Cherished throughout India and much of Asia for centuries, it has been faithfully preserved and passed on through poems, folk tales, music, dance, drama, sculpture, painting, even film and graphic novels. This story and its characters have captured the hearts and minds of countless generations. Revered through the ages for its moral and spiritual wisdom, it is an uplifting tale of romance and high adventure, recounting the odyssey of Rama, a great King of ancient India.

    But it contains much more than conflict. An epic masterpiece of huge sweep and magisterial power, “a hundred times more interesting” than the Iliad and the Odyssey, writes Wendy Doniger in the introduction, the Mahabharata is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion, and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love, and spiritual freedom. A seminal Hindu text, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, it is also one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilization.Innovatively composed in blank verse rather than prose, Carole Satyamurti’s English retelling covers all eighteen books of the Mahabharata. This new version masterfully captures the beauty, excitement, and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope.

    The Sacred Books of the East series, comprising 50 volumes, has translations of key sacred texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism & Islam. The series was edited by the famous linguist Max Muller, who also produced many of the translations & were the foundational documents for the new discipline known as the comparative science of religions. This volume contains The Laws of Manu.

    Originated at digital platform of Facebook, the famous face of TV news, anchor Ravish Kumar has started writing micro fiction in a limited space of Facebook and twitter. The politics of our times figures as Metaphor in the loving exchange between characters. Laprek is a story of Love in cities. It is a story of Cities in love. रेम हम सबको बेहतर शहरी बनाता है। हम शहर के हर अनजान कोनों का सम्मान करने लगते हैं। उन कोनों में ज़िंदगी भर देते हैं... आप तभी एक शहर को नए सिरे से खोजते हैं जब प्रेम में होते हैं... और प्रेम में होना सिर्फ हाथ थामने का बहाना ढूँढना नहीं होता। दो लोगों के उस स्पेस में बहुत कुछ टकराता रहता है। 'लप्रेक' उसी कशिश और टकराहट की पैदाइश है।

    

    Emotionally rich yet philosophically precise, sumptuously enigmatic yet crisply structured, these poems are as sensuously evocative as they are charged with an ecstatic devotion. Stripping away a century of Victorian-inflected translations and paraphrases, and restoring the jagged, colloquial power of Lalla’s voice, in Ranjit Hoskote’s new translation these poems are glorious manifestos of illumination.

    It is clear, from his writings, that his mind was amazingly modern, humane and sensitive, especially for the seventh-century India in which he lived. Bana had a healthy irreverence towards many of the established orthodoxies of his time and his strength lies in his skill as a storyteller and as a creator of characters vibrant with life and individuality.Kadambari is a lyrical prose romance that narrates the love story of Kadambari, a Gandharva princess, and Chandrapida, a prince who is eventually revealed to be the moon god. Acclaimed as a great literary work, it is replete with eloquent descriptions of palaces, forests, mountains, gardens, sunrises and sunsets and love in separation and fulfillment. Featuring an intriguing parrot-narrator, the story progresses as a delightful romantic thriller played out in the magical realms between this world and the other, in which the earthly and the divine blend in idyllic splendour.

    His son is India's best-known cinema superstar - Amitabh Bachchan. The core of this book is a long sequence called Madhushala (the house of wine) which could be compared to the Rubaiyat in imagery and metre.

    Economic and social conflict in a north Indian village are brilliantly captured in the story of Hori, a poor farmer and his family’s struggle for survival and self-respect. Hori does everything he can to fulfill his life’s desire: to own a cow, the peasant’s measure of wealth and well-being. Like many Hindus of his time, he believes that making the gift of a cow to a Brahman before he dies will help him achieve salvation. An engaging introduction to India before Independence, Godaan is at once village ethnography, moving human document and insightful colonial history.

    It is a collection of religious and philosophic texts gathered and translated into Coptic by fourth-century Gnostic Christians and translated into English by dozens of highly reputable experts. First published in 1978, this is the revised 1988 edition supported by illuminating introductions to each document. The library itself is a diverse collection of texts that the Gnostics considered to be related to their heretical philosophy in some way. There are 45 separate titles, including a Coptic translation from the Greek of two well-known works: the Gospel of Thomas, attributed to Jesus' brother Judas, and Plato's Republic. The word gnosis is defined as "the immediate knowledge of spiritual truth." This doomed radical sect believed in being here now--withdrawing from the contamination of society and materiality--and that heaven is an internal state, not some place above the clouds. That this collection has resurfaced at this historical juncture is more than likely no coincidence.--P. Randall Cohan

    It is considered second only to the Tao Te Ching, but the two books coundn't be more different. Where the Tao Te Ching is distant and proverbial in style, the Chuang Tze buzzes with life and with insights, often with considerable humour behind them.

    The great poem is also called Tulsi-krit Ramayan (literally, 'Tulsi-created Ramayan' or, more loosely, 'The Ramayan of Tulsidas'.Tulsidas (who is also sometimes called Tulsidas-ji or simply Tulsi) began writing the scripture in Vikram Samvat 1631 (1574 CE) in Avadhpuri, Ayodhya. The exact date is stated within the poem as being the ninth day of the month of Chaitra, which was the birthday of Lord Ram, Ram Navami. A large portion of the poem was composed at Varanasi, where the poet spent most of his later life.Today, it is considered one of the greatest works of Hindu literature. Its composition marks the first time the story of Ramayana was made available to the common man for song and performance. Thus, the text is associated with the beginning of the storied tradition of Ramlila, the dramatic enactment of the text.

    It is the story of the roguish Monkey and his encounters with major and minor spirits, gods, demigods, demons, ogres, monsters, and fairies. This translation, by the distinguished scholar Arthur Waley, is the first accurate English version; it makes available to the Western reader a faithful reproduction of the spirit and meaning of the original.

    For doubting his master’s Buddhist teachings, the monk is forced to endure a strange punishment: reincarnation as the most ideal of men. On his journey through this new life full of material, martial, and sensual accomplishments beyond his wildest dreams, he encounters the eight fairies in human form, each one furthering his path towards understanding the fleeting value of his good fortune. As his successes grow, he comes closer and closer to finally comprehending the fundamental truths of the Buddha’s teachings. Like Hesse’s Siddhartha, The Nine Cloud Dream is an unforgettable tale exploring the meaning of a good life and the virtue of living simply with mindfulness. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    enthralling’ BIBEK DEBROY‘A magical and thought-provoking adventure, Ahalya will intrigue and mesmerize readers’ CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI‘An enigmatic tale about purity, chastity, seduction and redemption’ NAMITA GOKHALE‘Brilliant and intriguing’ ANAND NEELAKANTANIt is known that Ahalya was cursed by her husband, Gautam, for indulging in a physical relationship with Indra. But is there another story to Ahalya's truth? Who was Indra anyway? A king? A lover? A philanderer? The first book of the Sati series, Ahalya hinges on these core questions, narrating the course of her life, from innocence to infidelity.In the Sati series, Koral Dasgupta explores the lives of the Pancha Kanyas from Indian mythology, all of whom had partners other than their husbands and yet are revered as the most enlightened women, whose purity of mind precedes over the purity of body. The five books of the Sati series reinvent these women and their men, in the modern context with a feminist consciousness.