Vacaka

Vasudeva...The Wanderer Prince discusses mainly the anecdotes/stories related to Vasudeva, the father of Balaram and Krishna, who were in relation and contemporary of the 21st Tirthankara Neminatha or Arishtanemi. As lucidly pointed out by the author herself, the book concentrates on the journey of Vasudeva involving his wandering from Magadha to the entire North India and even beyond. The stories include his lust for worldly possessions, authority and beautiful women for sensuous pleasure, but all such stories (not so well connected) conclude with spiritual or moral experience and suggestions, which reveal some important aspects of Jaina philosophy and moral values.

However, the objective of the present book is altogether different, which presents Vasudeva as a wanderer and in course of his wandering enormous knowledge of geography and different aspects of regional cultural features are provided, which are a tremendous source of cultural history. It is a book dealing with a text of Jaina stories centring around the wandering character of Vasudeva and his interaction both with the mortal human beings and semi-divine Vidhyadharas/ Vidyadharis to make the stories interesting as well as meaningful.

The translation is flawless and the language is chaste making the reading of the book interesting. It is indeed a new approach for the study of ancient Indian texts, which the readers will find absorbing with relevant messages of moving from worldly to spiritual attainment, the ultimate goal of human life. I congratulate the author for brilliant retelling of the stories based on the text Vasudevahindi.

Professor MARUTI NANDAN Pd. TIWARI

Former National Tagore Fellow,

Former Emeritus Professor and Former Head,

Department of History of Art, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi