Hala's Sattasai (Gatha Saptasati Prakrit)

by Peter Khoroche and Herman Jacobi

An elegant translation of the Sattasai (or Seven Hundred), India's earliest collection of lyric poetry, this book 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 Sattasai offers a more realistic counterpart to that notorious theoretical treatise on love, the Kamasutra, 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.

Peter Khoroche is a former lecturer in Sanskrit at the University of London and has previously translated Arya Sutra’s Jatakamala, 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 text into Dutch including the Sattasai and most recently, the Kamasutras.