Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Story Cycles
Framed story-cycles of India — tale-within-tale literature from the vetala traditions and their kin.
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Texts
A Heifer of the Dawn — F.W. BainF.W. Bain's 1904 romance A Heifer of the Dawn, presented as a translation of a Sanskrit manuscript: thirteen linked tales of a king's courtship, each named for a flower or tree.Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit — S. M. Mitra and Nancy BellNine Indian wonder tales retold in English for young readers — translated by S. M. Mitra and shaped by Nancy Bell, 1919, with close kin among the story cycles of the Kathasaritsagara and the Panchatantra tradition.The Baitāl Pachchisī — John T. PlattsJohn T. Platts’s literal English translation (1871), made for students of Hindi, of the Baitāl Pachchisī, the Hindi telling of the twenty-five tales that a corpse-haunting sprite tells King Vikram as he carries it from the burning-ground, each ending in a riddle, with Platts’s notes and the Hindi preface on how the text came from Sanskrit through Braj into Hindi; corrected against page images of the 1871 printing.The Descent of the Sun — F.W. BainF.W. Bain's 1903 romance The Descent of the Sun, presented as a translation of a Sanskrit manuscript: the tale of Bodhisattwa and Súryamatí framed as an incarnation-love-story of the Sun.The Kathá Sarit Ságara — C. H. TawneyC. H. Tawney’s English translation (Calcutta, 1880–1884) of the Kathá Sarit Ságara, Somadeva’s eleventh-century Sanskrit ocean of tales within tales, in eighteen books and 124 chapters framed by the story of Naraváhanadatta, son of Udayana king of Vatsa, with Tawney’s 1,624 notes on the text and on parallel tales in Asia and Europe, and the index.Twenty-Two Goblins — Arthur W. RyderArthur W. Ryder's 1917 translation of the Vetala-Panchavimshati, a Sanskrit frame-tale cycle of twenty-two riddle-stories told by a corpse-possessing spirit to King Triple-victory.Vikram and the Vampire — Richard BurtonRichard Burton's free adaptation (1870) of eleven of the twenty-five tales of the Baital-Pachisi, the Hindu story-cycle of King Vikram and the riddling corpse-spirit, in the 1893 edition prepared by Isabel Burton.