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Martha Ann Selby. The Circle of Six Seasons,
Penguin, Pages 163, Price Rs 250, ISBN 0-14-100772-9.

   The knowledge of weather and seasons in South Asia is crucial to the understanding of this region’s poetry. In the OUP Bose volume, there is a very good entry on this by Dyson on page 155. The Indian subcontinent is the only place in the world where there are officially ‘six seasons’ — Summer (Grishma), Monsoon (Barsha), Autumn (Sharat), early Winter (Hemanta), later Winter (Sheeth), and Spring (Bashanta).

   The title of the next anthology, The Circle of Six Seasons, takes its inspiration from just that. Expertly translated by Martha Ann Selby, we savour a varied selection from old Tamil, Prakrit and Sanskrit poetry dating from the first to late fourteenth centuries.

   One of the hallmarks of this anthology is the precise phraseology and the contemporary tone of the English translations. Here is an example from ‘Gathasaptasati III.38’:

                    A low man
                    will trade his shawl
                    for an ox
                    in the dead of late winter,
                    looking at the breasts
                    of that dusky girl
                    as if they’re smokeless embers.

   Often academics try to maintain the original diction in their translations, and that is fine in as much as it relays the contents faithfully, but the music of poetry to a modern ear is often lost due to the archaic use of language. Martha Ann Selby successfully conquers all that, and the result is a collection of 188 beautifully achieved poems, pieces that are full of unusual juxtapositions, images, mood, and palette.