E(dward) Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, and also a pioneer of compiling advanced cryptic crosswords.
Powys Mathers was born in Forest Hill, London, the son of a newspaper proprietor. He was educated at Loretto and Trinity College, Oxford.
He was the editor with J.C. Mardrus of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (his 12 volume English translation of the Mardrus adaptation appeared in 1923).
He is known also for the translations The Garden of Bright Waters: One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems (1920); and of the Kashmiri poet Bilhana in Bilhana: Black Marigolds (1919), a free interpretation in the tradition of Edward Fitzgerald. These are not scholarly works, and are in some cases based on intermediate versions in European languages. Some of his translations were set to music by Aaron Copland.
He was also a composer of cryptic crosswords for The Observer under the pseudonym "Torquemada" from 1926 until his death.
My instantly felt bond has to do with the name Kshemendra which sounds like a Sanskrit Schmendrick.
I believe this is a non-scholarly adaptation of other European translations. When the girl Kalavati at Kama’s court sees the street barber, she finds him “obese as a musk cat gorged with the buttercups of Spring.” Another possibly authentic and yet barely-to-be-believed line: “So suddenly I whispered: His betel nut is not moving in his mouth! and was seized by a foolish fear that he was dead.”