Somadeva was a Sanskrit poet known for his late
10th-century collection of tales called the
Kathasaritsagara (The ocean to the rivers of story).
Little is known of his life, but he seems to have
been of the Brahman caste, and he does mention
in his text that Queen Suryamati of Kashmir was
his patron and that he wrote the Kathasaritsagara
for her, to take her mind off the study of the sciences.
Somadeva based his work on a much older
collection of stories called the Brhathatha (The
great romance), attributed to Gunadhya. The
Brhathatha is no longer extant, but Somadeva’s
rescension is a worthy aesthetic creation in its own
right, and preserves a good deal of ancient Indian
folklore.
The Kathasaritsagara contains some 350 tales,
including some collections of stories that have
been brought in from a variety of sources. Clearly
Somadeva did not create any of these tales, but retold
them in an entertaining way. The tales are not
unlike European fairy tales in their emphasis on
adventure and on the supernatural. A number of
them are somewhat bawdy. They are told in a relatively
simple narrative style and with details that
appeal to the reader’s imagination.
The Kathasaritsagara is structured as a framed
narrative, not unlike the THOUSAND AND ONE
NIGHTS or CHAUCER’s CANTERBURY TALES. The
largest frame explains how the Brhathatha came
to be written after two goblins were tossed out of
paradise for listening to the tales the god Siva told
his wife Parvati. Required to tell all of Siva’s stories
to someone on earth in order to win their way back
to heaven, one of the goblins relates the stories to
a troll, who later conveys them to Gunadhya, who
tells them to the world.
Within this tale is the main frame of the
Kathasaritsagara, in which Prince Naravahanadatta
acquires a great deal of wealth and magical
powers that make him king of the spirits of the air.
In the meantime he has a number of amorous encounters
with a princess and other beautiful
women. Many of the stories in the collection are
told by characters within the narrative of this
frame to entertain lovers and friends, just as Siva’s
original tales were told to entertain his wife.
Since the stories of the Kathasaritsagara most
often deal with the acquisition of wealth, and have
middle-class protagonists who focus on material
gain, it has been suggested that the stories reflect
the materialist values of cosmopolitan areas of
11th-century India. Somadeva’s book is a valuable
historical source for the social customs of the time,
as well as an entertaining collection of colorful
characters and powerful, imaginative stories.
Bibliography
Somadeva. Tales from the Kathasaritsagara. Translated
by Arshia Sattar. With a foreword by Wendy
Doniger. New Delhi: Penguin, 1994.
van Buitenen, J. A. B., trans. Tales of Ancient India:
Translated from the Sanskrit. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1959.