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In this unique verse novel, "The Bawd's Counsel", Dāmodaragupta paints a vivid tableau of eighth-century urban life in Northern India. Instead of the gods, sages and heroes of legend that people the Sanskrit literary epics, here gurus, princes and merchants jostle upon the streets of Benares, Patna and in the gardens of Mount Abu with bawds, prostitutes, rakes and rustics, and they are shown grappling with matters of life, death, love, lovelessness and livelihood. These mortal actors have been woven into tales that are narrated with considerable grace and wit. The author, a minister at the court of a Kashmirian king, evinces particular empathy with those who have drawn the shortest straws—the abandoned prostitute in love, for instance, or the married woman seduced into a socially ruinous adulterous relationship. Caustically irreverent humour, meanwhile, is meted out to religious hypocrites, to the tiresomely self-important, and to men of rank with more money than sense. In spite of the intrinsic interest of the work—both as a piece of literature and as a document of the social history of its time—it has not received much attention in recent years, either in India or elsewhere. A German translation of an incomplete nineteenth-century edition was published in 1903, which was in turn rendered into French and the French then into English, and there have been translations into Hungarian and Japanese. This volume, which contains not only a fresh edition that draws on a hitherto unconsulted Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript of the thirteenth century, but also a metrical English translation, aims to bring this novel to the wider audience it deserves.

Manners and customs. --- India, North --- Inde (Nord) --- North India. --- Social life and customs --- Mœurs et coutumes

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"For a millennium and a half, Kalidasa's works -- from The Cloud Messenger to The Recognition of Shakuntala -- have delighted audiences in India and beyond. Although the renowned poet and dramatist inspired many literary works over the centuries, little is known about his life. He likely lived in central India in the late fourth or early fifth century. Kalidasa's The Lineage of the Raghus, or Raghuvaṃśa, belongs to the Sanskrit literary tradition of mahākāvya, or court poem. It recounts the lives of ancient kings in the Sūryavaṃśa, the Solar Dynasty, who ruled from the capital city of Ayodhya. The poem describes the quest for offspring by Dilipa, a descendant of the primordial king Manu; the world conquest of his son Raghu, which offers a panorama of the Indian subcontinent; the exploits of the famous Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu; and the debaucheries of Agnivarna, which jeopardize the future of the lineage. This volume presents a new edition of the Sanskrit text in the Devanagari script alongside a fresh English translation of this enduring epic."--

Epic poetry, Sanskrit --- Suryavamsha dynasty

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The Four Soliloquies have been handed down as a collection of the most ancient monologue farces in classical Sanskrit. Though stylistically divergent, they share a common plot : the hero is an inept, bungling procurer, who mismanages his client's love-affairs to an unexpectedly successful completion. A wide spectrum of India's urban society is scandalized, from respected judges to clumsy poetasters, from hypocritical Buddhist monks to greedy madams, from spoiled scions of wealthy houses to criminal low-life.

Sanskrit farces --- Erotic drama, Sanskrit --- Pimps --- Sex customs --- Erotic drama, Sanskrit. --- Sanskrit farces. --- Sanskrit farces - Translations into English --- Erotic drama, Sanskrit - Translations into English --- Pimps - India - Drama --- Sex customs - India - Drama