
The Recognition of Shakuntala
419 pages
November, 2006
ISBN: 9780814788158
This play was one of the first examples of Indian literature to be seen in Europe; it attracted considerable attention (among others, from Goethe), and indeed pained surprise that such a sophisticated art-form could have developed without the rest of the world noticing. A good deal of that surprise will be revived by the hitherto untranslated Kashmirian recension.
Kali·dasa's The Recognition of Shakúntala is a play that scarcely needs introduction. Among the first works of Sanskrit literature translated into European languages, its skilful plot of thwarted love and eventual redemption has long charmed audiences around the world. Shakúntala's story is a leitmotiv that recurs in many works of Indian literature and culminates in the master Kali·dasa's drama for the stage.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Reviews
“The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance.”
—Willis G. Regier, The Chronicle Review
“No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience.”
—The Times Higher Education Supplement
“The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes.”
—New Criterion
“Published in the geek-chic format.”
—BookForum
“Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs.”
—Tricycle
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