Narayana s best-seller gives its reader much more than Friendly Advice. In one handy collection closely related to the world-famous Pancatantra or Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom numerous animal fables are interwoven with human stories, all designed to instruct wayward princes. Tales of canny procuresses compete with those of cunning crows and tigers. An intrusive ass is simply thrashed by his master, but the meddlesome monkey ends up with his testicles crushed. One prince manages to enjoy himself with a merchant s wife with her husband s consent, while another is kicked out of paradise...

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...

Soma.deva composed his Ocean of the Rivers of Story in Kashmir in the eleventh century CE. It is a vast collection of tales based on The Long Story, a now lost (and perhaps legendary) repository of Indian fables, in which prince Nara.vahana.datta wins twenty-six wives and becomes the emperor of the sorcerers. There are tales within tales within tales. By turns funny, exciting, or didactic, they illustrate points within the narrative or are told simply to provide entertainment for the protagonists. Its twenty thousand plus verses are written in simple but elegant Sanskrit and it has long...

The Great Hall relates some of the most seminal events of the epic, culminating in the famous game of dice between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. The Pandavas, happily settled in Indra-prastha, enjoy one glorious success after another. Yudhi-shthira, after erecting the most magnificent hall on earth, decides to perform the Royal Consecration Sacrifice, which will raise his status to that of the world's greatest sovereign. His brothers travel far and wide and conquer all known kingdoms. Yet just when the Pandavas are beginning to seem invincible, Yudhi-shthira mysteriously gambles...

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 Book of Karna relates the events of the two dramatic days after the defeat of the great warriors and generals Bhishma and Drona, in which Karna, great hero and the eldest Pandava, leads the Kaurava army into combat. This first volume of "Karna" depicts mighty battles in gory detail, sets the scene for Karna's tragic death, and includes a remarkable verbal duel between Karna and his reluctant charioteer Shalya, the king of the Madras, as they hurl abuse at each other before entering the fray.

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

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