The short lyric poem appears with great frequency in Sanskrit collections and displays a wide range of themes. Bhartri·hari is the most famous composer. Ámaru and Bílhana also offer excellent examples.

This anthology of the Love Lyrics of three Indian poets conjures up an atmosphere of love both sensual and social, ever in tension with love's rejection or repression. The flavor of all these poems- Ámaru’s seventh-century C.E. “Hundred Poems,” Bhartri·hari's anthology “Love, Politics, Disenchantment,” from the fourth century, and Bílhana's eleventh-century “Fifty Stanzas of a Thief”—is the universalized aesthetic experience of love.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

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