Book Description

The setting of the stories is India in the 10th and 11th centuries, when the country was made of many small kingdoms and fiefdoms. There was a profusion of monarchs with dynastic ambitions and a desire for territorial aggrandisement. The king was usually advised by an intelligent and devoted Brahman minister. The heir apparent, the crown prince, had a circle of friends, mostly sons of the king’s ministers, who would be incorporated into the cabinet when the prince would become king. Dynastic intrigue was rife, and matrimonial alliances were often a strategy to expand the kingdom, together with befriending tribal communities to win their support. The kings were invariably polygamous and maintained large harems. The Brihatkatha, or Lord Shiva’s narrative to his wife Parvati, is presumed to confer the power of the celestial Vidyadharas to its readers, ridding them of all their sins and assuring them a place in heaven. The roller-coaster variety of telescoped stories form a complex garland from one narrative to another, with the possibility of losing touch with the main thread. Each story is gripping, quaint, and carries a moral or a message for the reader, who may, instead of reading the book from cover to cover, read the chapters randomly. The book is a treasure chest, a work of art, with its own secret internal geometry as well as myriad fascinating and often amusing stories.