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Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Shaheen Khan. This definitive recording includes an introduction by J. D. Smith, read by Sagar Arya. The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian...

Rain in the Mountains brings together some of Ruskin Bond’s most beautiful works from his years spent in the foothills of the Himalayas in the town of Mussoorie. Through vivid images and lucid writing, Bond evokes the everyday sights and sounds, and captures the essence of mountain life. The...

THE RAMAYANAM, an itihasa of the highest order, is considered adi kavya, the first poem to have been composed. Written by Valm ki during Rama’s time, and ratified by him, this timeless epic has been treated with utmost care by all acaryas in their famed commentaries. Since the advent of human civilization, it has inspired many poets and dramatists across the subcontinent and has been transcreated in almost all Bharat ya languages. Multiple layers of philosophy and theology are an embellishment to this classic. Its influence on Bharat ya music, dance, sculpture and textiles is unfathomable.

The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Christopher Nolan Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts...

The poet Kabir, a selection from whose songs is here for the first time offered to English audiences, is one of the most interesting personalities in the history of Indian mysticism.

Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis’s elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern audiences.

This book is about Sahir Ludhianvi, one of the greatest poets and lyricists of Hindi films. Sahir Ludhianvi, whose original name was Abdul Hayee, wrote poems that were different from his contemporaries who limited themselves to singing paeans on god, beauty, or wine. Instead, his poems were about other things: declining values of society, the meaninglessness of war and the subsummation of love by consumerism.

Manas ka hans is a brilliant attempt to bring forth the life of Goswami Tulsidas. The novel is an attempt to address the complications of religion through Tulsidas while portraying him as a person who was afflicted with all the virtues and vices known to human beings. How Tulsidas finds Shri Ram is a question that the author answers in a fashion that can only be termed brilliant, for lack of better word. The best thing about the work is that it doesn't attempt to glorify any God or deity but simply tries to go into the mind of the devotee - Tulsidas, in this case.

गागर में सागर की तरह इस पुस्तक में हिन्दी के कालजयी कवियों की विशाल काव्य-रचना में से श्रेष्ठतम और प्रतिनिधि काव्य का संकलन विस्तृत विवेचन के साथ प्रस्तुत है। कबीर (1398 -1515) भारतीय साहित्य की बड़ी विभूति हैं। उनके समान खरी-खरी कहने वाला कवि दूसरा नहीं हुआ। अपनी साखियों में पाखण्ड विरोध, ईश्वर निष्ठा और गुरु के प्रति समर्पण के चलते उनकी ऐसी लोक व्याप्ति हुई कि हिन्दी और हिन्दीतर जन सामान्य में भी आज तक उनका नाम लिया जाता है। उनका अध्यात्म अपने स्वाध्याय से अर्जित है तो खंडन का साहस भी उनके जीवनानुभवों का प्रमाण है। ‘जो घर फूंके आपना’ सरीखी बात कहने का साहस ही कबीर को कबीर बनाता है।

Ghalib is the greatest Urdu poet and one of the greatest in any Indian language. He would rank perhaps among the great poets of the world. With Meer Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz, to name only four, the firmament of Urdu poetry is truly star studded, with numerous starlets strewn around. Ghalib has not only a pride of place among them; his stature is growing with every passing decade. In fact it is well nigh impossible to do full justice to his poetry, particularly the ghazal in translation. The best that could be done was to translate the verses into independent rhymed couplets.

A book of twenty-six poetic essays written in English, Kahlil Gibran’s Devdoot is full of religious inspirations. With the twelve illustrations drawn by the author himself, the book took more than eleven years to be formulated and perfected and is Gibran’s best-known work. It represents the height of his literary career as he came to be noted as 'the Bard of Washington Street.'

The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays written in English in 1923 by the Lebanese American artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. In the book the prophet Almustafa, who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years, is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, and more.

Each of these prayer-poems has been spiritualized by this great man of God. Open this book, pick a poem at random and read it. Mentally repeat whatever phrase appeals to you. Within a short time, you will see your consciousness transformed. This book has the power to rapidly accelerate your spiritual growth, and provides hundreds of delightful ways for you to begin your own conversation with God.

In 81 brief chapters, Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao—the basic principle of the...

Faiz Ahmed Faiz is the most famous contemporary Urdu poet of the 20th century who appeals both to the common man as well as the elite connoisseurs of poetry. Faiz's ghazals reflect a strong influence of the Persian style and diction, because of which he is often considered the inheritor of the tradition of Ghalib; and at the same time several of them are written in a simple conversational style dealing with the problems of the common man.

'A joyful rendition of an iconic text' - Arundhathi Subramaniam Saundarya Lahari is a popular Sanskrit hymn celebrating the power and beauty of Sakti, the primordial goddess. In one hundred verses, it underlines the centrality of the feminine principle in Indian thought. Attributed to Adi...

Yogananda said Whispers from Eternity was one his favorite pieces of writing. He urged his followers to read and listen to it when he was gone from this world in order to reconnect with him in the dream world. In it he urges his students to demand when praying and live the prayer as if already realized. So in some ways Whispers From Eternity are his lessons in prayer as he share his own sacred prayers.

द्रौपदी महाभारत ही नहीं, भारतीय जीवन तथा संस्कृति का एक अत्यन्त विलक्षण और महत्वपूर्ण चिरत्र है-परन्तु साहित्य ने अब तक उसे प्रायः छुआ नहीं था।

Acclaimed actress Claire Danes burnishes an epic story of heroes, gods, and monsters in a groundbreaking translation of The Odyssey, the first great adventure story in the Western literary tradition. When the wily warrior-king Odysseus sets off for home after the Trojan War, he doesn’t realize this simple undertaking will become a perilous journey of 10 years. Beset at every turn, he encounters obstacles, detours, and temptations—both supernatural and human—while his wife Penelope fends off would-be suitors desperate to take the throne.

Do Kadam Aur Sahi is an excellent compilation of selected poems by the renowned Urdu poet Rahat Indoori. The compiler, Sachin Chaudhary, has named the collection as ‘selected pearls of the ocean’. The magic that flows from the pen of Rahat Indauri gives a different feeling.