The Art Of Sanskrit Poetry

This book is both an introduction to Sanskrit and an investigation into the relationship between the nine basic affective states and the form they take in the absence of self-interest according to the theory of Indian aesthetics as developed in the Dhvanyaloka and the Abhinavabharati.

In this rich collection of Sanskrit verse, the late Daniel Ingalls provides English readers with a wide variety of poetry from the vast anthology of an eleventh-century Buddhist scholar. Although the style of poetry presented here originated in royal courts, Ingalls shows how it was adapted to all aspects of life, and came to address issues as diverse as love, sex, heroes, nature, and peace. More than thirty years after its original publication, Sanskrit Poetry continues to be the main resource for all interested in this multifaceted and elegant tradition.

The stylistic difficulties of Sanskrit court verse and its boldness in dealing with love have hitherto prevented the translation of any of the great Sanskrit anthologies. Daniel Ingalls presents a vivid and unpedantic rendering of the 1739 verses found in the recently discovered anthology of Vidyākara. Separate essays are provided on the style and conventions of the poetry in each of the 50 sections of the collection, while the introduction gives the first general criticism by a Western scholar of the techniques and aims of Classical Sanskrit poetry. The notes offer a wealth of information on Sanskrit style and literature and on Indian antiquities.

Classical Sanskrit literature boasts an exquisite canon of poetry devoted to erotic love. In Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit, noted translator and scholar R. Parthasarathy curates a selection in a new verse translation that introduces readers to Sanskrit poetry in a modern English vernacular. The volume features works by seventy-two poets, including seven women poets and thirty-five anonymous poets, primarily composed between the fourth and seventeenth centuries. It includes a detailed introduction that guides readers through Sanskrit poetic forms and explains how to read and appreciate the poems in English. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit seeks to represent the breadth of Sanskrit poetry through the ages and to present a cohesive, thematically unified selection when read as a whole. The works in this volume depict licit and illicit love, speaking to the joys and sorrows of consummation and separation and a broader cultural celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. Often sexually explicit, they are replete with recurrent scenarios and striking tactile, visual, and olfactory images, whose resonance and use as motifs across eras are expertly explained. Parthasarathy shows that Sanskrit poets are our contemporaries despite the centuries that separate us, as they speak simply and passionately to a wide range of human experience. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit offers English-speaking readers an enticing and tantalizing initiation into the riches and beauty of this venerable poetic tradition.

In this rich collection of Sanskrit verse, the late Daniel Ingalls provides English readers with a wide variety of poetry from the vast anthology of an eleventh-century Buddhist scholar. Although the style of poetry presented here originated in royal courts, Ingalls shows how it was adapted to all aspects of life, and came to address issues as diverse as love, sex, heroes, nature and peace. More than thirty years after its original publication, Sanskrit Poetry continues to be the main resource for all interseted in this multifaceted and elegant tradition.