The Bṛhatkathā Re-told Again, and Again:The Double-narrative of Somadeva’s Kathāsaritsāgara and Cruelty in its Contemporary Retelling.

Abstract

The eleventh-century Kathāsaritsāgara of Somadeva is a magisterial narrative, so large as nearly to constitute an encyclopedia of Indian story literature, this even as it is likely to convey only a fraction of the original text of which it is a retelling, Guṇāḍhya’s perhaps sixth-century, Paiśācī-language narrative, the Bṛhatkathā.  In this presentation I do two things.  First, I identify unique features of Somadeva’s retelling.  I argue it presents a double narrative, transforming a text originally steeped in Buddhism and mercantile life into a Brahmanical work tied to a popularized understanding of Śaiva tantrism.  I argue the narrative emphasizes power and kingship and the link of both to tantric capacities located in the cremation ground.  Following this, I compare the same to the 21^st-century retelling of Douglas J. Penick (The Oceans of Cruelty, NYRB Classics, 2024), which recasts the cremation ground in modern terms, the vetāla becoming not a vehicle for power and wisdom, but danger and cruelty.  Through these retellings, we see through to the differences in conceiving of death, life, and the power and limits of human agency, respectively in premodern South Asia and the Contemporary Western world