SUNY Press Catalog - Spring 2009 - (Page 17) excelsior editions e e Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India oeo Hāla’s Sattasaī POEMS ON LIFE AND LOVE IN ANCIENT INDIA haµla’s Sattasaiµ Translated from the Prakrit and Introduced by Peter Khoroche and Herman Tieken The oldest surviving anthology of lyric poems from India, the Sattasaiµ presents the many aspects of love and provides a realistic counterpart to the Kaµmasuµtra. An elegant translation of the Sattasaiµ (or Seven Hundred), India’s earliest collection of lyric poetry, Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India deals with love in its many aspects. Mostly narrated by women, the poems reveal the world of local Indian village life sometime between the third and fifth centuries. The Sattasaiµ offers a more realistic counterpart to that notorious theoretical treatise on love the Kaµmasuµtra, which presents a cosmopolitan and calculating milieu. Translators Peter Khoroche and Herman Tieken introduce the main features of the work in its own language and time. For modern readers, these short, self-contained poems are a treat: the sentiments they depict remain affecting and contemporary while providing a window into a world long past. “These self-contained couplets are as sexy as they are tender; they are lively and playful, melancholy and haunting, often very funny, and continually startling.” — Lee Siegel, author of Love in a Dead Language Translated from the Prakrit by Peter KHorocHe and HermAn tIeKen e A volume in the SUNY series in Hindu Studies Wendy Doniger, editor March 212 pp Trim size: 5 ½ x 9 $24.95/T pb 978-0-7914-9392-2 $75.00 hc 978-0-7914-9391-5 POETrY aSIaN STUDIES www.sunypress.edu 17 Peter Khoroche is a former lecturer in Sanskrit at the University of London and has previously translated A÷r ya Såuµra’s Jaµ takamaµ laµ. herman Tieken is Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Tamil at the Kern Institute, University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. He has translated several Tamil, Sanskrit, and Prakrit texts into Dutch, including the Sattasaiµ and, most recently, the Kaµmasuµtra. http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61765 http://www.sunypress.edu
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