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 ...
The use of riddles in eastern fiction
Note: this text is extracted from Book XII, chapter 72
“The King Udayatuṅga here has a daughter named Udayavatī, well taught in all the sciences, and he has publicly announced that he will give her to the first Brāhman or Kṣatriya who conquers her in argument. And by her wonderful skill in argument she has silenced all other disputants, as by her beauty, which is the theme of the world’s wonder, she has put to shame the nymphs of heaven. You are a distinguished hero, you are a disputant of the Kṣatriya caste; why do you remain silent? Conquer her in argument, and marry her.”
Compare the commencement of the story of “The Blind Man and the Cripple” in Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 240, and Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 445. This tale appears to belong to the Atalanta cycle.——These “wit combats,” which sometimes take the form of a series of riddles, appear to have been a common feature of entertainment at the courts of Asiatic monarchs, and are found throughout Eastern fiction. They form a most useful “motif” in prolonging the final triumph of the hero, and afford a formidable obstacle for him to overcome.
The account given by Somadeva of how the femme savante was defeated in argument by Vinītamati is very disappointing, and reads rather as if it had been cut down from a longer account in the original tale as given by Guṇāḍhya.
In Vol. V, p. 183n1, I gave references to tales containing riddles in Chauvin. To them I would add vii, pp. 118, 119. Here Chauvin gives a large number of analogues to the tale of “Abu Al-Husn and his Slave-Girl Tawaddud” in the Nights (see Burton, vol. v, pp. 189-245), where the long series of questions on every imaginable subject occupies nearly the entire text. One is naturally reminded of the Queen of Sheba who “came to prove the wisdom of Solomon with hard questions,” and also of his putting the judges to shame by his questions to which they could make no reply. See Clouston, Flowers from a Persian Garden, pp. 218, 273, 274, and the references given.
For the riddles of the Queen of Sheba see S. Schechter, Folk-Lore, vol. i, pp. 349-358; J. Issaverdens, Uncanonical Writings of the O.T. found in the Armenian MSS. of the Library of St Lazarus, Venice, 1901, pp. 205-207, 211-215; W. Hertz, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, 1905, pp. 412-455; P. Cassel, An Explanatory Commentary on Esther, Edinburgh, 1888, pp. 283-285; and St John D. Seymour, Tales of King Solomon, pp. 145-146.
In Hindu fiction one of the best-known series of riddles (and charades) occurs in Pārśvanātha’s account of Vikrama’s adventures as a parrot. See Bloomfield, “On the Art of Entering Another’s Body,” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., vol. lvi, 1917, pp. 31-35.—n.m.p.