Yashodhara

Book excerpt: This collection of poems tells the story of Yashodhara, the wife of Gautama. Legend is that Gautama, the would-be Buddha, was born in the sixth century B.C. as the son of the king of a small warrior tribe of the Sakyas based in the principality of Kapilavastu in southwestern Nepal. At the age of twenty-nine, Gautama left his palace, his wife, and his newly born son, Rahul, to search for love, peace, and salvation. The poems relate the story of Yashodhara in a poetic form that was popular in ancient and medieval India, Sanskrit, and non-Sanskrit literatures. The season-poems follow a strict poetic structure and represent the voice of Yashodhara; the longer narrative poems that interject the season-poems are written in the voice of a contemporary narrator.