"Creative and absorbing. Peter Khoroche’s informed and scholarly translation, alongside his clean and evocative prose, shows that this collection has some great literary merits. Fortunately for us, his ability to carry a story and keep it fresh ensure that this collection is well worth reading in English too."

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung

“A delightful English rendering of a work hitherto available only to a relative few. . . . Khoroche’s appreciation for Haribhaṭṭa’s style seeps through the closing pages of the introduction, during which he orients readers toward the types of scenes—sometimes verdant, sometimes gruesome, but always extraordinarily detailed—that they are about to encounter. In the chapters that follow, Khoroche succeeds in transforming both the prose and verse of Haribhaṭṭa’s text into idiomatic yet elegant English.”
 

Reading Religion

“Reanimates classical stories of the Buddha’s past lives in vivid poetry and prose. While virtues like generosity and the Buddha-to-be’s extraordinary embodiment of them remain the work’s focus, Khoroche observes that Haribhatta’s descriptive powers give this text an almost cinematic quality, coupling ethics with artistry.”
 

Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

“The scholarship in this volume is impeccable. Peter Khoroche is a remarkably sensitive reader of Sanskrit, as one sees clearly from the fluent style he has chosen for this translation. The text itself is of major importance within the world of classical Buddhist literature and Buddhist art, and the stories that appear here are full of surprises even for scholars well versed in the Buddhist tradition. Khoroche has performed a great service in making a large selection from the Haribhaṭṭa text available to a wider audience.”

David Shulman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem