SOURCE: "One Nation Under Many Gods," in New York Times Book Review, March 30, 1997, p. 25.

[Trevelyan is writer of history and travel guides. In the following review, he surveys the historical and cultural contexts of Indian civilization that inform the essays of In Light of India and the poems of A Tale of Two Gardens.]

Octavio Paz modestly describes In Light of India—and indeed all his prose work on India—as a footnote to his poetry. Several beautiful and evocative poems included in A Tale of Two Gardens are from his East Slope, already well known to his admirers. For six years (1962–68) Mr. Paz, now in his 80's, was the Mexican Ambassador not only to India but to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then called (he resigned because of his Government's 1968 massacre of student demonstrators in Mexico City). That was not his first visit...