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Dandin's work as a novelist, poet and pioneering theorist of literary style has secured for him an important place in classical Sanskrit literature. He lived in Kanchi, near present-day Chennai, in the period c. AD 650?750, during the Pallava rule. The Dasa Kumara Charitam is a prose romance recounting the exploits of Prince Rajavahana and his nine companions. Its colourful tales of adventure are notable for their ironic humour, amoral outlook and uninhibited descriptions of contemporary life and manners. A remarkable feature of the stories is the geographical sweep of their action, ranging from present-day Punjab to Kerala, Gujarat to Assam and all the way to the islands of the Indian Ocean. Also remarkable is the rich variety of characters and situations. Dandin vivifies each personage, major and minor, and provides lively accounts of assassinations, executions, dance festivals and royal assemblies, describes at length the training of a courtesan, and even the tools for burgling a house. Even though Tales of the Ten Princes can be enjoyed for its absorbing stories alone, it is also a wonderfully detailed sociological account of an important age in ancient India.
Rama, the crown prince of the City of Ayodhya, is a model son and warrior. He is sent by his father the king to rescue a sage from persecution by demons, but must first kill a fearsome ogress. That done, he drives out the demons, restores peace, and attends a tournament in the neighboring city of Mithila; here he bends the bow that no other warrior can handle, winning the prize and the hand of Sita, the princess of Mithila.Valm'ki's Ramßyana is one of the two great national epics of India, the source revered throughout South Asia as the original account of the career of Rama, ideal man and incarnation of the great god Vishnu. The first book, "Boyhood," introduces the young hero Rama and sets the scene for the adventures ahead. It begins with a fascinating excursus on the origins and function of poetry itself.For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Tells the tale of prince Narávahana-datta, taking him from royal palaces to flying sorcerers' mountain fastnesses via courtesans' bedrooms and merchant ships. Along the way, he accumulates 26 wives.
King Harsha, who reigned over the kingdom of Kanauj from 606 to 647 CE, composed two Sanskrit plays about the mythical figures of King Udayana, his queen, Vásava·datta, and two of his co-wives. The plays abound in mistaken identities, both political and erotic. The characters masquerade as one another and, occasionally, as themselves, and each play refers simultaneously to itself and to the other. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
"Numerous more followed, including the third in the CSL selection, the sixteenth-century "Swan Messenger," composed also in Bengal by Rupa Go svamin, a devotee of Krishna. Here romantic and religious love combine in a poem that shines with the intensity of love for the god Krishna."--BOOK JACKET.
The name of Soma·deva's eleventh-century Ocean of the Rivers of Stories is no boast: in more than 20,000 verses it tells more than 250 tales. The reader has only to enjoy being swept away in the flood of stories, said to spring from that source of so much classical Indian literature, "The Long Story"--Publisher description.
Early biographies collected in one volume of the Sanskrit Libraries, a series of bi-lingual edition classics.
By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to the richness and complexity of an essential Buddhist genre.
"Nanda is not alone in being cured by the Buddha's sugar-coated bitter pills; the famous penultimate verse identifies all who hear or read Handsome Nanda as patients on the path to liberation, because we have savored the medicine that is bottled in this honeyed poem."--BOOK JACKET.
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