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| Subtitle | Clay Sanskrit Library, 7 |
| Translator | David Smith |
| First Written | 650 |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Origin | India |
| Publisher | New York University Press |
| ISBN-10 | 0814740804 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0814740804 |
| My Copy | library copy. side by side Sanskrit & English! |
| First Read | January 06, 2026 |
Princess Kadambari, Vol 1
Like the Elephant Lore, This book also mentions elephant rut ( or ‘musth’) which I finally googled. I had no idea - it’s like a months-long version of being in heat for males, characterized by a leaky gland on their temples. It’s got a distinctive smell. This book uses it poetically, and repeatedly to describe a situation that is hale and hearty - strong or powerful or functioning well. Huh!
Noted on January 6, 2026
Picked this up in the library; I know less than nothing about literary traditions from India. But this is delightful, I see why it's a classic. As with much cross-cultural reading you need to surrender to what the book is doing. In this case, most of the fun is the way the author piles simile on simile, for pages and pages. You get a mountain of tone with a mole hill of plot. But the plot is interesting too!
Noted on January 6, 2026
[This is a PARROT talking:]
And in an old hollow of that tree,
where my father lived in his old age with his wife,
somehow, as fate would have it, I was born,
his only son. Even as I was being born,
overcome by the very severe pain of giving birth,
my mother passed on to the next world.
Though assuredly overwhelmed with grief
at the death of his beloved wife, my father,
out of love for his son, repressed his grief,
deep and severe though it was,
and devoted himself to bringing me up on his own.
[Like, just noting for the record, this bird's mother died in childbirth. And this is after pages and pages describing the jungle he comes from.]
Quoted on January 6, 2026
[Here’s a lovely section of this poem, describing a kingdom ruled to perfection. The rhythm took a minute to get used to but I really enjoyed it once I found it]
And while that king who'd conquered the universe
was protecting the earth, for his subjects mixtures of caste occurred
only in paintings as mixing of colors;
pulling hair only in love-making;
rigorous imprisonment only in poetry as
rigid rules of composition;
worry only in respect of deliberation
about the forms of secular knowledge;
separations only in dreams;
fines in gold only as golden poles in parasols;
trembling only in flags;
manifestations of passionate emotion only in songs
as performances of musical ragas;
deterioration of behavior through intoxication
only in the case of the perturbation of elephants in rut;
absence of merits only in bows when their strings snapped;
deceitful practices only as latticework in windows;
stains were found only on armor, swords, and the moon;
messengers were sent only in the case of love quarrels,
not to declare war;
the only deserted houses were empty squares
on the boards of chess and dice games.
And for him there was fear only of the next world,
frustration only as the curve
in the curls of the women of his harem,
garrulity only as the noisiness of anklets,
imposing taxes only as taking the hand in marriages,
shedding tears only from the smoke
from the fires of ceaseless sacrifices,
the lash of the whip only on horses,
the twang of the bow only on the part
of mákara-bannered Kama.
Resembling the Golden Age huddled up
through fear of the time of the demon Kali, the fourth age,
extensive, as if it had been the place of origin of the three worlds,
encircled by the Vétravati river
whose garlands of waves broke up in collision with
the lovely Málava women's breasts as they bathed,
and whose waters took on the glow of evening
thanks to vermilion from the temples
of the victorious war elephants
come to dip themselves in its waters,
its banks resounding with the cackle of flocks
of impassioned kala-hansa geese—
such was his capital city. Vídisa was its name.
Quoted on January 6, 2026