The only edition available of the otherworldy tales from a golden age of Indian civilization  In India, Vikramaditya is held up as a model of kingly virtue, and his reign as a golden age of peace and prosperity. Dating from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, these tales, narrated by the thirty-two statuettes of nymphs supporting his magic throne, describe Vikramaditya exploits and extol his extraordinary courage, compassion, and kindness. Against an exotic setting of adventures and miracles, the nymphs relate fights with ogres, occult rituals, and travels to other worlds, as well as very human incidents of betrayal and rivalry. The only edition available of these colorful and instructive tales, this is an important addition to a growing library of Sanskrit titles in Penguin Classics.

Simhasana Dvatrimsika: Thirty-Two Tales of the Throne of Vikramaditya (Penguin Classics)

Politics & Social Sciences

Kshemendra

A.N.D. Haksar

Social Sciences

Penguin

The god Shiva is utterly seduced by Mohini, the enchanting female form assumed by the god Vishnu during the churning of the ocean for nectar. A barber employs wit and wile and rumours of witchcraft to win his wife back from the lustful attentions of their king. The celestial nymph Urvashi curses the Pandava prince Arjuna when he rejects her sexual advances. A woman caught in adultery befools her elders with a religious ritual. A man with a disagreeable missing wife insists nevertheless that she be recovered by his ruler who has a similar problem.  Refined, colloquial, romantic, cynical, satirical by turns, these stories of erotic love, elegantly translated from the Sanskrit classics, make a sustained argument for the secular ends of life of desire tempered with discrimination and pleasure with restraint.

The Seduction of Shiva: Tales of Life and Love

Literature & Fiction

A.N.D. Haksar (Tr.)

Dramas & Plays

The Dark Age Ridiculed, by Níla·kantha, Beguiling Artistry, by Ksheméndra, The Hundred Allegories, by Bhállata Written over a period of nearly a thousand years, these works show three very different approaches to satire. Níla·kantha gets straight to the point: swindlers prey on stupidity. The artistry that beguiles Ksheméndra is as varied as human nature and just as fallible. We are off to a gentle start Sanctimoniousreally no more than a warm-up among vices—but soon graduate to Greed and Lust. From there it's downhill all the way, as unfaithfulness leads on to fraud, and drunkenness to depravity; deception and quackery bring up the rear. What's this at the very end? Virtue? A late arrival, pale and unconvincing. This volume presents three Indian satirists with three different strategies: in the ninth century C.E., Bhállata sought vengeance on his boorish new king by producing vicious sarcastic verse, “The Hundred Allegories;” in the eleventh century, Ksheméndra presents himself as a social reformer out to shame the complacent into compliance with Vedic morality; and in the seventeenth century little can redeem the fallen characters Níla·kantha portrays, so his duty is simply to warn about the corruption of every social type. 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

Three Satires (Clay Sanskrit Library, 54)

Nilakantha

Bhallata

Humor & Satire

Clay Sanskrit

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Legends And Miracles Of Buddha, Sakya Sinha, Part 1 (1895)

Literary

Kessinger Publishing

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