Emperor of the sorcerers

Volume two of Budha·svamin’s “Emperor of the Sorcerers” begins with the merchant Sanu·dasa telling the story, an epic in itself, of how he acquired Gandhárva·datta, his daughter whose hand Nara·váhana·datta, the hero of the book, has just won in a lute contest. In this and the tales of how the prince comes by his next two wives, the reader’s tour of ancient India continues, extending to the far south and beyond, to magical islands of gold, before heading north to Varánasi. Along the way, we learn of, among other things, flying sorcerers, transvestite ascetics clad in skulls, the finer points of gambling with dice, the perils of trading by sea, the rivalry between fate and human effort and the difference between town and country mice. Sadly, the surviving manuscripts of the texts break off while our hero is in pursuit of only the sixth of his twenty-six wives.