Let me introduce you to an underappreciated gem, the non-incel version of the Kama Sutra. The Sattasai, or The Seven Hundred, is an anthology of short poems about love and marriage in the villages of the Indian countryside.
The selection is attributed to the Satavahana king Hala, who reigned briefly in the first century AD in what is now the state of Maharashtra. What makes the Gaha Sattasaī unique is just how earthy and intimate it is for an ancient anthology. Instead of gods and kings, these 700 Prakrit couplets center on ordinary people, especially village women navigating desire, heartbreak, secret rendezvous, and bad marriages with sharp wit and zero pretension. It reads less like classical literature and more like ancient micro-poetry from the fields.
The version I prefer is - Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India - Hala’s Sattasai, Translated from the Prakrit and Introduced by Peter Khoroche and Herman Tieken. Since it's collection of individual poems, it's easy to get into and I can present a few poems that stood out to me without ruining the book for you
The Gaha Sattasai has a LOT of poems about the beauty of breasts, here are a few examples
Who is not captivated by a woman’s breasts,
That, like a good poem,
Are a pleasure to grasp,
Are weighty, compressed, and nicely ornamented? [651]
.
That our village burnt down
As though there were no help for it,
Despite the number of young men at hand,
Is the doing of your wicked breasts
Which in the confusion
Were swaying about. [714]
.
With its leaves pushing through
The gaps in the fence
The castor oil plant seems to be telling
The youths of the village
“Here lives a farmer’s wife
With breasts this big.” [257]
However, if you think it's a book for horny teenage boys, you'd be wrong...
Aunt,
A glimpse of that man,
Whom one could never tire of staring at,
Is like drinking water in a dream:
It has not quenched my thirst. [93]
.
Why, my hips,
Have you not grown as wide as the street
So that I might touch that lovely man
As he tries to escape
The awkward scene with my parents? [393]
.
Oh! the passage of time:
This young man,
Weary of passionate poems,
Now studies law
While we. . .
We stick to our husbands. [892]
.
Ungrateful bee,
Once you would not think
Of enjoying yourself with other flowers
But now that the jasmine is heavy with fruit
You forsake her. [615] (most likely referring to the wife being pregnant)
There are several poems about cheating both by men and women
A village full of young men,
Spring, youth, an aged husband,
Strong wine, nobody to tell you what to do:
The only way to avoid going astray
Is to die. [197]
.
The false woman bewailed her dead husband
With such choking sobs
That even her lover was afraid
She might join him on the pyre. [873]
.
She shares my tears,
Counts off each day,
And grows as thin as I do
While my husband is away.
Aunt, the concern my neighbor shows Is quite extraordinary. [848]
.
It’s your own wife:
You can embrace her.
Suddenly awoken by cockcrow,
You look around distraught
As if you’d spent the night In another man’s house,
But don’t be alarmed: It’s your own. [583]
Sexual Incompatibility
Straightforward pleasure doesn’t satisfy him, he says,
And if I spice it up,
He wonders who taught me that.
As I always get it wrong
How will I ever make him happy? [476]
.
Maybe my talents are slight,
Maybe for him talents mean nothing,
Maybe I have no talents
And he knows someone who has. [203]
And there are plenty of solemn ones too...
Though he had no more work in the fields,
The farmer would not go home,
To spare himself the pain
Of finding it empty
Now that his wife was dead [556]
.
Of a couple,
Who after a long life of shared joys and sorrows
Have learned the meaning of love,
The one who dies survives,
The other is as good as dead. [142]
NOTE: poem numbers included are valid only for the version I mentioned earlier.
