The Samdesarasaka of Abdul Rahman

by C.M. Mayrhofer

This is message poem (dutakavya) in the tradition set by Kalidsa`s famous Sanskrit poem Meghaduta, composed in Apabhramsa by a Muslim poet of the thirteenth century. the Nayaika here is a beautiful young woman of Vijayanagara whose beloved husband left her on business and has not returned, and the messenger is a teraveller on his way from Multan to Cambay, a place where coincidentally her lover has gone. All we qbout the author is what he tell us in the poem: he was called Abdul Rahman, son of Mirasena, from a Mleccha country in the west. the poem is here translated for the first time in full into a European Language, and proveded with copious indexes. Colin Mayrhofer, the translator, is a Visiting Fellow in classics at the Australian National Univerdity, Canberra.