Soldier, explorer, and adventurer, British author Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) is perhaps best remembered for his notoriously unexpurgated translations of The Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, which scandalized-and titillated-Victorian readers. This Lesser known book, however, is his intriguing collection of classic Hindu tales of adventure, magic, and romance, first published in 1870. Enlivened by Burton's own imagination he was the first to translate them from Sanskrit. These stories purport to demonstrate "the exceeding folly of many wise fools," "the use and misuse of...