Tales Told by Mystics

Tales told by mystics: A significant branch of India’s vast literary heritage consists of tales told by mystics through the ages, different from myths and legends. Though taken for granted as a part of our folklore and rarely discussed, their influence on the minds of generations of common people has been only next to that of the epics. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head, sometimes they shock and sometimes they make one laugh at oneself, but they invariably enrich one’s mind by identifying the complex and intriguing forces—psychological and occult, at work in our lives. This collection, probably the first ever of its kind, of a full hundred tales culled from sages known and unknown, through decades of a sustained interest by its present author, should prove as revealing as they have proved for centuries past.