Melissa Farley is a clinical and research psychologist and directs the San Francisco-based Prostitution Research and Education project, which works to abolish prostitution and help prostitutes. She edited Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress.

This is an epic tale of the adventures of the deity Rama who fights to free his love, Sita, from the hold of Ravan, the King of Ceylon. Sacred-Texts.com has an online translation by Ralph T.H. Griffith.

Claude d’Estrée is director of the Human Trafficking Center, the Center on Rights Development and the international human rights degree program at the University of Denver, where he is also a Buddhist chaplain.

These are mystical texts often written in the form of dialogues between deities and men. They were composed between 400 and 200 C.E.

Kay Buck is executive director of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, a nonprofit that seeks to serve victims of trafficking. It is based in Los Angeles.

Melissa Broudo is a staff attorney at the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York, where she focuses on the legal concerns, safety and rights of sex workers.

This is the Ralph T.H. Griffith translation of the Atharvaveda. The Atharvaveda is a Vedic-era collection of spells, prayers, charms and hymns. There are prayers to protect crops from lightning and drought, charms against venomous serpents, love spells, healing spells and hundreds of verses, some derived from the Rig Veda, that are all very ancient.

The Yajur Veda is primarily comprised of prose mantras for worship rituals. An ancient Vedic Sanskrit text, it is a compilation of ritual-offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions.

Wendy Cadge is an associate professor of sociology at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. She has written widely about homosexuality and Christianity, especially as it pertains to mainline Protestantism.