into hundred pieces, when I think how you, O beautiful one, should have now ascended the heaven without me, you, who at the time of the marriage stepped on to a slab of stone by holding my hand for support, through fear of slipping of your feet.” (III, 5)

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The fourth part is entirely devoted to glorification of Kṛṣṇa-Viṣṇu. In IV, 40 the poet attests through a pun and not directly that the wretched, who do not get pleasure from the “songs of Jagannātha” - *jagannāthabhaṇiteḥ* - that can mean so much as the Bhagavadgītā, are already dead, although they may be alive..” [Jagannātha is credited also with the authorship of an ornate didactic poem Aśvadhāṭī-kāvya¹, so named on account of the fact that it is composed in verses written in the aśvadhāṭī metre].

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¹ Ed. with a commentary in Subhaṣitaratnākara, Bombay 1918.]

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Greater or smaller didactic poems on some topics, either religious or secular, are associated with some gnomic stanzas. A famous religious gnomic poem is Mohamudgara, “Hammer for Confusion” containing 17 or 18 rhyming stanzas,² that are attributed to Śaṅkara. The verses describe the voidness of the universe and blessings of mental peace and of knowledge of Viṣṇu. A few verses are quoted below:—

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² Text in Haeberlin 265 ff. and A. Hoefer Sanskrit—Lesebuch 74 ff. The text with English translation has been published by W. Jones in As. Res. 1, 34 ff. After this translation Herder gave a free rendering of some of the stanzas of the poem in “Die Entzauberung, Lehre der Braminen” (Herders Werke, edited by P. Suphan, Vol. 26, 419, f.). German translation. by P. v. Bohlen, Das alte Indien, Königsberg 1830, p. 375 ff., by Bs Hirzel (Morgenblatt 1834), A. Hoefer, Ind. Gedichte II, 149, ff. and H. Brockhaus (Über den Druck sanskritischer Werke mit lateinischen Buchstaben, Leipzig, 1841, 85 ff.). Text with French transl. by F. Nève in JA, 1841, s. 3, t. XII, 607 ff.

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*mā kuru dhanajanayauvanagarvaṁ*
*harati nimeṣātkālaḥ sarvam* ।
*māyāmayamidamakhilaṁ hitvā*
*brahmapadaṁ praviśa suviditvā* ॥
“Be not proud of your wealth or youth,
Not of your men: time rolls all in a moment;
Away from all that is pervaded by Māyā,
Know the Highest Lord and reach him without delay.”
*yāvajjanaṁ tāvanmaraṇaṁ tāvajjananījaṭhare śayanam* ।
*iti saṁsāre sphuṭataradoṣaḥ kathamiha mānava tava saṁtoṣaḥ* ॥
“How often are we born? How often dead? How long lying in mother’s womb? How great is the prevalence of vice in this world? Wherefore, O man, art thou satisfied here ?”
*suravaramandiratarutalavāsaḥ*
*śayyā bhūtalamajinaṁ vāsaḥ* ।
*sarvaparigrahabhogatyāgaḥ*
*kasya sukhaṁ na karoti virāgaḥ* ॥
“To dwell under the mansions of the high-gods at the foot of a tree, to have the ground for a bed, and a hide for vesture; to renounce all extrinsic enjoyments; whom does not such devotion fill with delight ?”

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To Śaṅkara is attributed also the Śataślokī, a gnomic poem in 101 sragdharā stanzas, in which the teachings of Vedānta have been set forth partly in figurative language¹.

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¹ Select works of Srī Sankaracharya, p. 85 ff.

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The Cātakaṣṭaka² “The Eight Strophes of Cātaka” is a very famous ornate poem, that is partly lyrical and partly gnomic, of an unknown writer and of an unknown age. The bird cātaka, according to the Indian belief, has the rare peculiarity that it does not drink any water, other than the pure liquid of the cloud, and rather remains thirsty, but does not in any case drink the terrestrial water of streams, lakes and swamps.

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² There are old and recent poems of this name (Pūrva- and Uttara-Cātakāṣṭaka), both in Haeberlin 237 ff. Edited and translated into German by H. Ewald in Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, IV, Bonn 1842, p. 366 ff. German by Hoefer, Ind. Gedichte II, 161 ff.; English by Cowell, JRAS 1891, 599 ff.

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Hence it always flies high up in the sky to ask the cloud for its drink. The Indian poets have special fascination for describing in lyrical stanzas the longings of the cātaka for the cloud, and proverbially the bird is the model of the noble person who scorns at all meanness in contempt and maintains his honour.

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A religious and philosophical poem of an unknown age is the Viṣṇubhaktikalpalatā¹ of Puruṣottama, son of Viṣṇu. The theme of the poem is meditation and exhuberance of devotion for God Viṣṇu. In the 17th century Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita wrote one Śāntivilāsa², a poem of 51 stanzas in simple and unartificial language on the “Charm of Peace of Soul”. The same Nīlakaṇṭha is the writer of an apparently uninteresting gnomic poem Kali-viḍambana³.

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¹ Edited with commentary in Km. 31, 1892, Cf. Ind. Off. Cat. p. 1475 f.

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² Edited in Km. Part VI, 1890, 12 ff.

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³ Edited in Km. Part V, 1888.

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As in the case of lyric, so in the case of gnomic poetry too, we find sometimes admixture of religion and erotic. A work of this type is the Rasikarañjana, written at Ayodhyā in the year 1524 by Rāmacandra, son of Lakṣmaṇabhaṭṭa, a poem that permits of a two-fold interpretation, in which each stanza can be taken as having an erotic as well as an ascetic meaning.

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Partly erotic and partly theosophical is also the Śṛṅgāra-jñānanirṇaya, “Distinction between Love and Knowledge”, contained in a dialogue between Śuka and Rambhā (Rambhāśukasaṁvāda) by an obscure author of an obscure age. They are stanzas with the refrain “*vṛthā gataṁ tasya narasya jīvitam*: useless is the life of that man”. Rambhā throughout recites stanzas composed in the lucid language of Indian erotics and containing the idea “useless is the life of the man, who has not tasted love”, that is retorted by Śuka in a stanza in which it is said "vain is the life of the man, who has not attained the highest wisdom, who has not worshipped Nārāyaṇa" etc.

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⁴ Edited in Km., Part IV, 80 ff. with a commentary, without which the text cannot be understood. Published for private circulation and translated into German by R. Schmidt, Stuttgart 1896; cf. his ‘Liebe und Ehe in the alten und modernen Indien, Berlin in 1904, 31 ff.

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⁵ J. -M. Grandjean, Dialogue de Śuka et de Rambhā sur l’amour et la science suprême: Texte (32 stanzas) with French translation in the Annales du Musée Guimet t. X, 1887, 477 ff.

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Exclusively erotic is the subject-matter of the gnomic poem of the Kashmirian poet Dāmodaragupta, who was the chief minister of King Jayāpīḍa (end of the 8th century A.D.). His Kuṭṭanīmata¹, "Teachings of the Procuress," is an instructive poem in kāvya-style, in which a prostitute is being instructed by a procuress as to how she should feign true love for a rich young man and employ all the arts of erotics without letting him take note of the fact that all this is done simply for extracting money from him. The poet tries to parade his knowledge of alaṅkāraśāstra, of Sanskrit vocabulary as well as of the kāmaśāstra. Since Kalhaṇa calls him a poet (kavi) and verses from the Kuṭṭanīmata are quoted in treatises on poetics² this work has to be considered as an ornate poem according to the opinion of the Indians, although western scholars would include it in the works on pornography. In verses 778 ff. it has been described how a prostitute shows her skill as an actress in staging the drama Ratnāvalī, in which an interesting peculiarity of representation has been demonstrated.

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¹ Edited in Km., Part III, 1887 32 ff. The German translation of J. J. Meyer, Altindische Schelmenbücher II, Lotos-Verlag, Leipzig, (1903). [Beside the title Kuṭṭanīmata there appears also the (synonymous) title Śambhalīmata. [Cf. also Dasharatha Sharma in COJ, I, 1934, 348 ff.].

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² Rājatarangiṇī 4, 496, Mammaṭa and Ruyyaka cite stanzas from the Kuṭṭanīmata. Bühler (Ind. Ant. 14, 1885. 354) mentions the work as "an early specimen of Indian pornography". J. J. Meyer has overrated the poet and his this work terribly.

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A work of a similar type, perhaps an imitation of the Kuṭṭanīmata is Kṣemendra's Samayamātṛkā completed in 1050 A. D. This prolific-writer, whom we have met so many times and whom we shall meet again, has worked in all the spheres. Throughout the period Kṣemendra worked as a poet, he always remained basically a scholar-teacher and his poems are all the more or less gnomic poems, whether they fall within the region of religion and morality or in that of erotics. The Samayamātṛkā is of interest also from the view-point of cultural history and is partly more brilliant than the work of Dāmodaragupta.

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³ Edited in Km., 10, 1888. Rendered into German by J. J. Meyer loc. cit. Meyer translates the title as "Charm Book for Prostitutes" that can with difficulty be justified with the help of I, 3. But according to VIII, 127 and 129 Samayamatṛkā simply means "the procuress" or literally "teaching mother" i.e. to say "she, who is the mother (of the harlot) through her teachings" (and not a physical mother).

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So is the description of the life of the procuress in chapter II not devoid of interest. As a girl of seven years, she happens to become a thief and a harlot at the same time, marries several men one after another, lives as a rich widow and in turn is a thief, nun, procuress, female swindler, a wealthy public house-keeper, food-vendor, beggar, flower-dealer, sorceress, landlady, holy Brāhmaṇa lady and lastly again a procuress. She is brought to the harlot Kalāvatī by a barber, who is depicted in a very realistic manner, for the purpose of training her in the exacting profession. She is now old and has become repulsive—IV. 7.

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