ARDOR

In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom The Paris Review has called a literary institution, explores the ancient texts kn own as the Vedas. Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left b ehind almost no objects, images, or ruins. They created no empires. Even the hallucinogenic plant the soma, which appears at the cen ter of some of their rituals, has not been identified with any certainty. Only a Parthenon of words remains: verses and formulatio ns suggestin...[Read more]