Yasodharawatha

The actual authorship of Yasodharavatha remains anonymous. It is a collection of 130 poems written in the voice of Princess Yasodhara wife of Prince Siddhartha who later became the Buddha. The collection is rich with emotions pathos and nuances of a wife who misses her husband dearly. Her husband is in wilderness in search of spiritual truth while she is confined to the walls of a royal palace. She wishes him all the good luck while missing him. In this slim book Gunawardana offers a comprehensive introduction to the origins of the period when Yasodharawatha came to be written. He categorises the period into traditions - great and minor traditions. Gunawardana elaborates the literary trends of Kandyan period of Sri Lanka during which Yasodharawatha is said to be penned.