400–500 AD
This bookshelf brings together Sanskrit drama, Indian poetry, and Hebraic literature from the 400–500 AD period, highlighting how different traditions explored dignity, justice, moral responsibility, and human freedom. Reading these works broadens the history of liberty and dignity beyond the familiar Greek, Roman, Christian, and modern European traditions. Kalidasa and Sudraka show human beings as moral agents embedded in love, family, social rank, political duty, and cosmic order, yet capable of choice, compassion, and self-command. The Little Clay Cart is especially important because it gives dignity to merchants, courtesans, servants, monks, and outcasts, not only rulers and sages. The Talmud and Midrashim deepen the idea that human dignity is protected through law, argument, interpretation, and communal responsibility. They show liberty not as isolation from obligation, but as the disciplined freedom to reason, dissent, judge, and live under a moral law.
6 of 6 books shown
Tales of Ancient India
Translated from the Sanskrit.
Hebraic Literature: Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and Kabbala
The Poems of Kalidasa
Rendered into English verse by M. C. Dutt.
Sakuntala; or, The Fatal Ring: A Drama
By Kalidasa. To which is added Meghaduta; or, The Cloud Messenger, the Bhagavad-Gita, or The Sacred Song. Edited, with an introduction, by T. Holme.
The Dramas of Kalidasa
Translated into English by Mrs. Bela Bose.
The Little Clay Cart (Mṛcchakaṭika): A Hindu Drama Attributed to King Shūdraka
Translated from the original Sanskrit and Prākrits into English prose and verse, by Arthur William Ryder. Added t.-p.: Harvard Oriental Series.