Birds in Sanskrit Literature

In his monumental research in ancient Sanskrit literature, the author has restored gaps in lexicons, and removed doubts in the later Sanskrit works about the identity of a very large number of birds of the Indian sub-continent. The ancient sages of India were great lovers of nature, with keen powers of observation and an extraordinary sensitivity about animal behaviour. The Vedas, Puranas, Epics and Samhitas are full of descriptions of birds, animals and plants, but the exact identification of names had got lost or confounded over the centuries. Acharya V.M. Apte, the great Sanskrit scholar described this contribution of the author in the following words. “It will be a study – the fascination of which will be matched only be its utility. Scholars intellectually constituted with a purely theoretical bias and studying nature not in the open but through books, have not a leg to stand on in this field and we well feel highly indebted to a scholar who introduces the ancient (and also modern, because surviving still) birds in Vedic and Classical Sanskrit Literature to us in such a way as to make us feel that we can actually admire their colourful plumage and appreciate the effusions of their vocal chords.” This book fills a void in Sanskrit literature, and should prove useful not only to scholars, but also to researchers.