The Bṛhatkathā Re-told Again: The Double-narrative of Somadeva’s Kathāsaritsāgara

The Kathāsaritsāgara 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.  Composed in Kashmir sometime around 1070 C.E. by a Brahmin named Somadeva, it is self-consciously and explicitly based on Guṇāḍhya’s perhaps sixth-century, Paiśācī-language narrative, the Bṛhatkathā, though this probably by way of a now-lost intermediary, also composed in Paiśācī, which influenced both the Kathāsaritsāgara and the other of two Kashmirian versions of the story, Kṣemendra’s Bṛhatkathāmañjarī.  The text marries two narratives, each of a king—Udayana and his son Naravāhanadatta—and it does so by elaborating eighteen books referred to as lambhakas, literally “attainments.”  Each king sets out on adventures and “attains” and marries wives along the way, gaining suzerainty over vast territories by doing so, each of them similarly advised by key Brahminical ministers in their endeavors.  Finally, and as has been noted repeatedly in the scholarly literature, the narrative structure—the Udayana story preceding the Naravāhanadatta story—allows the Kathāsaritsāgara to compile what were originally two distinct city epics, those of Ujjayinī and Kauśāmbī, a conceit, however, that was inherited from the original Bṛhatkathā narrative. 

Naravāhanadatta is the principle character of Somadeva’s text, as he is the one destined to become the emperor of the semi-divine class of beings, the vidyādharas, by the end of the narrative.  As such, the Kathāsaritsāgara elaborates with endless sub-stories and side-stories of his extraordinary journey what could properly be described as a kind of quasi-tantric endeavor—the quest for immortality furnished precisely by becoming a vidyādhara—which comes to be associated with early Śaiva tantric literature and this despite the roots of the story retold, which may be dated to the early, pre-tantric history of Indian religions and which “undeniably” exhibits a certain “latent Buddhism” (as Lacôte famously suggested).  Somadeva’s text further has been shown to have transformed this hero’s quest, which is common to all the Bṛhatkathā narratives, into a rather more yoginī-centric tale, which lends the retelling a more pronounced and distinctive tantric sensibility.

In the present paper I seek to chart the particular characteristics of the retelling of the Bṛhatkathā in the Kathāsaritsāgara, asking what distinguishes the latter’s story as unique.  I argue that it is not primarily the contents that define its narrative particulars but rather its model for organizing the many stories and substories of which it consists.  Paying close attention to the narrative structure that shapes the contents of the text, one may observe not only that Somadeva includes numerous narrative episodes that are excluded from other retellings of the Bṛhatkathā and orders them in a distinctive sequence (as is well known), but that in doing so he develops a “particular set of effects [that both the subject matter and the form of the work have] upon our opinions and emotions by virtue of [the] particular structuring of those materials” (this being the manner by which Nelson defined the task of charting the particular contributions of particular Bṛhatkathā retellings).

My argument is that the Kathāsaritsāgara advances a double narrative. It offers a Brahminicized and tantricized version of the story it rewrites, spinning a web of tales that reifies orthodox norms regarding the position of the king in society while simultaneously offering its audience a popularized vision of the tantric path, one that emphasizes the quest for the kinds of magical powers associated with Śaiva tantric initiation while warning of the potential dangers of the same, particularly those involving ḍākinīs and śākinīs.  The text emphasizes the king’s role in society, even while preserving some of the “popular” elements that are often associated with traders and the Vaiśya varṇa and that are probably original to the antecedent Bṛhatkathā narrative, and while Somadeva frames his story with an emphasis on the brāhmaṇa-kṣatriya bond, he further adds to this orthodox model what may be described as tantric and quasi-tantric contexts, rendering them central to the very progression of the Kathāsaritsāgara narrative itself.  The kings’ quests in the narrative are aided by what is found only in such (quasi-)tantric contexts: the vetāla stories, so famously recorded in the Kathāsaritsāgara, are presented as the apotheosis of the narrative arc, offering the key that allows the hero of the story to achieve his ends, this because a prince seeks the vetāla’s aid and counsel in a key moment of need and this on the advice of his Brahminical minister. What is good for the king is facilitated by what is only available in a typically tantric context—the cremation grounds—the same being presented in a manner largely stripped of sectarian particularities but nevertheless identifiable with tantra as it might have been received in its wider social context, namely, the imagination of non-initiates.

In the end, by tracing this double narrative I argue that the two are identified in Somadeva’s narrative. The Brahminical model of kingship, of a Kṣatriya king aided by a wise Brahminical advisor, relies upon the magical, powerful, dangerous, and even titillating powers of tantra to bring all royal ambitions to fruition: Naravāhanadatta, the hero of the narrative, can only attain the objects of his desire with the aid of a Brahminical advisor with tantric capacities.  With this parallelism is shown a way in which the king could simultaneously secure pleasure, power, wealth, and even spiritual emancipation, this by the aid of the good counsel of his Brahminical advisor, yes, but only inasmuch as he was versed in the sort of knowledge and power that could be found at the margins of proper society, in the haunting charnel grounds.  This narrative turn, marked by the novelty of the narrative arc of Somadeva’s re-telling, defines its unique contribution to the Bṛhatkathā story literature, and it carries with it distinct social and cultural markers and intentions that in turn reflect and served to shape Kashmiri society just after the turn of the second millennium, as I shall note in conclusion.