"The range of Manas performance traditions captured here is immense.

Debating the Dasam Granth is the first English language, book-length critical study of this controversial Sikh text in many years.

Smith analyzes Indic literature from all ages-the earliest Vedic texts; the Mahabharata; Buddhist, Jain, Yogic, Ayurvedic, and Tantric texts; Hindu devotional literature; Sanskrit drama and narrative literature; and more than a hundred ...

This richly suggestive book challenges many of our fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our world."—Mark C. Taylor, New York Times Book Review "Dazzling analysis. . .

The edition is enhanced by a selection of colour plates from an early edition of the work.

The work does not isolate dying as an issue; it treats it on many levels. This book discusses how images of dying in the Bhāgavata-Purāna relate to issues of language and love in the religious imagination of India.

Mah bh rata (including Harivam a) and R m yan a, the two great Sanskrit Epics central to the whole of Indian Culture, form the subject of this new work.The book begins by examining the relationship of the epics to the Vedas and the role of ...

Since first leaving India before AD 570, the Pancatantra has been widely translated and has influenced a cast number of works in India, the Arab world and Europe, including the Arabian Nights, the Canterbury Tales and the Fables of La ...

Explores the construction of the Aryan myth and its uses in both India and Europe.

Presents Kamadeva, the Hindu god of desire, in tales, art, and ritual. Also covers Kamadeva's appearance in Buddhist lore.