Rusnkin Bond - Penguin Book of Classical Indian Love Stories and Lyrics

Kamadevas arrows of love were made of flowers. His divine commander was vasanta (spring), who brought the trees and flowers into blossom and softened all creation for the sweet, irresistible attack of the god of love.

This nature-god is most in tune with Indias Classical Age (roughly, the first thousand years ad), a time when the land was dominated by forests teeming with bird and animal life, and the human population was comparatively small and scattered. Countless kingdoms, large and small, made up the rich bejewelled pattern of India. Around the kings palace or fort grew small towns and bazaars and caravanserais for travellers, but just outside the city gates there was considerable verdure, with areas of cultivation fringing the great forests. This was a fit setting for the great legends and romances of gods and heroes and heroines. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata belonged to the earlier, Epic Age, but they provided stories that continued to be told and retold, culminating in Kalidasas great verse-drama, Shakuntala, written in the early years of the new millennium. The great achievement of Shakuntala is in part due to its creators love of nature. He is at his best in the lyrical passages describing the flora and fauna of the land. Shakuntala herself is half bird, her name being derived from the shakuntas or birds with which she held such easy converse.

Shakuntala is romantic and escapist, but this is not always the case with other writings of the period. The Classical Age saw the flourishing of the Sanskrit language, with an outpouring of poetry and drama. And Kamadeva was no chubby, infant Cupid. He was a mischievous, dexterous, youthful deity. His presence, visible or invisible, is felt in almost every story, love poem or prose work.

The literature of love and the literature of love-making are different. In the stories, poems and extracts presented here we find passion, desire, tenderness,jealousy, sensuality, even platonic love. But the art of love-making, described so inexhaustibly (exhaustingly?) in Vatsayanas Kamasutra (fourth century AD) does not really fall in the purview of this collection. It is not so much a story as a manual of sexual prowess. And it is easily available everywhere in many handsome editions.

In making this selection, I was looking for love literature that was not too well-known but which, nevertheless, was of high quality. Naturally I drew upon legend and folklore, of which there is a fair sampling; upon recent translations of classical Sanskrit, Tamil and Kannada literature; upon retellings from the epics; and upon some of the formative literature of the last century. Even then, I felt that something was missingsome tantalizing fragment, forgotten, neglected, unknown to me (and probably to the general reader) and which in some way sought to draw attention to itself.