Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita (Margaret E Noble), Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists, London: George G Harrap and Company Ltd., 1913

pp.xii, 400, with 32 very fine colour plates including a frontispiece, all the plates by Indian artists such as Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, K Venkatappa, Surendra Nath Kar, Kshitindra Nath Mazumdar and Asit Kumar Haldar all working under Tagore; finely printed on Japanese vellum, with captioned tissue guards for plates; publisher's vellum over boards, with gilt titles to spine and blind decoration of GANESHA to the upper board, top edge gilt; others untrimmed.
9.8 x 7 x 2.6 in (24.5 x 17.5 x 6.5 cm)

An out-of-series copy from a limited edition of just 75 copies of which this is copy no. 21. Signed by George G Harrap & Co. This is the Deluxe first edition.

This volume attempts to gather, in an accurate but condensed form, all the myths that would be available to an 'educated Indian, with whom I include all those illiterate but wise peasants and women.' As a result, it covers figures from all the major Indian religious traditions, and features separate chapters on the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Krishna, Buddha, and Shiva, accompanied by extraordinary colour plates. The project was begun by Sister Nivedita, a Scots-Irish convert to Hinduism and a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, who died in 1911 before completion. Coomaraswamy completed the remaining two thirds of the work according to Nivedita's aims and wishes.

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