Three Satires

The Dark Age Ridiculed,by N?la?kantha,Beguiling Artistry,by Kshem?ndra,The Hundred Allegories,by BhßllataWritten over a period of nearly a thousand years, these works show three very different approaches to satire. N?la?kantha gets straight to the point: swindlers prey on stupidity.The artistry that beguiles Kshemendra is as varied as human nature and just as fallible. We are off to a gentle start Sanctimonious-really no more than a warm-up among vices-but soon graduate to Greed and Lust. From there it's downhill all the way, as unfaithfulness leads on to fraud, and drunkenness to depravity; deception and quackery bring up the rear. What's this at the very end? Virtue? A late arrival, pale and unconvincing.This volume presents three Indian satirists with three different strategies: in the ninth century C.E., Bhßllata sought vengeance on his boorish new king by producing vicious sarcastic verse, "The Hundred Allegories;" in the eleventh century, Kshem?ndra presents himself as a social reformer out to shame the complacent into compliance with Vedic morality; and in the seventeenth century little can redeem the fallen characters Nila?kantha portrays, so his duty is simply to warn about the corruption of every social type.For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org