This book examines the emplotment of India in the Western literary imagination. Basing her discussion on the reception of an emblematic Sanskrit text, Kalidasa's Saakuntala, the author studies how and why this text was distorted in translation, criticism, and adaptation, and isolates the linguistic errors and cultural distortions that can be grouped into trends and patterns. The unique situation of Sakuntala's reception affords the author the opportunity to look at the way Europeans projected their cultural needs upon India.