Written over a period of nearly a thousand years, these works show three very different approaches to satire. Nilakantha gets straight to the point: swindlers prey on stupidity. The artistry that beguiles Kshemendra is as varied as human-nature and just as fallible. We are off to a gentle start Sanctimonious - really no more than a warm-up among vices - but soon graduate to Greed and Lust. From there it's downhill all the way, as unfaithfulness leads on to fraud, and drunkenness to depravity; deception and quackery bring up the rear. What's this at the very end? Virtue? A late arrival, pale and unconvincing.
