London, Jan. 29 :    London, Jan. 29:  Prince Charles was once 'emotionally involved' with an Indian woman, it has been disclosed in a new royal book just published in London. It is well known that the Prince of Wales is fond of India and things Indian but no one had hitherto guessed that this weakness had stretched to actually having an Indian girlfriend. In Royal: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, brought out to mark the 50th year of her reign, author Robert Lacey tells of how Charles developed the spiritual side of his life in the 1970s. 'The prince also became emotionally involved, for a time, with a persuasive Indian woman who introduced him to Buddhism and eastern philosophy,' says Lacey, a heavyweight author with a long list of royal books to his name. He adds: 'Gripped by her ideas, Charles became persuaded by the arguments for vegetarianism and against the killing of animals.' His parents and staff at Buckingham Palace apparently were none too bothered about his many other sexual conquests since they were upper class English women. 'It was when the prince gave up shooting at Sandringham that his parents finally seem to have taken alarm,' Lacey goes on. 'The abstinence did not prove permanent, but it revealed a son and heir who was travelling on a very different track.' Contacted by The Telegraph, Lacey admitted his source for the story was a biography of Charles, The Prince of Wales, written by the broadcaster and journalist, Jonathan Dimbleby, in 1994, and also published by Little, Brown and Company, his own publishers. To coincide with his book, Dimbleby had done a TV interview with Charles in which the prince had admitted adultery with his long-time mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles. This provoked such reaction that the line about the Indian girlfriend was overlooked by everyone, explained Lacey. 'It's a mystery who she is,' he said. However, the story must be true, Lacey pointed out, 'because every line in Dimbleby's book was read and personally vetted by Charles'. Although Dimbleby was not immediately willing to name the girl, his biography says that in his spiritual quest, Charles 'was introduced in 1979, to a book called The Path of the Masters, a comprehensive guide to the spiritual wisdom of the Eastern gurus'. According to Dimbleby, 'The book had been given to him by a young Indian woman who telephoned Buckingham Palace relentlessly until he finally accepted her call. She told him her mission as a Buddhist was to convert him to an understanding of the role of the Masters.' Dimbleby then writes: 'Instead of extricating himself, the Prince was so intrigued that he arranged a meeting. At once, the two began a relationship that on both an emotional and a spiritual level swiftly became so intense as to send a frisson of alarm through the household.' In English code, this suggests that the two had a physical relationship. Or, at the very least, the reader is not steered away from that conclusion. Dimbleby concludes the section by writing: 'Evidently fearing that her hold over the Prince had become so powerful as to jeopardise his sense of perspective, his new private secretary, Edward Adeane, confided to more than one friend, 'it's got to be stopped'.' Soon afterwards, the relationship did indeed cease, but not before the Prince had been persuaded by her arguments in favour of vegetarianism and against the killing of animals to change his own habits accordingly.'