An elegant translation of the Sattasaī (or Seven Hundred), India's earliest collection of lyric poetry, Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India deals with love in its many aspects. Mostly narrated by women, the poems reveal the world of local Indian village life sometime between the third and fifth centuries. The Sattasaī offers a more realistic counterpart to that notorious theoretical treatise on love the Kāmasūtra, which presents a cosmopolitan and calculating milieu. Translators Peter Khoroche and Herman Tieken introduce the main features of the work in its own language and time. For modern readers, these short, self-contained poems are a treat: the sentiments they depict remain affecting and contemporary while providing a window into a world long past.

According to the Kama Sutra, the erotic handbook written two thousand years ago, when the wheel of ecstasy is in motion “there is no textbook at all, and no order.” Indian Love Poems is a unique gathering of poems from across more than two and a half millennia that attempts to catalog the disordered ecstasies of love, ranging from the Kama Sutra and earlier works up to present-day India and the poets of the Indian diaspora. Indian Love Poems features works from the classical languages of Sanskrit and Tamil and such later languages as Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, and English. Emerging from many Indian cultures and eras, the poems collected here reflect a variety of erotic and spiritual passions, and celebrate the powerful role of desire–both male and female–in the intricate dance of existence. From the twelfth-century female poet Mahadeviyakka to the twentieth-century Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to such contemporary poets as Kamala Das and Vikram Seth, this glittering tapestry of lyric voices beautifully and sensually evokes the transfiguring force of love.

This book is a translation and study of the poems of a ninth-century woman saint and mystic. The Introduction is designed to make the translations accessible to a non-specialist audience, while the Notes provide insights into the poems and useful explications of allusions and convention with which readers who do not possess a specialized knowledge of Tamil Vaisnava bhakti may be unfamiliar.

"A single stanza of the poet Amaru," declared a ninth-century poetry critic, "may provide the taste of love equal to what's found in whole volumes." Graceful and yet remarkably playful, intensely passionate, and at times hinting of divine transcendence, the poems translated here offer poignant glimpses into the many faces of erotic love. This collection, known in Sanskrit as the Amarushataka ("One Hundred Poems of Amaru"), was compiled in the eighth century and remains to this day one of India's finest collections of love poetry. It has never been fully translated into English poetry before. Legend connects the poetry's authorship to King Amaru of Kashmir, while present-day scholars generally consider it an anthology of the verses of many poets. Poet and translator Andrew Schelling's artful translations render the ancient verses with freshness and immediacy. Schelling's compelling introduction and afterword offer musings on the colorful background and history of the original Sanskrit text.

First Published in 2005. This is book attempts to give a true and vivid account of the life of woman in ancient India, based upon the immense masses of material imbedded in the two great Epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

This book looks at the representation and practice of chastity in selective ancient Indian texts. It studies how and when the concept originated and in what ways it was intertwined with the social, cultural, and economic notions of Indian society. Drawing on seminal Indian texts such as the MahāPurāṇas, Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, Sattasaī and the Jātakas, the volume delves into the social and reproductive rights of women through an examination of the norms of chastity, virginity, and Pātivratya, which were construed according to a patriarchal hierarchy of the society and implemented as a means of strengthening patriarchal authority. It also examines the interinfluence of various religious traditions that emerged on the very concept of chastity and the ideologies they later gave rise to. A comprehensive study of sexuality and gender in early India, the book will be indispensable to students, teachers, and researchers of gender studies, literature, women’s studies, women’s rights, feminism, South Asian studies, and social history of Ancient India.