SOMADEVA

flourished 1070 Kashmiri Brahman of the Saiva sect and Sanskrit writer who preserved much of India's ancient folklore in the form of a series of tales in verse. The court poet to King Ananta of Kashmir, Somadeva apparently was commissioned to compose a cycle of stories to amuse and calm the queen S uryamati during a political crisis. He borrowed from an earlier work, now lost, the Brhat-katha (Great Tale) by the Sanskrit writer Gunadhya, who probably had used Buddhist sources of an even earlier period. Somadeva's work Katha-saritsagara (Ocean of Rivers of Stories) bears a strong resemblance to medieval European fairy tales: magic, demons, bloody orgies, vampires, love, and high adventure abound in the 124 sections, or chapters, known as taranga (waves). An English translation by Charles H. Tawney, titled The Ocean of Story, was published in 192428. Somadeva wrote his monumental work during the two periods of Ananta's interrupted rule, which ended in 1077.