Nanda has it all&8212;youth, money, good looks and a kittenish wife who fulfills his sexual and emotional needs. He also has the Buddha, a dispassionate man of immense insight and self-containment, for an older brother. When Nanda is made a reluctant recruit to the Buddha&##8217;s order of monks, he is forced to confront his all-too-human enslavement to his erotic and romantic desires. Dating from the second century CE, Ashva.ghosha s Handsome Nanda portrays its hero s spiritual makeover with compassion, psychological profundity, and great poetic skill.

Co-published by New...

Rama, the crown prince of the City of Ayodhya, is a model son and warrior. He is sent by his father the king to rescue a sage from persecution by demons, but must first kill a fearsome ogress. That done, he drives out the demons, restores peace, and attends a tournament in the neighboring city of Mithila; here he bends the bow that no other warrior can handle, winning the prize and the hand of Sita, the princess of Mithila.

Valmiki's Ramayana is one of the two great national epics of India, the source revered throughout South Asia as the original account of the career of Rama, ideal...

This court epic describes events leading up to the birth of Kumara, the war god who will defeat the demon Taraka. The gods try to use Kama, the Indian Cupid, to make the ascetic god Shiva fall in love with the daughter of the Himalaya mountain. Kama fails, and is burnt to ashes by the angry Shiva. Then Parvati, the daughter of the mountain, herself turns to asceticism to win the husband she longs for. She is successful, and the climax of the poem is the marriage and lovemaking of Shiva and Parvati, parents of the universe.

The greatest long poem in classical Sanskrit, by the greatest...

The Book of Shalya recounts in gory detail the final destruction of the Kaurava army and the defeat of its leader, Dur.yodhana. In this first volume heroic duels and martial speeches abound as Shalya, the king of the Madras, is made general of the Kaurava army, only to be slaughtered in his turn.

The Book of Shalya recounts in gory detail the final destruction of the Kaurava army and the defeat of its leader, Duryodhana. In this first volume heroic duels and martial speeches abound as Shalya, the king of the Madras, is made general of the Kaurava army, only to be slaughtered in his...

Volume Two continues this fast-paced tale of mystery and sorcery up to canto 28. Nara.vahana.datta's epic quest to become the human emperor of the sorcerers leads him and his companions to win yet more wives. Unfortunately, the surviving manuscripts of the text break off while he is in pursuit of his sixth wife. The primary narrative is punctuated by diverting subplots.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

After Bhishma is cut down at the end of the previous book of the Maha.bharata, the book which bears his name, Duryodhana selects Drona as leader of his forces. Drona accepts the honor with Bhishma's blessing, despite his ongoing personal conflicts as mentor to both the Pandava and Kaurava heroes in their youth. The fighting rages on, with heavy losses on both sides. Furious and frustrated, Duryodhana accuses Drona of collaborating with the enemy, but he replies that as long as Arjuna is on the field, the Pandavas will remain invincible. When Arjuna is finally diverted from the main...

The Dark Age Ridiculed, by Nila.kantha, Beguiling Artistry, by Kshemendra, The Hundred Allegories, by Bhallata

Written over a period of nearly a thousand years, these works show three very different approaches to satire. Nila.kantha gets straight to the point: swindlers prey on stupidity.

The artistry that beguiles Kshemendra is as varied as human nature and just as fallible. We are off to a gentle start Sanctimoniousreally no more than a warm-up among vices but soon graduate to Greed and Lust. From there it's downhill all the way, as unfaithfulness...

This play was one of the first examples of Indian literature to be seen in Europe; it attracted considerable attention (among others, from Goethe), and indeed pained surprise that such a sophisticated art-form could have developed without the rest of the world noticing. A good deal of that surprise will be revived by the hitherto untranslated Kashmirian recension.

Kali.dasa's The Recognition of Shakuntala is a play that scarcely needs introduction. Among the first works of Sanskrit literature translated into European languages, its skilful plot of thwarted love and eventual...

The short lyric poem appears with great frequency in Sanskrit collections and displays a wide range of themes. Bhartri.hari is the most famous composer. Amaru and Bilhana also offer excellent examples.

This anthology of the Love Lyrics of three Indian poets conjures up an atmosphere of love both sensual and social, ever in tension with love's rejection or repression. The flavor of all these poems- Amaru s seventh-century C.E. Hundred Poems, Bhartri.hari's anthology Love, Politics, Disenchantment, from the fourth century, and Bilhana's eleventh-century Fifty Stanzas of a Thief is the...

The Epitome of Queen Lilavati tells the stories of the lives of a group of souls as they pass through a series of embodiments on their way to final liberation from the continual cycle of death and rebirth. Told as a means to promote the non-violent ethic of Jainism, it abounds in memorable incidents and characters, such as Dhana, the rich merchant who attempted to justify cheating in trade, Padmaratha, who while invisible attempted to seduce the ladies of the royal household, and Vasundhara, the bogus holy man who was caught in a compromising position with a female...