Epigrams on conduct and renunciation.

Vadakaymadom Krishna Iyer Subramanian(b. 1930, Kerala, India) is an eminent scholar whose life mission is to present to the world the treasures of ancient India, in the fields of art, literature, philosophy and religion. He has already translated several ancient texts into English. These include : Saundaryalahari, Sivanandalahari, Sacred Songs of India, maxims of Chankya and Sri Rudraprasna. As a consultant for holistic health and spiritual development, he has spelt out the Hindu regimens in this regard in his popular book : The Holistic Way to Health, happiness and Harmony. Subramanian's prolific literary output covers a variety of subjects ranging from astrology to art. He has been astropalmic counsellor for over 35 years. A retired officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (which he joined in 1953), Subramanian is also a reputed painter, who has held 22 one-man shows and whose paintings (some of them in the Chandigarh museum) have won wide acclaim from leading art critics of india. Subramanian who has travelled extensively in India, now lives in the United States of America.

Madhu Natisar Nath is a Rajasthani farmer with no formal schooling. He is also a singer, a musician, and a storyteller. At the center of A Carnival of Parting are Madhu Nath's oral performances of two linked tales about the legendary Indian kings, Bharthari of Ujjain and Gopi Chand of Bengal. Both characters, while still in their prime, leave thrones and families to be initiated as yogis—a process rich in adventure and melodrama, one that offers unique insights into popular Hinduism's view of world renunciation. Ann Grodzins Gold presents these living oral epic traditions as flowing narratives, transmitting to Western readers the pleasures, moods, and interactive dimensions of a village bard's performance. Three introductory chapters and an interpretive afterword, together with an appendix on the bard's language by linguist David Magier, supply A Carnival of Parting with a full range of ethnographic, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Gold gives a frank and engaging portrayal of the bard Madhu Nath and her work with him. The tales are most profoundly concerned, Gold argues, with human rather than divine realities. In a compelling afterword, she highlights their thematic emphases on politics, love, and death. Madhu Nath's vital colloquial telling of Gopi Chand and Bharthari's stories depicts renunciation as inevitable and interpersonal attachments as doomed, yet celebrates human existence as a "carnival of parting."