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95-478: It describes the adventures of ten young men, the Kumaras , all of whom are either princes or sons of royal ministers, as narrated by the men themselves (however, there are irregularities in the text). These narratives are replete with accounts of demigods, ghosts, prostitutes, gamblers, intrigues with voluptuous women, astonishing coincidences, cockfights, anthropophagy, sorcery, robberies, murders and wars. The reader

190-501: A Hymn to Demeter , of which the first verse remains: Δάματρα μέλπω Κόραν τε Κλυμένοι᾽ ἄλοχον μελιβόαν ὕμνον ἀναγνέων Αἰολίδ᾽ ἂμ βαρύβρομον ἁρμονίαν Dámatra mélpô Kóran te Klyménoi᾽ álochon melibóan hýmnon anagnéôn Aiolíd᾽ ám barýbromon harmonían I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed [Hades] Lifting forth a gentle-voiced hymn In the deep-toned Aeolian mode. The Greek poets from late antiquity Nestor of Laranda and Tryphiodorus wrote lipogrammatic adaptations of

285-469: A battlefield during a skirmish). These altogether make the ten Kumaras . The men are schooled in several disciplines such as law, grammar, astrology, music, medicine and warfare. The men are dispatched together by the King for a Digvijaya (world conquest). Prince Rajavahana comes across a Matanga Brahmana . The latter lures him into a scheme to conquer Patala (the netherworld), and the two disappear into

380-414: A book by Mike Schertzer (1998), is presented as the writings of "a prisoner whose world had been impoverished to a single utterance ... who can find me here in this silence". The poems that follow use only the vowels A , E , I , and O , and consonants C , D , F , H , L , M , N , R , S , T , and W , taken from that utterance. Eunoia , a book written by Canadian author Christian Bök (2001),

475-562: A broad class of nature spirits , usually benevolent, but sometimes mischievous or capricious, connected with water, fertility, trees, the forest, treasure and wilderness. They appear in Hindu , Jain and Buddhist texts , as well as ancient and medieval era temples of South Asia and Southeast Asia as guardian deities. The feminine form of the word is IAST : Yakṣī or Yakshini ( Sanskrit : यक्षिणी , IAST : Yakṣiṇī ; Pali : Yakkhini ). In Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts,

570-474: A coherent whole. However, as mentioned above, it comes from the hands of multiple authors writing in possibly different centuries. There are small discrepancies between the three parts; e.g., the patronage of Pramati as described in the prologue disagrees with the one in Dashakumaracharita proper. The ten Kumaras are named in the first chapter of the prologue as follows: The first two chapters of

665-630: A green complexion. Yakshas and their female counterparts are common in the Buddhist literature of Thailand , such as in The Twelve Sisters and Phra Aphai Mani . As ogres , giants, and ogresses, yakshas are present as well in Thai folklore . " ย ยักษ์ " ( yo yak ) is also used as an illustration in order to name the letter ย, the 34th consonant of the Thai alphabet , according to the traditional letter symbols Thai children use to memorise

760-837: A large list of yakshas that reside in the classical cities of ancient India who are invoked to seek the protection of the BuddhaDharma: "The deity Krakucchanda resides in Pataliputra . Aparajita resides in Sthuno. The great yaksha Bhadra resides in Saila. The great deity Manava resides in Uttara. The great sage Vajrapani though lives in Rajagrha Often dwells in Mount Grdhrakuta . The deity Garuda resides in

855-809: A letter from words that would otherwise contain it, as opposed to finding other words that do not contain the letter, was recorded by Willard R. Espy in 181 Missing O's , based on C. C. Bombaugh's univocalic 'Incontrovertible Facts'. N mnk t gd t rb r cg r plt. N fl s grss t blt Sctch cllps ht. Frm Dnjn's tps n rnc rlls. Lgwd, nt Lts, flds prt's bwls. Bx tps, nt bttms, schl-bys flg fr sprt. Trps f ld tsspts, ft, t st, cnsrt. N cl mnsns blw sft n xfrd dns, rthdx, dg-trt, bk-wrm Slmns. Bld strgths f ghsts n hrrr shw. n Lndn shp-frnts n hp-blssms grw. T crcks f gld n dd lks fr fd. n sft clth ftstls n ld fx dth brd. Lng strm-tst slps frlrn, wrk n t prt. Rks d nt rst n spns, nr wd-ccks snrt, N dg n snw-drp r n cltsft rlls, Nr cmmn frg cncct lng prtcls. The above

950-472: A non-fiction lipogram that omitted the letter "Z". In the ninth episode of the ninth season of How I Met Your Mother , " Platonish ", Lily and Robin challenge Barney to obtain a girl's phone number without using the letter E . A website called the Found Poetry Review asked each of its readers (as part of a larger series of challenges) to compose a poem avoiding all letters in the title of

1045-556: A soldier and is imprisoned. The jailor Kantaka uses his services to dig a tunnel out of the prison into the royal palace since Karnataka is enamoured of the princess and wishes to visit her in secret. However, Apaharavarman kills the jailor and escapes through the tunnel. Next, Upaharavarman relates his adventures. He had returned to his own country Videha in search of the Prince. He meets his old nurse who informs him that his father's kingdom has been usurped by King Vikatavarman. He entices

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1140-474: A stranger) and he throws Mitragupta into the sea. He is rescued by a passing vessel of Yavanas who want to hold him as a slave. However, at the same time, their ship is attacked by Bhimadhanva's party. Mitragupta helps the Yavanas in repelling the attack and wins their favour. The ship drifts off to an island and Mitragupta lands on the shore. There he meets a Rakshasa who threatens to eat him unless he answers

1235-438: A temple of Durga . The boy is restored to his rightful throne, and Vishruta marries the princess. The text breaks off in the middle of Vishruta's story. Later Vishruta restores the kingdom of Vidarbha to King Bhaskarvarman by leading an expedition against the usurper Vasantabhanu. After the narratives have ended, a messenger arrives from the old King Rajahamsa (father of Prince Rajavahana). The King had been very mournful when

1330-550: A thirteenth-century Telugu translation. These texts overlap significantly with the stories in the Dashakumaracharita . Precisely how the Dashakumaracharita and the Avantisundarī originally related is unclear. Although many have argued that the two must have been composed by different people, the Avantisundarī too is 'unmistakably ascribed to Daṇḍin by its colophons and by later sources'. Several eminent scholars now believe on stylistic and other grounds that, as suggested by

1425-404: A treacherous ally. Thus the queen is compelled to send away the boy to safety. Vishruta takes upon himself to help the boy. He sends back the servant and instructs him to spread a false report that the young prince is dead. He also sends a poisonous garland to the queen which she uses to kill Mitravarma. Then Vishruta arrives in the city with the young boy, restores the kingdom and meets the queen in

1520-469: A tree. During the night he was transported by a nymph to the palace of the princess Navamalika, with whom he fell in love. In order to gain the princess, he hatches a plan in consort with a Brahmana (whom he has met at a cock-fight). The Brahmana dresses Pramati in female garb, and leaves 'her' in the protection of the King (Navamalika's father) telling the King that 'she' is the Brahmana's daughter. While in

1615-463: Is a lipogrammatic novel in Tamil . The entire novel is written without the common word ஒரு ( oru , "one", also used as the indefinite article), and there are no punctuation marks in the novel except dots. Later the novel was translated into English. Russian 18th-century poet Gavriil Derzhavin avoided the harsh R sound (and the letter Р that represents it) in his poem "The Nightingale" to render

1710-429: Is about to be trampled to death by an elephant, the chain tied to his feet falls off and is revealed to be a nymph who had previously been cursed into assuming that form. Meanwhile, Chandavarman is killed by a thief. Several military allies of Simhavarman arrive at the scene, amongst whom all of Rajavahana's remaining missing friends are found. Now Apaharavarman is asked to relate his adventures. Apaharavarman travelled to

1805-544: Is all the more remarkable because dotted letters make up about half of the Arabic alphabet. In Hungarian language , the game "eszperente" is a game where people only speak using words that contain the vowel "e"; as this makes otherwise straightforward communication complicated, a lot of creative thinking is required in describing common terms in roundabout ways. While a lipogram is usually limited to literary works, there are also chromatic lipograms , works of music that avoid

1900-402: Is also a conventional lipogram in omitting the letters A, E, I, and U. American author James Thurber wrote The W[o]nderful [O] (1957), a fairy tale in which villains ban the letter 'O' from the use by the inhabitants of the island of [Oo]r[oo]. The book Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (2001) is described as a "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable":

1995-535: Is also a long tradition of vocalic lipograms , in which a vowel (or vowels) is omitted. This tends to be the most difficult form of the lipogram. This practice was developed mainly in Spain by the Portuguese author Alonso de Alcala y Herrera who published an octavo entitled Varios efectos de amor, en cinco novelas exemplares, y nuevo artificio para escribir prosa y versos sin una de las letras vocales . From Spain,

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2090-433: Is always the possibility that a given piece of writing in any language may be unintentionally lipogrammatic. For example, Poe 's poem The Raven contains no Z , but there is no evidence that this was intentional. A pangrammatic lipogram is a text that uses every letter of the alphabet except one. For example, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" omits the letter S , which the usual pangram includes by using

2185-458: Is being led to his execution, Arthapala drops a poisonous snake on his body and makes him fall down senseless. The seemingly dead body is carried away and later restored to life by Arthapala (who knows anti-poison charms). Later Arthapala overthrows Simhaghosha and marries the princess Manikarnika. Pramati relates his adventures. While travelling through the Vindhya mountains, he fell asleep under

2280-405: Is compelled to refrain from using any labial consonants (प,फ,ब,भ,म). In France, J. R. Ronden premièred la Pièce sans A ( The Play without A ) in 1816. Jacques Arago wrote in 1853 a version of his Voyage autour du monde ( Voyage around the world ), but without the letter a . Georges Perec published in 1969 La Disparition , a novel without the letter e , the most commonly used letter of

2375-501: Is considered the king of the yakshas and protector of the world ( Lokapāla ). His many epithets extol him as the overlord of numerous semi-divine species and the owner of the treasures of the world. Kubera is often depicted with a plump body, adorned with jewels, carrying a money-pot and a club. His vahana (vehicle) is the mongoose . He is often seen with Lakshmi , the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune and prosperity. In Buddhism, he

2470-628: Is equated with Vaiśravaṇa . In Buddhist literature, the yakṣa are the attendants of Vaiśravaṇa , the guardian of the northern quarter, a beneficent god who protects the righteous. The term also refers to the Twelve Heavenly Generals who guard Bhaiṣajyaguru , the Medicine Buddha. The yakshas of many Buddhist stories are ugly ogres, reborn in that form because of sins committed during their past lives as humans. One such malevolent yaksha, Silesaloma, appears in

2565-548: Is generally on the right-hand side of the Jina image while the yakshini is on the left-hand side. They are regarded mainly as devotees of the Jina and have supernatural powers. They are also wandering through the cycles of births and deaths just like the worldly souls, but have supernatural powers. The Harivamsapurana (783 CE) refers to them as Shasandevatas. Initially among the yakshas, Manibhadra and Purnabadra yakshas and Bahuputrika yakshini were popular. The yaksha Manibhadra

2660-496: Is lipogrammatic. The title uses every vowel once. Each of the five chapters in this book is a lipogram. The first chapter in this book uses only words containing the vowel "A" and no other vowel. The second chapter uses only words with no vowel but "E", and so on. In December 2009, a collective of crime writers, Criminal Brief, published eight days of articles as a Christmas-themed lipogrammatic exercise. In June 2013, finance author Alan Corey published "The Subversive Job Search",

2755-431: Is not taxing. You should find out without any hints. All that you must know to form your solution is right in front of you. I know if you work at it a bit, it will dawn on you. It’s so amazing and so obvious though you can still miss it. The KJV Bible unintentionally contains two lipogrammatic panagrams: Ezra 7:21 lacks only J , and 1 Chronicles 12:40 lacks only Q . Another type of lipogram, which omits every instance of

2850-416: Is seen forcibly carrying the princess Kandukavati through the air. She is rescued and then married to Mitragupta. Mantragupta relates his adventures, in a speech which is entire niroshthya (निरोष्ठ्य, i.e., without labial consonants). One night he sees that a Siddha (sorcerer) is about to sacrifice the princess Kanakalekha of Kalinga in order to obtain miraculous powers. He kills the sorcerer and rescues

2945-422: Is still practiced, a form of instantaneously improvised poetry sung by opposing Ashiks taking turns for artfully criticising each other with one verse at a time, usually by each placing a pin between their upper and lower lips so that the improvised song, accompanied by a Saz (played by the ashik himself), consists only of labial lipograms i.e. without words where lips must touch each other, effectively excluding

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3040-417: Is treated to some very striking passages; for instance, a seductive young girl (all of whose anatomical features are very frankly described) deftly prepares a fragrant meal of rice-gruel and vegetables for her prospective suitor in the sixth chapter of the Dashakumaracharita . The seventh chapter of the Dashakumaracharita contains a specimen of lipogrammatic writing (a species of constrained writing ). At

3135-504: Is wedded to Navamalika. Mitragupta relates his adventures. He had travelled to the Suhma country, where, by the grace of the goddess Durga , the king had obtained two children, a son (Bhimadhanva) and a daughter (Kandukavati). The goddess had stipulated that the son should be subordinate to the daughter's husband. The princess chooses Mitragupta as her husband in a public festival. This infuriates Bhimadhanva (who resents being subordinated to

3230-622: Is worshipped by the Jains affiliated with the Tapa Gachchha. During tenth and thirteenth centuries yaksha Saarvanubhuti, or Sarvahna and yakshinis Chakreshvari , Ambika , Padmavati , and Jwalamalini became so popular that independent temples devoted to them were erected. Yakshas and yakshinis are common among the Murtipujaka Śvētāmbara and Bispanthi Digambara Jains. The Digambara Terapanth movement opposes their worship. Among

3325-717: The yakṣa narrator is a romantic figure, pining with love for his missing beloved. By contrast, in the didactic Hindu dialogue of the Yakṣapraśnāḥ "Questions of the Yakṣa ", it is a tutelary spirit of a lake that challenges Yudhiṣṭhira . In Mahavamsa poem of Sri Lanka, a local population is given the term Yakkhas. Prince Vijaya encountered the royalty of the yakkhas' queen, Kuveni , in her capital of Lanka pura and conquered them. Yakshas ( Thai : ยักษ์ , RTGS :  Yak ) are an important element in Thai temple art and architecture . They are common as guardians of

3420-420: The yakṣa s have a dual personality. On the one hand, a yakṣa may be an inoffensive nature- fairy , associated with woods and mountains; but there is also a darker version of the yakṣa , which is a kind of ( bhuta ) that haunts the wilderness and waylays and devours travellers, similar to the rakṣasas . Yakshas appear in Hindu , Jain and Buddhist texts. Several monumental yakshas are known from

3515-476: The Brihatkatha . It has been said to focus on "how people are, rather than how they should be". Lipogram A lipogram (from Ancient Greek : λειπογράμματος , leipográmmatos , "leaving out a letter" ) is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided. Extended Ancient Greek texts avoiding

3610-578: The Dashakumaracharita . The author is traditionally regarded as the poet and grammarian Daṇḍin who composed the Kavyadarsha , a manual on poetry and rhetoric , and according to Yigal Bronner, 'there is now a wide consensus that a single Daṇḍin in authored all these works at the Pallava court in Kāñcī around the end of the seventh century'. In the early twentieth century, Agashe doubted this attribution on

3705-696: The Jataka tales of the Pali Buddhist canon. In the story "Prince Five-Weapons and the Sticky-Haired Demon", Silesaloma is described as being the height of a palm tree, with sharp teeth and two yellow tusks, and a coat of thick, matted fur. A bodhisattva named Prince Panchayudha (Five-Weapons) attempted to kill Silesaloma, but all his attacks, from both his weapons and his bare hands, were thwarted by Silesaloma's sticky hair. Ultimately, Prince Panchayudha impressed Silesaloma with his bravery, and

3800-404: The Kumaras had scattered away, but was comforted by a seer who assured him that they would return after sixteen years. This interval has now come to pass. The Kumaras return with an army to Ujjain, and succeed in defeating King Manasara. Various kingdoms are distributed to the Kumaras , which they govern with justice and happiness to all. There has been extensive debate about the authorship of

3895-550: The R which ensured the practice of the lipogram continued into modern times. In German especially, the R , while not the most prevalent letter, has a very important grammatical role, as masculine pronouns, etc. in the nominative case include an R (e.g. er , der , dieser , jener , welcher ). For the Italian authors, it seems to be a profound dislike of the letter R which prompted them to write lipograms excluding this letter (and often only this letter). There

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3990-825: The tutelary deity of a city, district, lake, or well. Their worship, together with popular belief in nagas (serpent deities), feminine fertility deities, and mother goddesses, may have had its origin among the early Hindu people of India. Yaksha worship coexisted with the priest-conducted sacrifices of the Vedic period. They were later viewed as the steward deities of the earth and the wealth buried beneath. In early Indian art, male yakṣas are portrayed either as fearsome warriors or as portly, stout and dwarf-like . Yakṣiṇī s are portrayed as beautiful young women with happy round faces and full breasts and hips. In Hindu, Buddhist and Jain Religion, Kubera , wealth and prosperity,

4085-441: The 5th century, he is led to 6th-8th century as the most probable time of composition. (This remains in some tension with the fact that Dashakumaracharita is not referred to by any other text until the 10th century. There is also a conflicting tradition, generally considered unreliable, which makes Dandin a contemporary of Kalidasa .) Another work attributed to Daṇḍin is the Avantisundarī or Avantisundarīkathā (The Story of

4180-591: The Beautiful Lady from Avanti). Like the Dashakumaracharita this is in prose, but is even more fragmentarily preserved: the two surviving manuscripts break off early in the text. A later Sanskrit poem, the Avantisundarīkathāsāra (Gist of the Story of the Beautiful Lady from Avanti) seems to have summarised the full story, and its surviving portion covers more of the story, and more again is preserved in

4275-532: The Greeks were able to invent this system of writing as they had a concept of literary notation. Harris then argues that the proof of this knowledge is found in the Greek invention of "a literate game which consists, essentially, in superimposing the structure of a notation on the structure of texts". A pangrammatic lipogram or lipogrammatic pangram uses every letter of the alphabet except one. An example omitting

4370-533: The Homeric poems: Nestor composed an Iliad , which was followed by Tryphiodorus' Odyssey . Both Nestor's Iliad and Tryphiodorus' Odyssey were composed of 24 books (like the original Iliad and Odyssey) each book omitting a subsequent letter of the Greek alphabet . Therefore, the first book omitted alpha, the second beta, and so forth. Twelve centuries after Tryphiodorus wrote his lipogrammatic Odyssey , in 1711,

4465-541: The Murtipujaka Śvētāmbaras, the Tristutik Gaccha sect (both historical founded by Silagana and Devabhadra, and the modern sect organised by Rajendrasuri ) object to the worship of shruta-devatas. In Jainism, there are twenty-four yakshas and twenty-four yakshis that serve as śāsanadevatās for the twenty-four tirthankaras: These yakshas are as follows: In Kālidāsa 's poem Meghadūta , for instance,

4560-1078: The Vipula mountain. Citragupta resides in Citemukha. The yaksha Vakula resides in Rajagrha. ... The yaksha king Mahagiri resides in Girinagara. The yaksha Vasava resides in Vaidisa . The yaksha Karttikeya resides in Rohitaka . This yaksha Kumara is renowned in the great city. ... Vaisravana who resides in the city Alakavati, Located along the jewelled stairway of the Buddha's descent, Is surrounded by billions of gods and goddesses. Such yakshas command huge and powerful contingents of troops To subjugate adversaries and enemies, Conquering all. They are famous throughout all directions. Imbued with great dignity and virtue, They come to aid In

4655-438: The ability to analyse language, the lipogram would be unable to exist. He argues that "the lipogram would be inconceivable unless there were writing systems based on fixed inventories of graphic units, and unless it were possible to classify written texts on the base of the presence or absence of one of those units irrespective of any phonetic value it might have or any function in the script ". He then continues on to argue that as

4750-622: The alphabet in French. Its published translation into English, A Void , by Gilbert Adair , won the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 1995. In Sweden, a form of lipogram was developed out of necessity at the Linköping University . Because files were shared and moved between computer platforms where the internal representation of the characters Å , Ä , Ö , å , ä , and ö (all moderately common vowels) were different,

4845-576: The battles between the heavens and asuras. These deities of virtues and great yaksha generals are located everywhere in Jambudvipa . They uphold and protect the Buddhadharma, generating compassion." Jains mainly maintain cult images of Arihants and Tirthankaras , who have conquered the inner passions and attained moksha. Yakshas and yakshinis are found in pair around the cult images of Jinas, serving as guardian deities. The yaksha

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4940-532: The beautiful damsel Balachandrika, who is facing unwelcome advances from a certain Daruvarma. Pushpodbhava spreads a report that Balachandrika is possessed by a Yaksha . He accompanies Balachandrika to Daruvarma's apartment disguised as her female attendant, kills him when he tries to sport with her, and blames the death on the Yaksha. He then marries Balachandrika. Rajavahana relates his adventures. He had gone to

5035-450: The beginning and the end of Dashakumaracharita proper has been lost; thus it contains only eight of the ten narratives, and furthermore, the stories of Rajavahan and Vishruta are incomplete. The 1st and the 3rd parts seem to have been added later by various authors (some of whom have tried to mimic the style of the original); indeed, there are several disparate versions for these parts in existence. The plot, as described below, almost makes

5130-457: The beginning of the chapter, Mantragupta is called upon to relate his adventures. However, during the previous night of vigorous lovemaking, his lips have been nibbled several times by his beloved; as a result, they are now swollen, making it painful for him to close them. Thus, throughout his narrative, he is compelled to refrain from using any labial consonants (प,फ,ब,भ,म). Most extant texts of Dashakumaracharita are composed of Some text at

5225-473: The bird's singing. The seventh-century Arab theologian Wasil ibn Ata gave a sermon without the letter rāʾ (R). However, it was the 19th-century Mufti of Damascus, Mahmud Hamza "al-Hamzawi" (d. 1887), who produced perhaps the most remarkable work of this genre with a complete commentary of the Quran (published in two volumes) without dotted letters in either the introduction or interlinear commentary. This

5320-413: The city of Champa , where he became a gamester and a burglar and helped the maiden Kulapalika to gain her lover by enriching her with burgled wealth. A devious prostitute named Kamanamanjari had defrauded several people in that city. Apaharavarman falls in love with her sister Ragamanjari, tricks Kamanamanjari into giving back her money to her former paramours, and marries the sister. Later he rashly attacks

5415-462: The earth through a chasm. After the scheme is accomplished (and the Brahmana marries the daughter of the King of Asuras ), Rajavahana returns to earth, only to find that his friends have all scattered away. Eventually, the young men will meet again and relate their adventures, which will form the body of the present work. Rajavahana travels to Ujjain , where he meets Somadatta. The latter begins his narrative. Somadatta had gone to Ujjain in search of

5510-487: The edition by Kale includes the original in Sanskrit, a literal English translation, as well as an extensive commentary on the stylistic and historical aspects of the text. In her translation of the lipogrammatic chapter, Onians omits the labial roman letters 'b', 'm' and 'p'. (E.g., she uses the circumlocution 'honey-creator' instead of 'bumblebee'). There is also a translation into German by Mayer. Critical commentaries on

5605-573: The end of this narrative, Rajavahana and Somadatta accidentally meet Pushpodbhava and ask him to relate his adventures. The latter begins his narrative. Pushpodbhava saves a man falling from a cliff, who turns out to be his father, who had tried to commit suicide after becoming despondent for having lost his family. Shortly afterwards, he saves a woman from throwing herself in fire due to grief; this turns out to be his mother. Later Pushpodbhava acquires vast wealth by applying magical collyrium to his eyes to detect subterranean riches. He becomes enamoured of

5700-418: The following four questions: 1. What is cruel by nature? 2. What ensures the happiness of a householder? 3. What is love? and 4. What is the best means of achieving difficult things? He answers 1. The heart of a woman, 2. The virtues of a wife, 3. Imagination and 4. Ability. He illustrates his answers by four stories (told in full in the text). The Rakshasa is appeased by these answers. Just then, another Rakshasa

5795-521: The gates in Buddhist temples throughout the country since at least the 14th century. Ceramic sculptures of guardian yakshas were produced in Thailand , during the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya periods , between the 14th and 16th centuries, at several kiln complexes in northern Thailand . They are mostly depicted with a characteristic face, having big round bulging eyes and protruding fangs , as well as

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5890-434: The grounds that the two works differ very widely in style and tone. Since a poet Dandin (presumably distinct from a prose writer) is also mentioned in sundry ancient Indian texts, he is led to conjecture the existence of at least three distinct Dandin s. Since Dandin (literally, a staff-bearer) is also a common adjective for ascetics or religious mendicants, Wilson doubted whether it was the author's proper name at all. On

5985-511: The influential London essayist and journalist Joseph Addison commented on this work (although it had been lost), arguing that "it must have been amusing to see the most elegant word of the language rejected like "a diamond with a flaw in it" if it was tainted by the proscribed letter". Petrus Riga , a canon of Sainte-Marie de Reims during the 11th century, translated the Bible, and due to its scriptural obscurities called it Aurora . Each canto of

6080-408: The king into a trap to perform a magical rite in order to exchange his (the King's) old and shrivelled body for a new one and succeeds in killing him. The kingdom is restored to his father. Arthapala narrates his adventures. He had gone to Kashi where he heard the plight of Kampala (his father, and a former royal minister). The latter was sentenced to death by the evil King Simhaghosha. While Kampala

6175-458: The latter enters. He issues forth as the King (who has acquired a new lustrous body), frees the old king and marries the princess. Vishruta begins to relate his adventures. While wandering through the Vindhya forest, he comes across a young boy accompanied by an old servant. The boy is the prince of Vidarbha whose kingdom has been usurped. This had forced the queen Vasundhara to take refuge (with her son and daughter) with Mitravarma, who proved to be

6270-482: The letter A , and " Un marido sin vocación " ("A Vocationless Husband"), without the E . Interest in lipograms was rekindled by Georges Perec 's novel La Disparition (1969) (openly inspired by Wright's Gadsby ) and its English translation A Void by Gilbert Adair . Both works are missing the letter E , which is the most common letter in French as well as in English. A Spanish translation instead omits

6365-544: The letter A , the second most common letter in that language. Perec subsequently wrote Les revenentes (1972), a novel that uses no vowels except for E . Perec was a member of Oulipo , a group of French authors who adopted a variety of constraints in their work. La Disparition is, to date, the longest lipogram in existence. Lipograms are sometimes dismissed by academia. "Literary history seems deliberately to ignore writing as practice, as work, as play". In his book Rethinking Writing , Roy Harris notes that without

6460-906: The letter E is: A jovial swain should not complain Of any buxom fair Who mocks his pain and thinks it gain To quiz his awkward air. A longer example is "Fate of Nassan", an anonymous poem dating from pre-1870, where each stanza is a lipogrammatic pangram using every letter of the alphabet except E . Bold Nassan quits his caravan, A hazy mountain grot to scan; Climbs jaggy rocks to find his way, Doth tax his sight, but far doth stray. Not work of man, nor sport of child Finds Nassan on this mazy wild; Lax grow his joints, limbs toil in vain— Poor wight! why didst thou quit that plain? Vainly for succour Nassan calls; Know, Zillah, that thy Nassan falls; But prowling wolf and fox may joy To quarry on thy Arab boy. Two other pangrammatic lipograms omitting only

6555-464: The letter sigma are the earliest examples of lipograms. Writing a lipogram may be a trivial task when avoiding uncommon letters like Z , J , Q , or X , but it is much more challenging to avoid common letters like E , T , or A in the English language, as the author must omit many ordinary words. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose. Identifying lipograms can also be problematic, as there

6650-419: The letter E are: Now focus your mind vigorously on this paragraph and on all its words. What’s so unusual about it? Don’t just zip through it quickly. Go through it slowly. Tax your brain as much as you can. This is an unusual paragraph. It looks so ordinary and common. You would think that nothing is wrong with it, and, in fact, nothing is. But it is unusual. Can you find it? Just a quick think should do it. It

6745-499: The letters B, F, M, P and V from the text of the improvised songs. The seventh- or eighth-century Dashakumaracharita by Daṇḍin includes a prominent lipogrammatic section at the beginning of the seventh chapter. Mantragupta is called upon to relate his adventures. However, during the previous night of vigorous lovemaking, his lips have been nibbled several times by his beloved; as a result, they are now swollen, making it painful for him to close them. Thus, throughout his narrative, he

6840-446: The letters are removed from the story, the alphabet, and sentence changes. In Rebeccah Giltrow's Twenty-Six Degrees , each chapter, narrated by a different character, deliberately excludes one of the twenty-six letters while using the other twenty-five at least once. And each of the twenty-six letters is excluded from one and only one chapter (for instance, the twelfth chapter excludes L ). Cipher and Poverty (The Book of Nothing) ,

6935-446: The lost Prince, where King Mattakala has usurped King Viraketu. Somadatta finds a jewel near a river, and then gives it to a destitute Brahmana in charity. The latter has him imprisoned as a jewel thief. Somadatta discovers that his fellow prisoners are loyal to the minister of King Viraketu. They break free from the prison, raise an army and overthrow the usurper. The old king is restored to the throne and Somadatta marries his daughter. At

7030-440: The method moved into France and England. One of the most remarkable examples of a lipogram is Ernest Vincent Wright 's novel Gadsby (1939), which has over 50,000 words but not a single letter E . Wright's self-imposed rule prohibited such common English words as the and he , plurals ending in -es , past tenses ending in -ed , and even abbreviations like Mr. (since it is short for Mister ) or Rob (for Robert ). Yet

7125-417: The narration flows fairly smoothly, and the book was praised by critics for its literary merits. Wright was motivated to write Gadsby by an earlier four- stanza lipogrammatic poem of another author. Even earlier, Spanish playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela published five short stories between 1926 and 1927, each one omitting a vowel; the best known are " El Chofer Nuevo " ("The new Driver"), without

7220-568: The newspaper that had already been selected. For example, if the reader was using the New York Times , then they could not use the letters E , I , K , M , N , O , R , S , T , W , and Y . Grant Maierhofer's Ebb , a novel published in 2023, by Kernpunkt Press, was written entirely without the letter "A". In Turkey the tradition of " Lebdeğmez atışma" or "Dudak değmez aşık atışması" (literally: two troubadours throwing verses at each other where lips do not touch each other) that

7315-583: The other hand, in the mid twentieth century Kale accepted that Kavyadarsha and Dashakumaracharita had been written by the same person. On the basis of textual evidence from the Dashakumaracharita , he opines that the author must have lived earlier than the Muslim invasion of India , i.e., before the 11th century. Moreover, since the Kavyadarsha refers to the Prakrit poem Setubandha (सेतुबंध) composed in

7410-407: The palace, Pramati wins the princess's affection, but then absconds and joins the Brahmana. The two approach the King, and the Brahmana presents Pramati as his prospective son-in-law who has come to claim his future wife. The King is, of course, unable to produce her, and is forced to give up his own daughter in order to propitiate the Brahmana (who otherwise threatens to immolate himself). Thus Pramati

7505-535: The period. The Dashakumaracharita has been compared to the Spanish genre of picaresque , linking the settings and drawing parallels 6th-century disorder of India to the disorder of Spain in the late mediaeval period. It has also been noted that the Dashakumaracharita , while fantastic, has realism that is not present in contemporary prestigious works, and involves thieves, prostitutes and other less exalted members of society. Dandin may have borrowed major themes from

7600-448: The plot of the story deals with a small country that begins to outlaw the use of various letters as the tiles of each letter fall off of a statue. As each letter is outlawed within the story, it is (for the most part) no longer used in the text of the novel. It is not purely lipogrammatic, however, because the outlawed letters do appear in the text proper from time to time (the characters being penalized with banishment for their use) and when

7695-416: The plot requires a search for pangram sentences, all twenty-six letters are obviously in use. Also, late in the text, the author begins using letters serving as homophones for the omitted letters (i.e., PH in place of an F , G in place of C ), which may be considered cheating. At the beginning of each chapter, the alphabet appears along with a sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". As

7790-418: The princess who falls in love with him. The sorcerer's slave (a ghost) is overjoyed to be freed from his master and clandestinely carries Mantragupta into the palace, where he lives with the princess in the ladies chambers. One day, as the king of Kalinga (and the princess), is away on a hunting expedition, their entire retinue is surprised and made captive by the rival king Jayasimha. The latter wishes to possess

7885-478: The princess, who resists his advances. In order to rescue her, Mantragupta dresses in the rags and severed hair of the sorcerer and presents himself as an ascetic possessing magical powers. He convinces Jayasimha to bathe in a presumably enchanted lake which would frighten away the Yaksha who has presumably possessed the princess. Mantragupta hides himself in a cavity along the bank of the lake and drowns Jayasimha when

7980-489: The prologue form the frame story . King Rajahamsa of Magadha is defeated in a war by the rival King Manasara of Malwa , and thence retires into the Vindhya forest together with his ministers. During his sojourn, he and his ministers respectively sire sons. Several other young men are brought to his dwelling due to various incidents (e.g., one is rescued from a river, another from a tiger, and still another wanders off from

8075-451: The text begins in the middle of Rajavahana's story. The lovers are discovered by royal attendants and reported to Chandavarman, who becomes furious, arrests Rajavahana and imprisons him in a wooden cage. Then Chandavarman launches a military campaign against his rival King Simhavarman (carrying along the wooden cage onto the battlefield) and vanquishes him. Meanwhile, a message arrives from Manasara commanding that Rajavahana be executed. As he

8170-563: The text have been written by, inter alia , Ghanashyama , Gupta and Pankaj. A more extensive bibliography may be found in Onians. The Dashakumaracharita has been used to examine the creation of the Ajanta Caves , interpreting it as an extended metaphoric telling of the 5th-century fall of the Vākāṭaka dynasty , and a comparison to the 7th-century Pallava dynasty , which is the period that

8265-622: The time of the Maurya Empire period. They are variously dated from around the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. These statues are monumental (usually around 2 metres tall), and often bear inscriptions related to their identification as yakshas. They are considered as the first known monumental stone sculptures in India. Two of these monumental yakshas are known from Patna , one from Vidisha and one from Parkham , as well as one yakshini from Vidisha. The yakṣas may have originally been

8360-444: The town of Avanti where he became enamoured of Princess Avantisundari (the daughter of Manasara, his father's enemy). Meanwhile, Manasara has temporarily abdicated his kingdom to practice penance and left Chandavarman in charge. Rajavahana and Avantisundari are married by a friendly conjurer who makes Chandavarman believe that the wedding ceremony is a delusion. The couple retires into a private chamber for amorous sport. In Chapter I,

8455-467: The tradition to write comments in source code without using those characters emerged. Zanzō ni Kuchibeni o (1989) by Yasutaka Tsutsui is a lipogrammatic novel in Japanese. The first chapter is written without the syllable あ , and usable syllables decrease as the story advances. In the last chapter, the last syllable, ん , vanishes and the story is closed. Zero Degree (1991) by Charu Nivedita

8550-477: The translation was followed by a resume in Lipogrammatic verse; the first canto has no A , the second has no B , and so on. There are two hundred and fifty manuscripts of Petrus Riga's Bible still preserved. There is a tradition of German and Italian lipograms excluding the letter R dating from the seventeenth century until modern times. While some authors excluded other letters, it was the exclusion of

8645-437: The use of certain notes. Examples avoiding either the second, sixth, and tenth notes, or the third, seventh, and eleventh notes in a chromatic scale have been cited. A reverse lipogram , also known as an antilipo or transgram is a type of constrained writing where each word must contain a particular letter in the text. Yaksha The Yakshas ( Sanskrit : यक्ष , IAST : Yakṣa , Pali : Yakkha ) are

8740-662: The verse summary and its Telugu translation, both the Avantisundarī and the Daśakumāracarita originally formed a single massive prose work that was broken up at a relatively early age in its transmission; another view is that the two represent separate stages in the life and work of the same author. The first translation, into Telugu , was produced by Ketana in c. 1250. Editions of the original Sanskrit text have been published in modern times by Agashe, Godbole and Parab, Kale, and Wilson. The work has been translated into English by Haksar, Jacob, Kale, Onians, and Ryder. In particular,

8835-463: The word jumps . Lasus of Hermione , who lived during the second half of the sixth century BCE, is the most ancient author of a lipogram. This makes the lipogram, according to Quintus Curtius Rufus , "the most ancient systematic artifice of Western literature". Lasus did not like the sigma , and excluded it from one of his poems, entitled Ode to the Centaurs, of which nothing remains; as well as

8930-511: The work is conventionally dated to. Spink argues that the work has an essentially historical core, almost readable as a roman a clef , which is an accurate account of the Vākāṭaka fall and that Dandin (or one of the Dandins) had a personal, perhaps familial, connection to the events in the 5th-century. Evidence from the text has also been used to establish the spread of the cult of Vindhyavasini in

9025-472: The yaksha decided to let him go. Panchayudha explained that Silesaloma's monstrous state was caused by wicked deeds from his past lives, and he taught the yaksha the five precepts , after which Silesaloma renounced violence and transformed into a friendly forest spirit. The Mahāmāyūrīvidyārājñī Sūtra, a text that dates back to fourth century or earlier (translated from the Sanskrit by Kumarajiva ), gives

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