The library

The oldest of the four Vedas: 1,028 hymns, arranged in ten maṇḍalas. The epigraph on this site is from the Sarasvatī hymn of the second maṇḍala, attributed to Gṛtsamada.

Vālmīki's epic of exile, promise and return, in seven kāṇḍas. The site reads the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa as the book of a promise kept at a cost.

The great epic of the Kuru war and its aftermath, some 100,000 verses. The Gītā sits inside its sixth book.

1,330 couplets in three books — virtue, wealth and love — by Tiruvaḷḷuvar. The most translated Tamil work, and a standing comparison for any ethics of honour.

Kauṭilya's manual of statecraft, taxation, espionage and war — the least sentimental book in the corpus, and a useful antidote to honour talk.

Viṣṇuśarman's frame-tale of animals teaching a king's sons statecraft. The ancestor of a thousand fable collections, in India and abroad.

Kālidāsa's play of recognition: a ring, a forgotten marriage and a king who must remember.

Kālidāsa's messenger poem: an exiled yakṣa asks a cloud to carry word to his wife. 111 verses, and the model for every later sandeśa-kāvya.

Jayadeva's song-cycle of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa: twelve cantos that reshaped devotional poetry and dance across eastern India.

Patañjali's 196 aphorisms on attention, habit and liberation — the source text behind most modern yoga, and much less about posture than the moderns assume.

The surgical compendium: instruments, procedures, anaesthesia and ethics. The oldest surviving systematic treatise on surgery.

A king's public self-correction, carved on rock and pillar across the subcontinent — the earliest large corpus of Indian political prose.

Abul Fazl's survey of the Mughal empire: revenue, ranks, crafts, prices and the households of a court. The most detailed administrative portrait of its time.

Bābur's own memoir — gardens, wine, battles, homesickness — the first autobiography in the Mughal line and unusually candid about failure.