Tales from the Kathasaritsagara

By SOMADEVA| ARSHIA SATTAR

₹ 599.00 inclusive of all taxes

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About the book

The Kathasaritsagara – the ocean of stories – is among the world’s great story collections, truly an ocean that carries the reader on its gentle swell to shores far and near, to places known and imagined, to people familiar and strange.

Drawing from earlier collections of tales, the Kathasaritsagara was composed in Sanskrit by Somadeva in eleventh-century Kashmir. In a period and a language still largely dominated by religious texts, the Kathasaritsagara is a breath of fresh air. No set of beliefs dominates, no sacred texts are glorified – what it revels in most is the pulsating carnival of human life and experience.

Priests and monks, gamblers and courtesans, kings and bandits, merchants and housewives, talking animals, divine and demonic beings – all cavort through its pages, in cities and forests, across seas and on islands. And in Arshia Sattar’s masterful translation, the many universes of adventure the Kathasaritsagara holds within itself come alive for a new generation of readers.

Pages: 398

Available in: Paperback

Language: English

SOMADEVA

Although his dates have not been conclusively established, according to some historical records Somadeva was a Kashmiri Shaivite Brahmin who lived in the eleventh century during the rule of King Anantadeva. Legend has it that he composed the Kathasaritsagara around AD 1070 for Queen Suryamati (also known as Suryavati), wife of King Anantadeva. However, the stories in the Kathasaritsagara were in circulation long before Somadeva compiled them into this particular collection. The Kathasaritsagara is supposed to be part of a larger text, the Brihatkatha, composed by Gunadhya who is generally reckoned to be a mythical figure.

ARSHIA SATTAR

Arshia Sattar holds a PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. She teaches classical Indian literature at several institutions in India, is founder and director of the Sangam House writers’ residency, and writes about books and Indian literatures for a number of journals and magazines. Her Mahabharata for Children was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Children’s Literature in 2022. She has been working with the Valmiki Ramayana for thirty-five years.