Text · story compendium · India
Kathāsaritsāgara
Also known as Kathasaritsagara, Somadeva, Ocean of the Streams of Story, Brihatkatha
Somadeva's ocean of the streams of story, composed in Kashmir about 1070 for Queen Suryamati, in some twenty-one thousand verses — a Sanskrit verse recension of the lost Bṛhatkathā of Guṇāḍhya. It is the largest frame-story collection in any language and holds several cycles that travelled separately afterwards.
- Date
- 1063–1081
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
Nested frames run six and seven deep, with characters telling stories in which characters tell stories, which is the structure the Arabian Nights and the Decameron also use. It contains the twenty-five Vetala tales and much of what later became the Vikramaditya cycle, and Richard Burton and C.H. Tawney both translated from it into English.
Connections (2)
- Scriptural inclusion inVetālapañcaviṃśati
The twenty-five Vetala tales sit inside the Kathasaritsagara and also circulate as an independent book in four Sanskrit recensions, in Hindi as the Baital Pachisi, and in Tamil, Telugu and Marathi. A cycle that can be lifted out of its compendium and travel on its own is how most of this material moved, and it is why attributing any of it to one author is hopeless.
- Contemporary capital withKalhaṇa
Somadeva finished the Kathasaritsagara about 1070 for Queen Suryamati and Kalhana the Rajatarangini about 1149, at the same Kashmiri court within eighty years. One produced the largest story collection in any language and the other the only sustained work of history in Sanskrit, which makes eleventh-century Kashmir the most productive literary establishment in the subcontinent.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kathasaritsagara”. Somadeva, Kathāsaritsāgara, trans. C.H. Tawney, ed. N.M. Penzer, The Ocean of Story, 10 vols (1924–28).
Open Kathāsaritsāgara in the repository →