Folk tales.

Classic tales of courage and compassion The fabled monarch Vikramaditya is considered a model of kingly virtues, and his reign a golden age. These famous stories narrated by the thirty-two statuettes of nymphs supporting the magic throne of Vikramaditya extol his courage, compassion and extraordinary magnanimity. They are set in a framework recounting the myths of his birth, accession, adventures and death in battle, after which the throne remained concealed till its discovery in a later age. A fascinating mix of marvellous happenings, proverbial wisdom and sage precepts, these popular tales are designed to entertain as well as instruct. Many have passed into folk literature. The original author of the Simhasana Dvatrimsika is unknown. The present text is dated to the thirteenth century AD. It exists in four main recensions, from which extracts have been compiled together for the first time, in this lively and faithful translation of this celebrated classic by a renowned Sanskritist

"India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and great grandmother of tradition. Mark Twain Essence of Indian Thought is about the contribution of India to the thoughts, cultures and traditions of the world. The debt owed by the west to other civilisations and to India in particular, goes back to the earliest epoch of the ‘Western’ scientific tradition, the age of the classical Greeks and continued up until the dawn of the modern era, the renaissance when Europe was awakening from its Dark Ages. This book is an humble attempt to put together some of the aspects of India’s contribution to the thoughts of the world. Upanishads and Yoga both speak of universal values and constitute the heritage of all peoples. Other subjects like Ayurveda, Kamasutra and various forms of Indian arts-painting, music and dance have been analysed and discussed elaborately. The book draws attention to the Indian art of storytelling, the origin of mathematics, including the zero and decimal system.

Examines the world's greatest literature about empires and imperialism, including more than 200 entries on writers, classic works, themes, and concepts.

The Trial (1920) is a prose translation of the verse play Lakshmir Pariksha (The Test of Lakshmi), written in 1897-98.Autumn Festival is the English translation of the Bengali play Sharadotsav (1908), a prose-play interspersed with songs. The nature element is so well depicted that wind and sunlight are almost actors in this play.

The Dasam Granth is a 1,428-page anthology of diverse compositions attributed to the tenth Guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh, and a topic of great controversy among Sikhs. The controversy stems from two major issues: a substantial portion of the Dasam Granth relates tales from Hindu mythology, suggesting a disconnect from normative Sikh theology; and a long composition entitled Charitropakhian tells several hundred rather graphic stories about illicit liaisons between men and women. Sikhs have debated whether the text deserves status as a "scripture" or should be read instead as "literature." Sikh scholars have also long debated whether Guru Gobind Singh in fact authored the entire Dasam Granth. Much of the secondary literature on the Dasam Granth focuses on this authorship issue, and despite an ever-growing body of articles, essays, and books (mainly in Punjabi), the debate has not moved forward. The available manuscript and other historical evidence do not provide conclusive answers regarding authorship. The debate has been so acrimonious at times that in 2000, Sikh leader Joginder Singh Vedanti issued a directive that Sikh scholars not comment on the Dasam Granth publicly at all pending a committee inquiry into the matter. Debating the Dasam Granth is the first English language, book-length critical study of this controversial Sikh text in many years. Based on research on the original text in the Brajbhasha and Punjabi languages, a critical reading of the secondary literature in Punjabi, Hindi, and English, and interviews with scholars and Sikh leaders in India, it offers a thorough introduction to the Dasam Granth, its history, debates about its authenticity, and an in-depth analysis of its most important compositions.

A Hindu poet, Kalyana Malla, renders in classical Sanskrit a biblical story for his Muslim patron, a Lodhi prince of the sixteenth century, in this unusual intermingling of cultural traditions. The sensual unfolding of David and Bathsheba’s love story-the bathing scene, David’s infatuation, his pursuit of Bathsheba, and their eventual union-is strikingly portrayed in the language of the gods through its shringara rasa, or the erotic mode, by a writer better known for the sex manual Ananga Ranga. This marvellous, first-ever English translation of Suleiman Charitra-a delightful Sanskrit rendering of Hebraic and Arabic tales-elegantly brings together the east and the west.