Satire in Bhallaṭaśataka of Bhallaṭa

The poet Bhallaṭa is a Sanskrit poet from Kashmir who lived in the latter half of the 9th and the first half of the 10th century AD. He is known as the author of Bhallaṭaśataka. The work contains 100 verses. It is the earliest known compilation of detached poems (muktakakāvya) focused entirely on allegorical satire. Satire is one of the most powerful styles of writing that targets the fraudsters and the hypocrites in the literature of every age. The work contains satire, but it is not purely satirical. Bhallaṭa has used allegorical satire to express the deeper truths of human life through flowers, animals, trees, etc. He is remembered as the poet who employed the genre of anyokti. In the poem, the poet’s deep emotional pain is expressed. In the work, the poet satirizes the upper-class people of his time for their incompetence. The poet also ridicules the shortcomings of the patrons of his time.