Book titled ‘The Seduction of Shiva: Tales of Life and Love’ is compiled and translated by Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar. The stories of love and longing from various Sanskrit texts including Puranas are part of the book.
”All great literature deals with the theme of the relation between the sexes and I have tried to bring together a collection of stories covering as big a period as possible,” Haksar said during the book release here recently.
The first story in the anthology talks about how the god Shiva is seduced by Mohini, the female form assumed by Vishnu. In another tale, Urvashi curses the Pandava prince Arjuna when he rejects her advances. The protagonist in another story pursues pleasure first as a man and then as a woman.
“The stories in the ‘Seduction of Shiva’ have been taken over a over 1500 years let me drew material from not only from what is called secular writing but also literature traditionally regarded as scriptural like tales from the Puranas,” says Haksar.