CONTENTS
The Sanscrit work entitled "Dasakumaracharitam, or the Adventures of Ten Princes," though printed more than twenty-five years ago, has not, as far as I can ascertain, been translated into any European language. Many parts of it are written in such a turgid "Oriental" style, that a close translation would be quite unsuitable to the English reader. Such passages have therefore been much condensed; others, which are hardly decent—or, as in the speech of the parasite in the last story, tedious and uninteresting, have been omitted; but in general the original has been pretty closely adhered to, and nothing has been added to it.
The exact date of the composition of the "Dasakumaracharitam" is not known. It is supposed to have been written about the end of the eleventh century, and was left unfinished by the author; but as the story of the last narrator is almost finished, not much could have been wanting to complete the work, and the reader may easily imagine what the conclusion would have been.
Some of the incidents correspond with those of the "Arabian Nights," but the stories on the whole are quite different from anything found there, and give a lively picture of Hi