Ananta’s Kama Samuha appears on page 358 Vol III. Of New Catalogus Catalogorum. It is a later day work on Kama Shashtra. Its distinguishing features are description of seasons, description of each and every limb of female body, besides the core topics of erotics, and lastly, the description of detachment from worldly pleasures i.e. ‘Vairagya’. These topics have been touched upon by many poets of Sanskrit literature over the centuries. However, it is Ananta who has brought these within the fold of a work on Kama Shashtra. Poetic description of female body might have got impetus from the decadent society of his times, which was later on picked up by poets of Hindi literature during Riti Kala which was characterized by nakhsikhvarnan of the naika smimilarly payakprashnotrashtak and a few other verses in this work which remind us of Amir Khusro (13th cen. A.D.) seem to take their origin from the then taste of the royalty and the elite. Besides these features it has a large number of verses taken from earlier poets, which could Qualify this work as an anthology but for its focus on erotics.
There are no reviews yet.