Phantasies of a Love-Thief The Caurapancasika Attributed to Bilhana 1971 Vintage First Edition Illustrated Columbia University Press

Phantasies of a Love-Thief The Caurapancasika Attributed to Bilhana 1971 Vintage First Edition Illustrated Columbia University Press

<Condition is Good+ as Pictured> (normal wear, some markings, visible edge-wear, some pages are creased, dust jacket has been tape repaired by a previous owner)

Sanskrit text and translation Textual criticism of the Caurapancasika Authorship of the Caurapancasika.
Bilhana (Author), Barbara Stoler Miller (Translator)

—The Caurapañcasika is a series of lyrical verses in which the parted lover evokes his young mistress's beauty and the pleasure of their love in a web of sensuously of descriptive words.
Authorship of the poems is problematic, but a widespread Indian tradition attributes them to the eleventh century Kashmiri poet, Bilhana. Romantic legends attached to the work relate that the poet's mistress was a king's daughter, whose enraged father condemned him to death when the lovers were discovered.
While Bilhana was awaiting execution, he recited the verses of the to celebrate his love. The poetry worked its magic, and he was granted his life as well as the princess.

Textual criticism of the Caurapancasika manuscripts proceeds from the observation that the text was handed down in two divergent forms: the Northern recension and the Western-Southern recension.
Such a division is not uncommon with regard to Sanskrit texts; what is striking about the recensions of the Caurapañcasika is that they have only five verses in common. Confronted with the impossibility of reconstructing one text as an archetype from which extant manuscripts could be said to have derived,
each recension has been considered separately. The critical edition of the poetry includes two sets of fifty verses; each Sanskrit verse is accompanied by a translation, variant readings, and notes.

Although the form, the language, and vocabulary of both recensions are alike, each creates a different mood. A tone of absolute separation and death rings through the Northern recension and finally the poet begs for
execution to end the suffering of separation from his Love. The Western-Southern recension pessimistic.
The text is supplemented by an appendix devoted to historical and stylistic analyses of the important sixteenth-century illustrated manuscript of the Caurapañcasika, which is reproduced in the volume.
The issue of the origin and development of Rajasthani painting is reviewed and new suggestions are offered
on the basis of this manuscript.

Barbara Stoler Miller is an Assistant Professor of Oriental Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.
She is the translator of Bhartrihari: Poems (1967, Columbia University Press).
Printed in U.S.A.


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