Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom
Edited and translated by Patrick Olivelle
The king despairs of his idle sons, so he hires a learned brahmin who promises to make their lessons in statecraft unmissable. The lessons are disguised as short stories, featuring mainly animal protagonists. Many of these narratives have traveled across the world, and are known in the West as Aesop’s fables.

The Four Soliloquies
By Sudraka, Syamílaka, Vararuci, and Ísvaradatta, edited and translated by Csaba Dezso and Somadeva Vasudeva
The Four Soliloquies have been handed down as a collection of the most ancient monologue farces in classical Sanskrit. Though stylistically divergent, they share a common plot: the hero is an inept, bungling procurer, who mismanages his client’s love affairs to an unexpectedly successful completion. A wide spectrum of India’s urban society is scandalized, from respected judges to clumsy poetasters, from hypocritical Buddhist monks to greedy madams, from spoiled scions of wealthy houses to criminal low-life.

The Heavenly Exploits: Buddhist Biographies from the Divyávadána, Volume One
Edited and translated by Joel Tatelman
The Heavenly Exploits are “Buddhist Biographies from the Dívyavadána.” The worldly face of religious literature, these lively morality tales have inspired audiences across Asia for more than two millennia. This volume contains four of the thirty-eight Buddhist biographical stories in the “Dívyavadána,” or Heavenly Exploits. Where religion meets the world, these tales present something for everyone.

Love Lyrics
By Amaru, Bhartrihari, and Bilhana, edited and translated by Greg Bailey and Richard Gombrich
This anthology of the Love Lyrics of three Indian poets conjures up an atmosphere of love both sensual and social, ever in tension with love’s rejection or repression. The flavor of all these poems— Ámaru’s seventh century CE “Hundred Poems,” Bhartri•hari’s anthology “Love, Politics, Disenchantment,” from the fourth century, and Bílhana’s eleventh-century “Fifty Stanzas of a Thief”—is the universalized aesthetic experience of love.

Mahábhárata Book Two: The Great Hall
Translated by Paul Wilmot
The Great Hall relates some of the most seminal events of the epic, culminating in the famous game of dice between the Pándavas and the Káuravas. The Pándavas, happily settled in Indra•prastha, enjoy one glorious success after another. Yudhi•shthira, after erecting the most magnificent hall on earth, decides to perform the Royal Consecration Sacrifice, which will raise his status to that of the world's greatest sovereign. His brothers travel far and wide and conquer all known kingdoms. Yet just when the Pándavas are beginning to seem invincible, Yudhi•shthira mysteriously gambles everything away in a fateful game of dice to his cousin Duryódhana.