Art. XIX.—S'uka-sandeśaḥ A Sanskṛit Poem by Lakshmî-dâsa

Extract

The ancient Sanskṛit literature of India is attracting daily the increasing attention of Orientalists of Europe. Sanskṛit works, hitherto unknown, are being brought to the notice of the public by the labours of European scholars like Doctors Bühler, Cowell, Burnell, and others. Those labours, however, have been but very imperfectly extended to the purely Sanskṛit literature of Keraḷam or Malayâḷam in the South-Western extremity of India. In the blessed isolation which that Land of Paraśu-râma had for ages enjoyed, the cultivation of Sanskrit literature was far from being neglected. Poets have flourished who would yield superiority to none in the rest of India, except perhaps to the great Kâlidâsa and one or two others of the highest rank. It cannot, therefore, be labour wasted to bring some of the works left by them to the notice of European Orientalists. The manuscript here printed for the first time is a poem called “Śuka-sandeśa,” or “Śuka-dûta”— “Parrot-messenger.” It is very much on the plan of Kâlidâsa's celebrated “Megha-dûta,” so admirably translated into English verse by the late Professor Horace Hayman Wilson. The metre is the same—Mandâkrântâ.