The figure of Sakuntala appears in many forms in South Asian literature--most famously in the Mahabharata and in the fourth century Sanskrit play, Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection , by Kalidasa. She has historically been important in the construction and performance of Hindu femininity throughout South Asian culture. This book reprints portions of Barbara Stoler Miller’s translation of the Kalidasa play (published by Columbia in 1984) and J.A.B. van Buitenen’s translation of the Mahabharata (published by Chicago in 1973) and provides historical and literary background. Thapar tracks the intersections between history, literature, and culture by following the expanding itinerary of this central character in the Indian imagination. She includes all the contexts in which depictions of the Sakuntala narrative is found and frames the developmental history of this canonical figure in an engaging and illuminating way.