Author Description

Some of the incidents correspond with those of the Arabian Nights, but the stories on the whole are quite different from anything found there. Unscrupulous deception, ready invention, extreme credulity and superstition, and disregard of human life.... The belief in the power of penance, which was supposed to confer on the person practicing it not merely personal sanctity, but even great supernatural powers, was very generally entertained among the Hindus, and is often alluded to here; as is also transmigration, or the birth of the soul after death in a new body, human or brute.... -- P.W. Jacob