Indian Tales and Legends is a book of contrasts: there are simple folk tales about cats, mice and tortoises, about a tiger of very great cunning, and a jackal who dyed himself blue. There are strange legends of ten-headed demons, of rogues and villains, of splendid kings ruling from jewelled thrones, the air around them heavy with the scent of flowers. And at the heart of the book is the great Indian epic The Ramayana : the marriage of Rama and Sita, the loss of Sita, and of how the monkey god Hanuman went in search of her.