Kathasaritsagara (the Ocean of Story)

by Somadeva | 1924 | 1,023,469 words | ISBN-13: 9789350501351

This is the English translation of the Kathasaritsagara written by Somadeva around 1070. The principle story line revolves around prince Naravāhanadatta and his quest to become the emperor of the Vidhyādharas (‘celestial beings’). The work is one of the adoptations of the now lost Bṛhatkathā, a great Indian epic tale said to have been composed by ...

Note on regrowing of the head

Note: this text is extracted from Book VII, chapter 42.

“And in the course of the fight Indīvarasena frequently cut off the Rākṣasa’s head, but it grew again.[12] Seeing that magic power of his, and having had a sign made to him by the virgin at the Rākṣasa’s side, who had fallen in love with him at first sight, the prince, after cutting off the head of the Rākṣasa, being quick of hand, again cut it in two with a stroke of his sword”

See Ralston’s remarks on this story in his Russian Folk-Tales, p. 71. In Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, vol. i, p. 44, Hilda reunites as fast as she is cut in two, but at last Dietrich, by the advice of Hildebrand, steps between the two pieces and interferes with the vis medicatrix. Baring-Gould seems to identify this story of Indīvarasena with that of St George.

In his essay on that hero-saint (Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 305) he observes:

“In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara a hero fights a demon monster and releases a beautiful woman from his thraldom.”

The story, as told by Somadeva, has already progressed, and assumed a form similar to that of Perseus and Andromeda.

——The idea of the hero finding the person or animal he has killed coming to life again is one of the oldest motifs in fiction. It first appears on an Egyptian papyrus of Ptolemaic times, in the “Adventure of Satni-Khamoîs with the Mummies.”

Here we read (Maspero, Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt, p. 127):

“He came to the place where the eternal serpent was; he attacked him, he slew him. The serpent came to life, and took his form again. He attacked the serpent a second time; he slew him. The serpent came to life again. He attacked the serpent a third time; he cut him in two pieces, he put sand between piece and piece; the serpent died, and he did not again take his previous form.”

There is a curious variant in the Nights (Burton, vol. vii, p. 36 1), where, in the story of “Sayf al-Muluk and Badi’a al-Jamal,” the hero cuts the ghul in half by a single stroke across his waist.

Whereupon the ghul screams out:

“O man, an thou desire to slay me, strike me a second stroke.”

He is just about to make the second stroke when a certain blind man who has befriended him calls out:

“Smite him not a second time, for then he will not die, but will live and destroy us.”

He accordingly holds his hand, and the ghul dies.

I notice another variant in a recent number of Folk-Lore (Dec. 1923, p. 302), which, although again different from that in our text, seems to have the same basic idea—that in the case of supernatural beings or animals there is a kind of magical power making their life hard to destroy, but once the secret is discovered, and the magical properties annulled, they are slain like an ordinary human being or animal.

The variant referred to appears in Buxton’s “Some Navajo Folk-Tales and Customs,” and is as follows:—

“Then the man used the lightning and killed the giant. The blood started to run out of his mouth, and flowed back in two streams behind his head. Nayezesegoni stuck his club into the ground to prevent the two streams of blood joining, as if they had the giant would have come to life again.”

In some cases the head of the giant repeatedly flies on again until the secret of his “life-index” is discovered. See, for instance, R. B. Shaw, “On the Shighni (Ghalchah) Dialect,” Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xlvi, pt. i, No. 2, 1877, pp. 115-117.—n.m.p.

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