[1] They often express her unrequited feelings and longings to her friend, mother or another relative, lover, husband or to herself.
[1] Many poems are notable for describing unmarried girls daring for secret rendezvous to meet boys in ancient India, or about marital problems with husbands who remains emotionally a stranger to his wife and bosses over her, while trying to have affairs with other women.
[4] While Kamasutra is a theoretical work on love and sex, Gaha Sattasai is a practical compilation of examples describing "untidy reality of life" where seduction formulae don't work, love seems complicated and emotionally unfulfilling.
[3] It is unlikely to be the work of Hala, based on style, inconsistencies between its manuscripts and because other sources state it had as many as 389 authors.
The existence of many major recensions, states Moriz Winternitz, suggests that the text was very popular by early medieval era in India.
[17] One of the most important translation of this text along with an elaborate introduction has been done by Sadashiv Atmaram Joglekar[18] in Marathi, published in 1956.
S.A. Joglekar has carefully compiled them and has identified a total of 1006 poems in a book titled Halsatvahan’s Gathasaptashati Published in 1956 by Prasad Publications, Pune.
[20] Many poems of the text include names of gods and goddesses in Hinduism, for allegorical comparison of a woman's feelings.
This reflects the fact that the common people composing these poems lived in close vicinity of nature.
- Gatha 273[22]If one of two beings who grew up together in joy and pain and loved each other for a long time, dies – this one lives, and the other one is dead.