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...