Lee Siegel calls this work "wonderful, clever, and incredibly erudite." India has a long history of being associated with magic, from the Mohenjo-daro seals that showed yogis and sorcerers to the jugglers, mountebanks, and acrobats who wowed audiences at the courts of Hindu maharajas and Mughal emperors. Stories were recounted of fakirs being buried alive for months and then brought back to life, of ropes being put up in the air that were strong enough for a youngster to climb and vanish, and of sanperas lulling poisonous cobras with their flutes. Indian travelling magicians captivated foreign audiences around the beginning of the nineteenth century, inspiring generations of Western illusionists to imitate their Eastern counterparts. ?A Magical History of India tells us how Indian magic descended from the domain of the gods to become part of daily ritual and popular entertainment, and its transformation from the street to the stage culminating with the rise of the great P. C. Sorcar Sr. Drawing on ancient religious texts, colonial records, newspaper reports, journals and the memoirs, diaries and testimonies of Western and Indian magicians, John Zubrzycki offers us a vibrant narrative on Indian magic from ancient times to the present day.