The Prabodha-chandrodaya, or "the moon-rise of intelligence," composed by Krishnamigra about the 12th century, is an alle gorical play, in six acts, the dramatis personae of which consist entirely of abstract ideas and symbolical figures divided into two conflicting hosts; it is full of vigour, however. It depicts the struggle between the wicked king Error and the good king Reason.
Allusion has already been made to the marked predilection of the mediaeval Indian poet for depicting in a single stanza some peculiar physical or mental situation. The profane lyrical poetry consists chiefly of such little poetic pictures, which form a prominent feature of dramatic compositions. Numerous poets and poetesses are only known to us through such detached stanzas, preserved in native anthologies or manuals of rhetoric, and enshrining a vast amount of descriptive and contemplative poetry. An excellent specimen of a longer poem, of a partly descriptive, partly erotic character, is Kalidasa's Meghadfita, or "cloud messenger," in which a banished yaksha (demi-god) sends a love-message across India to his wife in the Himalaya, and describes, in verse-pictures of the stately mandakranta metre the various places over which the messenger, a cloud, will have to sail in his airy voyage. Another much-admired descriptive poem by Kalidasa is the Ritu-santhara, or "collection of the seasons," in which the attractive features of the six seasons are successively set forth.
As regards religious lyrics, the fruit of sectarian fervour, a large collection of hymns and detached stanzas, extolling some special deity, might 6e made from Puranas and other works. Of independent productions of this kind only a few of the more important can be mentioned here. 8ankara Acharya, the great Vedantist, who seems to have flourished about A.D. 800, is credited with several devotional poems, especially the Ananda-lahari, or "wave of joy," a hymn of 103 stanzas, in praise of the goddess Parvati. The Surya-sfataka, or century of stanzas in praise of Surya, the sun, is ascribed to MayUra, the contemporary (and, according to a tradition, the father-in-law) of Bana (in the early part of the 7th century). The latter poet himself composed the
Chandikastatra, a hymn of 102 stanzas, extolling 8iva's consort. The Khandapra,fasti, a poem celebrating the ten avataras of Vishnu, is ascribed to no other than Hanuman, the monkey general, himself. Jayadeva's beautiful poem Gitagovinda, which, like most productions concerning Krishna, is of a very sensuous character, is a religious drama.
The particular branch of didactic poetry in which India is especially rich is that of moral maxims, ex pressed in single stanzas or couplets, and forming the chief vehicle of the Niti-histra or ethic science. Excellent collections of such aphorisms have been published—in Sanskrit and German by Bohtlingk, and in English by John Muir. Probably the oldest original collection of this kind is that ascribed to Chanakya, but really much later.
For purposes of popular instruction stanzas of an ethical import were early worked up with existing prose fables and popular stories. A collection of this kind, a mirror for princes, was translated into Pahlavi in the reign of the Persian king Khusru Anushirvan, A.D. 531-579; but neither this translation nor the original is any longer extant. A Syriac trans lation, however, made from the Pahlavi in the same century, under the title of "Qualilag and Dimnag"—from the Sanskrit "Karataka and Damanaka," two jackals who play an important part as the lion's counsellors—has been discovered and published. The Sanskrit original, which probably consisted of fourteen chap ters, was afterwards recast—the result being the Panchatantra, or "five books" (or headings), of which several recensions exist. A popular but late summary of this work, in four books, the Hitopadeia, or "Salutary Counsel," has been shown by Peterson to have been composed by one Narayana. Other highly popular collections of stories and fairy tales, interspersed with sententious verses, are: the Vetalapanchavitniati, or "twenty-five (stories) of the Vetala" (the original of the Baital Pachisi), older than the I I th century, since both Kshemendra and Somadeva have used it ; and the guka-saptati, or "seventy (stories related) by the parrot," the author and age of which are unknown.