Book launch for the Hitopadesa


A book launch will be held tomorrow afternoon celebrating publication of a translation of the Hitopadesa. The original work by Narayana is presented in a new translation by renowned Sanskrit scholar A.N.D. Haksar. The event will take place in the York University Bookstore on the Keele campus, on Wednesday, Oct. 11, from 4 to 5pm. The launch is jointly sponsored by the York University Bookstore and York’s South Asian Studies Program, Division of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Arts.


About the Book


Composed between 800 and 950 AD, Narayana’s Hitopadesa is one of the best-known of all works in Sanskrit literature. A fascinating collection of fables, maxims and sayings in verse, it combines a wide variety of writings from earlier authors in one volume – a garden of pleasing animal and human fables, it was created to provide guidance, wisdom and political advice to the reader.  At once an anthology of folk wisdom and an original and satirical work in its own right, the Hitopadesa has been deeply admired and widely read for more than a thousand years for its humorous and profound reflections on human lives, loves, follies and philosophies.


More about A.N.D. Haksar


A.N.D. Haksar is a renowned Sanskrit scholar and translator. He has published eight books of translation of classical Sanskrit literature. A former diplomat, Haksar, now retired from the diplomatic corps, served as India’s high commissioner to Kenya and Seychelles, and was the ambassador to Portugal and the former Yugoslavia.


Several of Haksar’s translations, including the Hitopadesa, have been published by Penguin Classics.


For more information visit the York University Bookstore Web site or e-mail Malcolm Blincow, associate professor of anthropology, Faculty of Arts.