Kathasaritsagara
Kathasaritsagara is a famous 11th century CE collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales by Somadeva. It means in Sanskrit The ocean of the streams of stories.
It consists of 18 books of 124 chapters and more than 21,000 verses in addition to prose sections. The principle tale is the narrative of the adventures of Naravahanadatta, son of the legendary king Udayana. A large number of tales are built into this central story to make it the largest collection of Indian tales.
The Katha-sarit-sagara claims to be a mainly based on Gunadhya's Brhat-katha written in Paisachi dialect from the south of India. But the Kashmirian Brhat-katha from which Somadeva used material maybe quite different from the Paisachi one as there exist two versions of the Brhat-katha in Kashmir, in addition to Brhatkatha-sloka-samgraha of Buddhasvamin from Nepal. Like the Panchatantra, tales from this (or its main source book Brhat-katha) travelled to many parts of the world.
See also
References
- The Katha Sarit Sagara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story, Translated by C.H.Tawney, 1880
 | This article about the literature of India is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |