The Present Work Embodies A Comprehensive Study Of Subandhu And A Critical Appraisal Of His Contribution To Sanskrit Literature. Besides A Biographical Account Of Subandhu And A Brief Introduction To His Vasavadatta,It Presents A Detailed Literary Evaluation With Regard To His Plot-Construction, Narration, Descriptive Art, Characterization, Delineation Of Sentiments (Rasas), Use Of Poetic Figures (Alankaras), And Style And Diction, Followed By A Succinct Account Of The Social And Cultural Conditions Reflected In His Prose Romance. Though Designed For The General Reader, Scholars Would Also Find The Present Work Of Refreshing Interest.

Vāsavadattā, a classical Sanskrit romantic tale.

Comparative study between two classical Sanskrit authors, with special reference to the Vāsavadattā and Avantīsundarīkathā portion of Daśakumāracarita.

The present work is an analytical account of classical Sanskrit literature in its historical perspective. It is divided into six books, containing several chapters, each dealing with a particular branch of Sanskrit learning. The work is full of references; the footnotes refer to a variety of sources, legendary, inscriptional, numismatic, architectural and literary. The writer has exploited all the relevant material of the journals, catalogues, annals, reports and other documents in discussing the vexed problems of the date, place, genealogy of the authors and the literary tendencies of their compositions. His methodology of literary criticism is rationalistic and bears the stamp of the modern scientific age. The elaborate index, the critical introduction, the exhaustive bibliography, the list of abbreviations, the table of transliteration and a supplement are the most useful additions to this interesting and instructive work of literary history.

Beginning in the sixth century C.E. and continuing for more than a thousand years, an extraordinary poetic practice was the trademark of a major literary movement in South Asia. Authors invented a special language to depict both the apparent and hidden sides of disguised or dual characters, and then used it to narrate India's major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, simultaneously. Originally produced in Sanskrit, these dual narratives eventually worked their way into regional languages, especially Telugu and Tamil, and other artistic media, such as sculpture. Scholars have long dismissed simultaneous narration as a mere curiosity, if not a sign of cultural decline in medieval India. Yet Yigal Bronner's Extreme Poetry effectively negates this position, proving that, far from being a meaningless pastime, this intricate, "bitextual" technique both transcended and reinvented Sanskrit literary expression. The poems of simultaneous narration teased and estranged existing convention and showcased the interrelations between the tradition's foundational texts. By focusing on these achievements and their reverberations through time, Bronner rewrites the history of Sanskrit literature and its aesthetic goals. He also expands on contemporary theories of intertextuality, which have been largely confined to Western texts and practices.

Between 476 CE and 505 CE, three heroic “makers of history” from India laid the seeds of a massive transformation in human society; the effects of which we still feel today. Budhagupta Vikramaditya, the heroic warrior emperor, unified a polarized and disintegrating country, defeated the “world conquering” armies of the Huns, appointed mentors to the Nan Qi emperors of Southern China and paved the way for organized state formation in Tibet. He organized a series of mega conferences that powered a transformative intellectual ferment. Two products of the intellectual ferment of these years were the child prodigy, Aryabhata, and the literary giant, Subandhu. In the wider realm of world politics and society, the effects of events of these three decades in India laid the foundation for some of the most defining moments of civilizational history. These moments included the unification of the Korean peninsula in the 7th cent, the consolidation of imperial control by the Soga clan in Japan, the transformation of Chinese polity, a redefinition of Sassanian kingship in Persia and an intellectual revolution in late medieval Europe. This book is a non-fiction narrative of this incredible yet rare story of three Indians who in a short span of thirty years created a whole new world.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1866.

The twenty-nine Buddhist caves near Ajanta form a devotional complex which ranks as one of the world's most startling achievements, created at the very apogee of India's Golden Age. Ajanta: History and Development, appears as part of the series Handbook of Oriental Studies, present the reader with a systematic treatment of all aspects of the site, the result of forty years of painstaking research in situ by Walter M. Spink. Volume one deals with the historical context in which this dramatic burst of pious activity took place under the reign of Vakataka emperor Harisena, (c. 460 – 477 A.D.), and with the sudden halt of activity almost immediately following the death of the emperor. In surprising detail the relative and absolute chronology of the site can be established from a careful reading of the physical evidence, with consequences for our dating of India’s Golden Age. Ajanta, it appears, is a veritable illustrated history of Harisena’s times, crowded with information on its history, development and how it was used. Originally published in hardcover

Walter Spink’s intense concern with the development of the Ajanta caves and their architectural, sculptural and painted features finds its most insistent reflection in his present richly illustrated study. In part 1, Spink explains the many connections between the Bagh caves and its “sister site”, Ajanta. He particularly emphasizes the leading role that Bagh plays in establishing the “short chronology” and in the crucial matter of Buddhist shrine development from the aniconic to iconic forms of worship. In part 2, along with his colleague Professor Naomichi Yaguchi, who also provided the photographs and the newly informative plans, the authors show how, over the course of a mere decade, better and better ways were discovered to fit the doors in the cells where the monks lived. Such an analysis reveals the vigor of the conceptual and technical changes that characterize Ajanta’s evolution from its start in the early 460s to its traumatic collapse in about 470. Moving from Ajanta’s beginning to its ending, the evolution of door fittings parallels the precise and dramatic development of Indian history in the remarkable course of the emperor Harisena’s reign.