The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c43.349

v2.c43.349

**Volumes 26 and 27. Vikrama’s Adventures, or The Thirty-two Tales of the Throne.** A collection of stories about King Vikrama, as told by the Thirty-two Statuettes that supported his throne. Edited in four different recensions of the Sanskrit original (Vikrama-charita or Siṅhāsana-dvātriṅçikā) and translated into English with an introduction, by FRANKLIN EDGERTON, Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania. Nearly ready. Vikrama’s Adventures is one of the most famous story-books of mediæval India. Vikrama is a kind of Hindu King Arthur, an example for real kings. Edgerton hopes that his work may prove suggestive as a model for students of comparative literature. The text of each of the four recensions is printed in horizontally parallel sections, so that each section of the first version is followed by the corresponding section of the three other versions in immediate sequence. And the translation is treated in like manner. Comparisons are thus facilitated to a degree never before attained in a work of this kind. From all this, Edgerton reconstructs, with some detail, and with reasonable certainty, the original work from which the current versions are derived. This he presents in the form of a Composite Outline, the concrete solution of a problem in literary genetics.