Welcome to language scholar and sitarist Srinivas Reddy’s distillation of the multifarious texts that together comprise classical Indian literature. The quality of the translation is just a wee bit uneven, faithful to script but lacking in nuance. The pieces, themselves, are all too brief and often unrelieved of the circumlocution of imagery and expression that characterises many traditional narratives.
The real surprise, however, lies in the selection of these texts. These appear as little windows on a time machine that can transport the reader into different eras of Indian history and let one contemplate the universe through the eyes of famous and lesser-known romantics and ascetics, poets and thinkers, see inside their minds even. On some occasions, they entice one to read the treatise in full, and explore the original.
Which would be an insurmountable challenge for most readers as these are written or were recited in Sanskrit, the early Prakrits and Tamil. Herein lies the significance of this work. All credit to Reddy for illuminating lost worlds.
The timeline of the texts range from 1500 BCE ( ) to 750 CE ( by Sankara). Multiculturalism is a much-abused concept today, but an appreciation of not only the diversity of language but also the panoply of, often complementary, philosophies, religions, regions and geographies they originate from might evoke wonder. This reader was particularly enthused by the inclusion of the doctrines of the heterodox Ajivikas, many of whom w.