Kshemendra - The Seduction of Shiva: Tales of Life and Love

The tales presented here have been translated directly from the original Sanskrit. The ancient language is mainly associated in modern popular perception with religion and philosophy. That it is of course much more, and its vast literature also ranges over worldly life, love and human relations like that of all great languages, is an aspect this presentation endeavours to highlight.

The stories in this collection have been drawn together, perhaps on a first occasion, from a cross section of Sanskrit literature spread over a considerable time span with a wide variety in its nature, form and content. Their settings vary from the mundane to the celestial, but each touches in its own way on emotions, issues and predicaments which are ageless. A feature common to all is that they are relatively unknown to the general readership of today. Hence these translations to enable a renewed look at some notable tales from a distant past.

This is an eclectic assemblage. Almost half the stories have been taken from irreverent secular works composed mainly for the entertainment of their audiences. Their racy styles extend from the finely cultivated to the almost colloquial and their tones from the romantic and erotic to the cynical and satirical. The rest have been selected from literature traditionally regarded as scriptural, and intended primarily to edify even as it also attracts to hold attention.

Most of this second type is smriti or remembered literature which traditionally includes itihsa and pura, that is, the two great epics and the eighteen scriptural histories. Here the style is comparatively simpler and more uniform in its versification, and the tone has an underlying didactic and reverential seriousness, though enlivened with moving narrations and colourful accounts of desire and despair, fantasy, heroism and wit.

Another narrative of this category included in the collection is a Buddhist birth story which reflects features of tales from both types of literature mentioned above. While they precede as well as follow this story in time, the art form displayed in it also points to the essential continuity in Sanskrit literature as a whole.

It is difficult to determine the dating of these tales, given the paucity of chronological and other data. According to academic estimates, the likely time frame may stretch from the fourth century BCE to the twelfth century CE , a period of 1500 years separated by nearly a millennium from the present times. Despite their antiquity, however, the varied background of these stories still has a contemporary resonance in several cases.

These echoes may very broadly be of relations between the sexes in the social contexts and the mindsets reflected in these tales. Such relations cover the gamut of love and lifedesire and duty, need and responsibility, seduction and restraint, sex and marriage to mention only a few aspects. Their treatment in these narratives ranges from the down-to-earth to the subtly philosophical, giving additional interest to the whole.

One may begin with the stories classified here as being from secular works. These are, in order of their scholarly dating, from the seventh-century Daa Kumra Charitam of Dandin, the eighth-century Brihatkathlokasagraha of Budhasvamin, the eleventh-century Kathsaritsgara of Somadeva and the twelfth century Shuka Saptati of uncertain authorship. Their provenance, where known, extends from present-day Tamil Nadu to Kashmir.

The first three of these are written in the refined kvya style of classical Sanskrit composition while the last uses a more folksy kath idiom. Their backgrounds stretch from the polished and urban to the rough and rural. Their colourful descriptions range from the leisurely to the brusque, and the elegant to the bawdy, aimed primarily at amusement.