Somadeva

Somadeva (flourished 1070) was a Kashmiri Brahman of the Śaiva 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 Sūryamati during a political crisis. He borrowed from an earlier work, now lost, the Bṛhat-katha (“Great Tale”) by the Sanskrit writer Guṇāḍhya, who probably had used Buddhist sources of an even earlier period. Somadeva’s work Kathā-saritsāgara (“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 taraṅga (“waves”). An English translation by Charles H. Tawney, titled The Ocean of Story, was published in 1924–28. Somadeva wrote his monumental work during the two periods of Ananta’s interrupted rule, which ended in 1077.