Description
Book SynopsisThe Dark Age Ridiculed, by Nílakantha, Beguiling Artistry, by Ksheméndra, The Hundred Allegories, by Bhállata
Written over a period of nearly a thousand years, these works show three very different approaches to satire. Nílakantha gets straight to the point: swindlers prey on stupidity.
The artistry that beguiles Ksheméndra 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 vicesbut 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., Bhállata sought vengeance on his boorish new king by producing vicious sarcastic verse, The Hundred Allegories; in the eleventh century, Ksheméndra 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 Nílakantha portrays, so his duty is simply to warn about the corruption of every social type.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
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