Krishna is the greatest Hero, whom we can emulate without second thought. He is the Mentor of Mentors, Coach of Coaches and Guru of all Motivational Gurus. He is the greatest life skills expert. Krishna is God for faithful devotees. He is a magician for non-believers. He is a romantic Hero for some and a great manipulator for many. He is the greatest Philosopher. To succeed in professional and personal life, one has to learn and try to emulate Krishna to become a complete man.

In the West, Krishna is primarily known as the speaker of the Bhagavad Gita. But it is the stories of Krishna's childhood and his later exploits that have provided some of the most important and widespread sources of religious narrative in the Hindu religious landscape. This volume brings together new translations of representative samples of Krishna religious literature from a variety of genres - classical, popular, sectarian, poetic, literary, and philosophical.

The Srimad Bhagavata (or Srimad Bhagavatam) is one of the few main Puranas and a great Book on Bhakti (devotion).It consists of 18000 verses and is regarded as an encyclopedia of spiritual philosophy.Attributed to the sage Vyasa the Bhagavata (also Bhagavatam) illustrates religious truths with stories of ancient India’s saints seers and kings. The book also deals in part with the life of Krishna (which makes the book especially sacred to the Vaishnavas). The set consists of four volumes each with Devanagri Sanskrit and English translation mainly in the lines of Sridhara’s interpretation. The verses are numbered. A thorough introduction explains the methodology and outlook of Pauranika literature in respect to space time nature and man.Prologues are also included with each Skanda to further the reader’s understanding of the text.

In this exciting rendition of the renowned classic, Krishna Dharma retells this epic as a fast-paced novel, but fully retains the majestic mood of the original. As the divinely beautiful Draupadi rose from the fire, a voice rang out from the heavens foretelling a terrible destiny. “She will cause the destruction of countless warriors.” And so begins one of the most fabulous stories of all time. Mahabharata plunges readers into a wondrous and ancient world of romance and adventure. A powerful and moving tale, it recounts the history of the five heroic Pandava brothers and their celestial wife. Cheated of their kingdom and sent into exile by their envious cousins, they set off on a fascinating journey on which they encounter mystical sages, mighty kings, and a host of gods and demons. Profound spiritual themes underlie the enthralling narrative, making it one of the world’s most revered texts. Culminating in an apocalyptic war, Mahabharata is a masterpiece of suspense, intrigue, and illuminating wisdom.

This work, first published in 1968, presents the fabulous world of Hinduism in its entirety in two volumes. It is the first general encyclopedia of Hinduism covering every major aspect of Hindu life and thought, embodying the results of modern scholarship yet not ignoring the traditional point of view. It contains over 700 articles, each of which gives a comprehensive account of the subject, and by a system of cross references interlinks all topics related to it, so that a single theme may be traced in all its ramifications through the whole book. An index of over 8,000 items, which in itself forms a veritable treasury of Sanskrit terms and names, will further assist the researcher finding their way among the lesser topics treated in the work.

The sacred city of Banāras on the River Ganges is one of the oldest living cities in the world—as old as Jerusalem, Athens, and Peking. It is the place where Shiva, the Lord of All, is said to have made his permanent home since the dawn of creation. There are few cities in India as traditionally Hindu and as symbolic of the whole of Hindu culture as Banāras. In this eloquent, finely observed study, Diana Eck shows how the city over the centuries has become a lens through which the Hindu vision of the world is precisely focused. She reveals the spiritual and historical resonance of this holy place where great sages such as the Buddha and Shankara were taught, where ashrams, palaces, and universities were built, where God has been imagined and imagined in a thousand ways. She describes the rites of its temples, the busy life of its riverfront, and the exuberance of its festivals. She tells how people travel from all over India to Banāras for the privilege of dying a good death here, for they believe that on the banks of the River Ganges where “the atmosphere of devotion is improbable in its strength,” it is possible to be released from the earthly round forever. In her account of the sacred history, geography, and art of the city, its elaborate and thriving rituals, its myths and literature, and its importance to pilgrims and seekers, Diana Eck uses her wealth of scholarship to make the Hindu tradition come powerfully alive so that we come to understand the meaning of this sacred city to the millions of believers who have been coming here for over 2,500 years.

Reproduction of the original: Hinduism and Buddhism by Charles Eliot