The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Further reading: Martin C. D'Arcy, ed., St. Augustine: His Age, Life and Thought; Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo; Rebecca West's brilliant, untraditional St. Augustine; Warren T. Smith, Augustine: His Life and Thought.

Kгlidгsa—Translations of The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala by Arthur W. Ryder (J.M. Dent), old but still beautiful; and by Chandra Rajan, Kalidasa: The Loom of Time. A Selection of His Plays and Poems (Penguin). Translations of Sakuntala alone by Barbara Stoler Miller in Theater of Memory : The Plays of Kalidasa (Columbia U. Press); P. Lal, Great Sanskrit Plays in Modern Translation (New Directions); Michael Coulson, Three Sanskrit Plays (Penguin). There is a nice verse translation of The Cloud Messenger by Franklin and Eleanor Edgerton (U. Michigan Press).

Further reading: Mary B. Harris, Kalidasa: Poet of Nature; K. Krishnamoorthy, Kalidasa; Henry W. Wells, The Classical Drama of нndia; Arthur B. Keith's great work, The Sanskrit Drama, is old but still useful.

The Koran—There are many English translations; it is important to note that most believers deny that any translation from the origi­nal Arabic can be valid. That said, the translations of Marmaduke Pickthall (New American Library), N.J. Dawood (Penguin), and Arthur J. Arberry (Macmillan) are generally satisfactory.

Further reading: Faruq Sharif, A Guide to the Contents of the

Quran is helpful. See also Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. More broadly, see Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples; Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History and Islam in History.

Hui-neng—Translations of the Platform Sutra, by Wing-tsit Chan (St. Johns U. Press); Philip B. Yampolsky (Columbia U. Press).

Further reading: Kenneth Chen, Buddhism in China: A Historical Suroey and The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism; D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism.

Firdausi—The only complete English translation of the Shah Nameh is by Arthur G. Warner and Edmond Warner; it is unfortu- nately in antiquated blank verse. Better is Reuben Levy's abridged translation, The Epic of the Kings (Routledge and Keegan Paul). There are two very good transations of single episodes from the epic: Jerome Clinton, The Tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam (U. Washington Press), and Dick Davis, The Legend of Seyavash (Penguin Classics).

Further reading: Dick Davis, Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsis Shahnameh; Olga M. Davidson, Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings).

Sei Shхnagon—The complete, and excellent, translation of The Pillow-Book is by Ivan Morris (2 vols; Columbia U. Press; abridged version, Columbia U. Press; Penguin).

Further reading: Ivan Morris's highly readable account of Heian court life, The World of the Shining Prince, is the best gen­eral introduction to both Sei Shхnagon and to The Tale of Genji.

Lady Murasaki—Arthur Waleys translation of The Tale of Genji (Modern Library) is justly famous; Edward Seidenstickers (Knopf) is nevertheless better overall. See also Richard Bowrings Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs (Princeton U. Press).

Further reading: Richard Bowrings Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji gives a useful overview of the novel. See also: Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince; Haruo Shirane, The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of the Tale of Genji; Andrew Pekarik, ed., Ukifune: Love in the Tale of Genji, a collection of essays deal- ing only with the later chapters of Genji.