2025-04-20 14:32:05 by ambuda-bot
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Introduction
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
२५
The truth of these lines of Shelley is brought home to us
by this and similar songs of Amaru; for it is a very re-
markable feature of Amaru's love-poetry that his women are
true to their plighted troth, and whenever inconstancy is
referred to, it is always associated with men. This is very
remarkable, indeed, in view of the fact that popular Sanskrit
poetry is full of the riotous appetite of women and bitterly
complains about their vileness, unreliability and fickleness.
In these adventures of the poet among the lush pastures
of amatory verse, "the passion for beauty is there, but is less
explicit than the eshly passion." The poems, according to
approved oriental standards, can be classified into two groups
in the first instance. The first group sings of love in union
(Sambhoga) and gives a very frank and vivid portrayal of
the various aspects of love in practice. While some of these
pictures are on the side of excess and may be objected to by
persons of very sensitive and refined tastes, as going beyond
aesthetic bounds, yet to those who face the facts of life
openly and are not restrained by such inhibitions-and
ancient Indian poets were free from these-and freely admit
with an eminent English author that "the keenest pleasure
to which the body is susceptible is that of sexual congress",
these pictures, with their infinite variety, subtlety and charm,
are highly poetic and have become models for all later
poetry of the same genre; these imitations, which miss the
very tender, very yearning, very precious quality of the
original have degenerated into vulgar and revolting pictures
of lubricious dalliance, which give the impression that the
imitators looked upon venery as the only natural occupation
of young men and women.
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
२५
The truth of these lines of Shelley is brought home to us
by this and similar songs of Amaru; for it is a very re-
markable feature of Amaru's love-poetry that his women are
true to their plighted troth, and whenever inconstancy is
referred to, it is always associated with men. This is very
remarkable, indeed, in view of the fact that popular Sanskrit
poetry is full of the riotous appetite of women and bitterly
complains about their vileness, unreliability and fickleness.
In these adventures of the poet among the lush pastures
of amatory verse, "the passion for beauty is there, but is less
explicit than the eshly passion." The poems, according to
approved oriental standards, can be classified into two groups
in the first instance. The first group sings of love in union
(Sambhoga) and gives a very frank and vivid portrayal of
the various aspects of love in practice. While some of these
pictures are on the side of excess and may be objected to by
persons of very sensitive and refined tastes, as going beyond
aesthetic bounds, yet to those who face the facts of life
openly and are not restrained by such inhibitions-and
ancient Indian poets were free from these-and freely admit
with an eminent English author that "the keenest pleasure
to which the body is susceptible is that of sexual congress",
these pictures, with their infinite variety, subtlety and charm,
are highly poetic and have become models for all later
poetry of the same genre; these imitations, which miss the
very tender, very yearning, very precious quality of the
original have degenerated into vulgar and revolting pictures
of lubricious dalliance, which give the impression that the
imitators looked upon venery as the only natural occupation
of young men and women.