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).
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.