Three satires

s:994:"Written over a period of eight hundred years, these works represent alternative approaches to satire. Bhallata sought vengeance on his boorish new king by producing vicious sarcastic verse, "The Hundred Allegories." The disgruntled ninth-century CE court poet speaks of a setting sun, his former king and patron Avanti-varman, being replaced by a flickering firefly, the new king Shankara-varman, who did not continue his predecessor's patronage. The artistry that captivates the Kashmirian Kshemendra in the eleventh century in "The Grace of Guile" is as varied as human nature and just as fallible. He presents himself as a social reformer out to shame the complacent into compliance with Vedic morality. In the seventeenth century CE, Nila-kantha gets straight to the point in his "Mockery of the Kali Era": little can redeem the fallen characters he portrays, so his duty is simply to warn about the corruption of academics, sorcerers, astrologers, physicians, poets, relatives, and others.";