The New Lifetime Reading Plan

The Ramayana—The best translation (of Books I and II) is by Robert P. Goldman, The Ramayana ofValmiki (2 vols, Princeton U. Press); also Hari P. Shastri, The Ramayana ofValmiki (3 vols., Routledge).

There are good abridged versions by William Buck, Ramayana: King Ramas Way (U. Califуrnia Press); R.K. Narayan (Penguin); Aubrey Menen (Greenwood); C.V. Srinivasa Rao (Bangalore Press); Swami Venkasetenanda (State U. of New York Press).

Further reading: Herbert H. Gowen, A History of Indian Literature, has a good chapter on the Ramayana. For the culture of ancient нndia more generally, see the classic work by A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was нndia.

The Mahabharata: J.A.B. Van Buitenen's translation of Books I-V is a masterpiece of the translators art; it also has an excellent intro- duction to the text (U. Chicago Press). There is a hard-to-find, multivolume complete translation by P. Lal (Writers Workshop, Calcutta). Also very fine is the performance version by Jean- Claude Carriиre, tr. from the French by Peter Brook. There are good abridged versions by R.K. Narayan (Vision) and Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan (Columbia U. Press).

Further reading: The notes and commentary in Van Buitenens translation are very good. More generally, see Basham, The Wonder That Was нndia.

The Bhagavad Gita—The most readable translation is by Barbara Stoler Miller, The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War (Columbia U. Press; Penguin); Eliot Deutsch's translation (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) is also good. An excellent scholarly translation is J.A.B. Van Buitenen's The Bhagavad Gita in the Mahabharata (U. Chicago Press). Also good are the translations by Franklin Edgerton (Harvard U. Press) and R.C. Zaehner (Everyman).

Further reading: Millers translation features an excellent introduction; Zaehners has the best textual commentary.

Ssu-ma Ch'ien—There's only one good English translation: Burton Watson's Records of the Grand Historian (2 vols., Columbia U. Press; try to get the revised [1993] edition).

Further reading: Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Grand Historian of China; Charles S. Gardner, Traditional Chinese Historiography; W.G. Beasley and E.G. Pulleyblank, eds., Historians of China and Japan.

Lucretius—Nature of the Universe, tr. Ronald E. Latham (Penguin); On Nature, tr. Russell M. Geer (Bobbs-Merrill); On the Nature of Things, ed. S. Palmer Bovie (New American Library); also by Anthony M. Esolen (John Hopkins U. Press); best of ali, The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura of Titus Lucretius Carus, tr. Rolfe Humphries (Indiana U. Press)

Further reading: A fine essay on Lucretius is in George Santayana's Three Philosophical Poets, which also contains essays on Dante (31) and Goethe (62). For Rome generally: Michael

Grant, History ofRome; R.H. Barrow, The Romans; Moses Hadas, A History of Latin Literature.

Virgil—Aeneid, tr. Rolfe Humphries (Scribners); tr. Robert Fitzgerald (Random); tr. William F. Knight (Penguin); tr. C. Day Lewis (Anchor); tr. Allen Mandelbaum (Bantam). The Fitzgerald version is highly acclaimed. Note also Georgics, tr. S.P. Bovie (U. of Chicago Press); tr. Allen Mandelbaum (U. of Calif. Press).

Further reading: G. Highet, Poets in a Landscape; T. R. Glover, Virgil.

Marcus Aurelius—Long's translation of the Meditations is con- tained in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, ed. Whitney J. Oates (Modern Library Giants). Other versions: tr. G. M. Grube (Bobbs-Merrill); tr. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin).

Further reading: See Matthew Arnold's famous essay in The Portable Marcus Aurelius, ed. Lionel Trilling. A reasonably recent biography is Anthony Birley's Marcus Aurelius.

Saint Augustine—The Confessions are included in Basic Writings of St Augustine, ed. Whitney J. Oates (2 vols., Random). Paperback editions: tr. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Penguin); tr. Edward B. Pusey (Collier); and, especially good, tr. Rex Warner (Mentor). Note also On the Two Cities: Selections from the City of God, ed. F. W. Strothmann (Ungar).