A. N. D. Haksar

Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar is a well-known translator of Sanskrit classics into English. Born in Gwalior, central India, he is a graduate of The Doon School, Allahabad University and Oxford University. He was a career diplomat, serving as Indian High Commissioner to Kenya and the Seychelles, Minister in the United States, Ambassador to Portugal and Yugoslavia, and he also served as Dean of India's Foreign Service Institute and President of the U.N. Environment Programme's Governing Council.
Haksar is noted for his collection of translations from Sanskrit. He has increasingly focused on the kathā or narrative Sanskrit literature, the manuscript archive of which may amount to some 40,000 volumes. This is in part because many generations of orientalist scholars had overlooked this rich tradition in favor of more ancient religious texts. His kathā translations include Shuka Saptati, and the first ever renditions into English of Madhavanala Katha and Samaya Matrika, respectively published as Madhav & Kama and The Courtesan's Keeper.

List of works