Sarpa and Siṃhī: The Beginning Illustrated children's edition

When a great storm separates a young lioness from her pride, she runs through the rain and the lightning until she finds shelter in a cave. In the darkness, she meets a wise serpent — and the serpent begins to tell her a story.

This volume contains two complete stories. The first is a picture book, illustrated on every spread. The second moves into chapter book territory — the language deepening, the illustrations stepping back, the story beginning to carry its own weight.

Its language is simple. Its questions are not.

For readers of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, Richard Adams's Watership Down, and the old Indian fables themselves.

For ages 5 and up, or as young as a child likes to listen.

Siṃhī: The Becoming A literary novel in thirteen books · The complete English edition

A young lioness loses her mother in a storm and finds shelter in a cave, where a wise serpent begins to tell her a story. Across thirteen books, composed in the old Indian tradition of nested wisdom stories, she meets figures who carry the oldest questions — and slowly becomes who she was always going to be.

Written and illustrated by Mateo Rose.

Sarpa and Siṃhī: A First Sanskrit Reader in the Hitopadeśa Style The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 1 · Forthcoming

The Sanskrit reader edition of the opening story — composed in accessible Classical Sanskrit in the Hitopadeśa style, with full lexical apparatus, grammatical notes, and reading support. For students ready to make the jump from textbook exercises into sustained classical prose.

This is Book 1 of The Siṃhī Reader Series. Each book of the series is a literary translation into Sanskrit, composed within the attested tradition. The language modulates book by book to meet each book's material, drawing on the Hitopadeśa, the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa, the Yoga Sūtra, the Ṛg Veda, the Devī Māhātmya, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavad Gītā as their source texts appear.

Siṃhī and Kūrma: Gaṇeśa's Race Around the World The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 2 · Forthcoming

The cave is inside you. Book 2 of The Siṃhī Reader Series, composed in classical Sanskrit with full reading apparatus.

Coming after Book 1 ships.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 3 · Forthcoming

Mūṣikā is Gaṇeśa's vāhana — small, warm, quick, the perfect view from ground level. She was there for the birth, the beheading, the elephant head. She tells it as someone who was shaking with wonder and never fully recovered. She tells the stories of the divine children: Gaṇeśa, remade; Kṛṣṇa, born in the dark.

The divine as child.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 4 · Forthcoming

Vāsuki is the king of serpents — the one who coils at Śiva's throat, the one who wound himself around the churning mountain while the gods and demons pulled and the ocean gave up its poison. He tells the young lioness about the moment Śiva drank the poison so the world would not end. He did not swallow it. He held it still.

Stillness as power.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · 5 · Forthcoming

Bhīma is the strongest of the Pāṇḍavas — a man who can uproot mountains. And there is an old monkey sleeping across the path who will not move.

Strength meeting greater strength.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 6 · Forthcoming

Pakṣikā is a small brown bird — sacred in the oldest hymns, the watcher-bird, the one who sees. She tells the young lioness about Ekalavya: the boy who learned alone in the forest, who built a clay teacher from devotion.

Injustice.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 7 · Forthcoming

A forest fire threatens the valley. The young lioness goes toward it.

Kālī is subtle, beautiful, and terrible. She is not spectacle. This is the book of fire.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 8 · Forthcoming

Karṇa is the greatest archer alive and no one knows who he is. The young lioness sits with him at a high overlook, and his story comes out the way stories come out between two beings sitting in the same silence.

Identity.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 9 · Forthcoming

Garuḍa — king of birds, divine vehicle of Viṣṇu, enormous, ancient, grieving — carries a story inside his wings. A story about Jaṭāyu: the old vulture who flew alone against Rāvaṇa to protect Sītā.

Devotion unto death.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 10 · Forthcoming

Abhimanyu learned how to enter the Chakravyūha — the spinning circle formation — while still in the womb. He never learned how to leave. He entered anyway.

Endurance and doomed courage.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 11 · Forthcoming

Kṛṣṇa does not come to the young lioness with philosophy. He comes as a charioteer, while something she loves is moving toward its end — and she still has a choice.

This is the teaching. The one the whole series has been moving toward.

Why you act.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 12 · Forthcoming

Sāvitrī chose her husband knowing Nārada's warning. She chose anyway. And when the day came, she followed where she had to follow.

She is the last companion before the becoming. She tells the young lioness about the source beneath the source.

The original mantra.

The Siṃhī Reader Series · Book 13 · Forthcoming

Siṃhī meets no one. There is no companion, no frame story, no embedded tale. After twelve encounters — the thirteenth book has no companion.

She is the story — All of it.