Customer Reviews

A Digit of the Moon and Other Love Stories From the Hindoo

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"May the kindly three-eyed god, who stained his throat deep-purple by the draught of deadly poison which he swallowed for the preservation of the world, preserve you."

So Francis William Bain introduces his tale as a true romantic whose beautiful fantasies charm the imagination. Born in 1863, the author was 40 years old when the first stories in this book were published.

Bain immerses his readers in a lush world of ancient India by claiming that his tales are actual translations from rare Indian manuscripts. Eventually the truth came out: he dreamt up the Oriental fantasies on his own...but what dreams he had!

By the time his secret was exposed his prose had many admirers and they kept on reading. The wonderful thing is that they are magical in and of themselves, even without a genuine "Hindoo" pedigree. While readers can't use them for serious scholarly reference on Hindu mythology they are infused with the essence of many of these legends.

This tale, "A Digit of the Moon" is a love story, in the spirit of Scheherazade The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights (Modern Library Classics). His style of writing is florid but captures the essence of South Asia.

I find Bain quite a relaxing and sensuous to read, but here is a passage about the King's daughter, Shri, from "A Lotus of the Day" so you can judge for yourself:

"And after a while, Shrí came in, undulating as she moved like a swan, and swaying like a flower waving in the wind: for her waist could be grasped by the fist, and her bosom was glorious, like the swell of an ocean wave. And like a child she smiled at her father with parted lips and half-shut eyes, casting before her through the net of their lashes the magical charm of the colour of a wet lotus: and her girdle jingled as if with joy, while the flashing jewels with which she was covered all over changed colour, as if with envy at being outshone by the play of her eyes."

There's plenty more where that came from! Kudos to Kessinger Publishing for bringing this classic and many others back to the public eye in both print and digital Kindle editions.