The Ocean of the Streams of Story
Somadeva assembled some three hundred and fifty tales for a Kashmiri queen inside a frame about the exiled king Udayana and his son's search for a bride, the stories opening into further stories eighteen books deep: the corpse-demon's riddles of the Vetālapañcaviṃśati, a full cycle of the Panchatantra, merchants, thieves, sorceresses, flying cities. Every tale is handed off inside another, so a listener is always being told something by a character who is himself being listened to. The largest surviving reservoir of Indian narrative, and the point to which many wandering plots of the Near East and Europe can be traced back.
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Lineage
- adapts ↑ The Panchatantra
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 52% · 11 shared
- 51% · 10 shared
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