The Kathāsaritsāgara ("Ocean of the Streams of Stories") ( Devanagari : कथासरित्सागर) is a famous 11th-century collection of Indian legends and folk tales as retold in Sanskrit by the Shaivite Somadeva from Kashmir .
151-716: Kathāsaritsāgara contains multiple layers of story within a story and is said to have been adopted from Guṇāḍhya 's Bṛhatkathā ("the Great Narrative"), which was written in a poorly-understood language known as Paiśāchī . The Bṛhatkathā is no longer extant but several later adaptations still exist — the Kathāsaritsāgara , Bṛhatkathamanjari and Bṛhatkathāślokasaṃgraha . However, none of these recensions necessarily derives directly from Gunadhya, and each may have intermediate versions. Scholars compare Guṇāḍhya with Vyasa and Valmiki even though he did not write
302-475: A flashback of events leading up to the murder. Within this flashback, an unreliable narrator tells a story to mislead the would-be murderer, who later discovers that he was misled after another character narrates the truth to him. As the story concludes, the " Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and his Son " is narrated within it. This perennially popular work can be traced back to Arabic , Persian , and Indian storytelling traditions. Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein has
453-572: A story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes called nested stories . A play may have a brief play within it, such as in Shakespeare's play Hamlet ; a film may show the characters watching a short film; or a novel may contain a short story within the novel. A story within a story can be used in all types of narration including poems , and songs . Stories within stories can be used simply to enhance entertainment for
604-496: A "bonus material" style inner story is the chapter "The Town Ho's Story" in Herman Melville 's novel Moby-Dick ; that chapter tells a fully formed story of an exciting mutiny and contains many plot ideas that Melville had conceived during the early stages of writing Moby-Dick —ideas originally intended to be used later in the novel—but as the writing progressed, these plot ideas eventually proved impossible to fit around
755-526: A certain Mustafa Khaliqdad ‘Abbasi also known as the translator of other works. This work was presumably carried out after 1590 following the military annexation of Kashmir. Abbasi named it Darya-yi asmar (“River of Stories”) to distinguish it from the Kashmirian translation. In its preface, ʿAbbasi mentions that he was assigned to rewrite an earlier version “of the book barhatkata […] which
906-408: A couplet that was added, possibly by religious zealots intent on giving the play extra moral gravity, are said only on the night that Oedipa sees the play. From what Pynchon relates, this is the only mention in the play of Thurn and Taxis' rivals' name—Trystero—and it is the seed for the conspiracy that unfurls. A significant portion of Walter Moers ' Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is an ekphrasis on
1057-464: A deeply nested frame story structure, that features the narration of Walton, who records the narration of Victor Frankenstein, who recounts the narration of his creation, who narrates the story of a cabin dwelling family he secretly observes. Another classic novel with a frame story is Wuthering Heights , the majority of which is recounted by the central family's housekeeper to a boarder. Similarly, Roald Dahl 's story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
1208-535: A dream to comply, as Matanga is in truth a Vidyadhara. He had conspired against the life of Naravahanadatta, in order to prevent his becoming emperor of the Vidyadharas, and had been therefore condemned by Siva to live in Ujjain with his family as Chandalas. The curse was to terminate when eighteen thousand Brahmins should eat in his house; and this being accomplished, Matanga is restored to his rank, and his daughter
1359-585: A history compiled by several of the characters. The subtitle of The Hobbit ("There and Back Again") is depicted as part of a rejected title of this book within a book, and The Lord of the Rings is a part of the final title. An example of an interconnected inner story is "The Mad Trist" in Edgar Allan Poe 's Fall of the House of Usher , where through somewhat mystical means the narrator's reading of
1510-636: A large number of wealthy merchants resided. It was an important entrepôt of goods and passengers from north-west and south. It figures very prominently in the accounts of the life of Buddha. Historically, Kosambi remained a solid urban centre through the Mauryan period and during the Gupta period. Pillars of Ashoka are found both in Kosambi and in Prayagraj. The present location of the Kosambi pillar inside
1661-490: A like destination. Parvati tells the culprits that they shall resume their celestial condition when Pushpadanta, encountering a yaksha , a follower of Kubera , the god of wealth, doomed for a certain time to walk the earth, as a pishacha or goblin, shall recollect his own former state, and shall repeat to the pishacha the stories he overheard from Shiva; and when Malyavan, falling in with the Pisacha, shall hear from him again
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#17327868348981812-503: A little more than 7,561 slokas. In 1871 Professor Bühler ( Indian Antiquary , p. 302 et seq.) proved two important facts: firstly, that Somadeva and Kṣemendra used the same text, and secondly, that they worked entirely independently from one another. A Bṛhatkathā such as the two writers reproduced, a prose work in the Paiśācī dialect, existed, therefore, in Kashmir. But it was no longer
1963-480: A man who finds a manuscript telling the story of a documentary that may or may not have ever existed, contains multiple layers of plot. The book includes footnotes and letters that tell their own stories only vaguely related to the events in the main narrative of the book, and footnotes for fake books. Robert A. Heinlein 's later books ( The Number of the Beast , The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond
2114-420: A more famous composer is told in a series of letters to his lover Rufus Sixsmith, which are interrupted halfway through and revealed to be in the possession of an investigative journalist named Luisa Rey and so on. Each of the first five tales are interrupted in the middle, with the sixth tale being told in full, before the preceding five tales are finished in reverse order. Each layer of the story either challenges
2265-542: A narrative counterpoint and add a touch of surrealism to the main narrative. They additionally raise the question of whether works of artistic genius justify or atone for the sins and crimes of their creators. Auster's The Book of Illusions (2002) and Flicker by Theodore Roszak (1991) also rely heavily on fictional films within their respective narratives. This dramatic device was probably first used by Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy around 1587, where
2416-731: A noble story, the boring character tells a very dull tale, and the rude miller tells a smutty tale. Homer 's Odyssey too makes use of this device; Odysseus ' adventures at sea are all narrated by Odysseus to the court of king Alcinous in Scheria . Other shorter tales, many of them false, account for much of the Odyssey . Many modern children's story collections are essentially anthology works connected by this device, such as Arnold Lobel 's Mouse Tales , Paula Fox 's The Little Swineherd , and Phillip and Hillary Sherlock's Ears and Tails and Common Sense . A well-known modern example of framing
2567-424: A palace with its foundations going back to 8th century BCE until 2nd century CE and built in six phases. The last phase dated to 1st - 2nd century CE featured an extensive structure which was divided into three blocks and enclosed two galleries. There was a central hall in the central block and presumably used as an audience hall surrounded by rooms which served as a residential place for the ruler. The entire structure
2718-487: A possible inspiration of another well-known story, that of King Shahryar and His Brother in the One Thousand and One Nights . Two young Brahmins travelling are benighted in a forest, and take up their lodging in a tree near a lake. Early in the night a number of people come from the water, and having made preparation for an entertainment retire; a Yaksha, a genie, then comes out of the lake with his two wives, and spends
2869-545: A prince and his nine companions are separated for a season, and recount what has happened to each when they meet again. The exact stories, however, are different. This book also contains an earlier version of a popular collection of tales called the Vetala Panchavimshati : twenty-five tales of a Vetala being related to Trivikramasena, king of Pratishthan , on the Godavari. The thirteenth book ( Madiravati )
3020-461: A sprawling, loosely interconnected science fiction narrative, as do the albums of Janelle Monae . On Tom Waits 's concept album Alice (consisting of music he wrote for the musical of the same name), most of the songs are (very) loosely inspired by both Alice in Wonderland , and the book's real-life author, Lewis Carroll , and inspiration Alice Liddell . The song "Poor Edward", however,
3171-508: A surreal version of Madam Mao 's Red Detachment of Women , illuminating the ascendance of human values over the disillusionment of high politics in the meeting. In Bertolt Brecht 's The Caucasian Chalk Circle , a play is staged as a parable to villagers in the Soviet Union to justify the re-allocation of their farmland: the tale describes how a child is awarded to a servant-girl rather than its natural mother, an aristocrat, as
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#17327868348983322-459: A tale told through the music of Coheed and Cambria , tells a story for the first two albums but reveals that the story is being actively written by a character called the Writer in the third. During the album, the Writer delves into his own story and kills one of the characters, much to the dismay of the main character. The critically acclaimed Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
3473-731: A trading center along the Ganges Plain and its status as the capital of the Vatsa Kingdom, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas . It was located on the Yamuna River about 56 kilometres (35 mi) southwest of its confluence with the Ganges at Prayaga (modern Prayagraj ), which made it a powerful center for trade and beneficial for the Vatsa Kingdom. During the 2nd millennium BCE Ochre Coloured Pottery culture spread in
3624-459: A young boy. Both the book and the movie assert that the central story is from a book called "The Princess Bride" by a nonexistent author named S. Morgenstern . In the Welsh novel Aelwyd F'Ewythr Robert (1852), by Gwilym Hiraethog , a visitor to a farm in north Wales tells the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin to those gathered around the hearth. Sometimes a frame story exists in the same setting as
3775-549: Is James Merrill 's 1974 modernist poem " Lost in Translation ". In Rabih Alameddine 's novel The Hakawati , or The Storyteller , the protagonist describes coming home to the funeral of his father, one of a long line of traditional Arabic storytellers. Throughout the narrative, the author becomes hakawati (an Arabic word for a teller of traditional tales) himself, weaving the tale of the story of his own life and that of his family with folkloric versions of tales from Qur'an,
3926-504: Is a graphic novel about a middle-school musical production, and the tentative romantic fumblings of its cast members. In Manuel Puig 's Kiss of the Spider Woman , ekphrases on various old movies, some real, and some fictional, make up a substantial portion of the narrative. In Paul Russell 's Boys of Life , descriptions of movies by director/antihero Carlos (loosely inspired by controversial director Pier Paolo Pasolini ) provide
4077-552: Is about a rich bachelor who finds an essay written by someone who learned to "see" playing cards from the reverse side. The full text of this essay is included in the story, and itself includes a lengthy sub-story told as a true experience by one of the essay's protagonists, Imhrat Khan. Lewis Carroll 's Alice books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), have several multiple poems that are mostly recited by several characters to
4228-499: Is about a troupe of actors who perform a play about marital infidelity that mirrors their own lives, and composer Richard Rodney Bennett and playwright - librettist Beverley Cross 's The Mines of Sulphur features a ghostly troupe of actors who perform a play about murder that similarly mirrors the lives of their hosts, from whom they depart, leaving them with the plague as nemesis. John Adams ' Nixon in China (1985-7) features
4379-515: Is about the production of a fictitious musical, The Taming of the Shrew , based on the Shakespeare play of the same name , and features several scenes from it. Pericles draws in part on the 14th-century Confessio Amantis (itself a frame story), by John Gower , and Shakespeare has the ghost of Gower "assume man's infirmities" to introduce his work to the contemporary audience and comment on
4530-466: Is acquainted with the stories narrated by Shiva to the great mortification of Parvati who had flattered herself that they had been communicated to her alone. She accordingly complains to Shiva of his having deceived her and he vindicates himself by discovering the truth. Parvati thereupon pronounces an imprecation upon Pushpadanta, condemning him to be born upon the earth as a man; and she sentences his friend Malyavan, who had ventured to intercede for him, to
4681-592: Is also found in classic religious and philosophical texts. The structure of The Symposium and Phaedo , attributed to Plato , is of a story within a story within a story. In the Christian Bible , the gospels are accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus . However, they also include within them the parables that Jesus told. In more modern philosophical works, Jostein Gaarder 's books often feature this device. Examples are The Solitaire Mystery , where
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4832-501: Is also the world's longest epic, has a nested structure. The experimental modernist works that incorporate multiple narratives into one story are quite often science-fiction or science fiction influenced. These include most of the various novels written by the American author Kurt Vonnegut . Vonnegut includes the recurring character Kilgore Trout in many of his novels. Trout acts as the mysterious science fiction writer who enhances
4983-442: Is approximately equal to 66,000 lines of iambic pentameter; by comparison, John Milton 's Paradise Lost weighs in at 10,565 lines. All this pales in comparison to the (presumably legendary) 700,000 ślokas of the lost original Brihatkatha . Somadeva’s narrative captivates both by its simple and clear, though very elegant, style and diction and by his skill in drawing with a few strokes pictures of types and characters taken from
5134-474: Is consoled by the narration of a number of stories about the temporary separation and final reunion of faithful couples. They consist of a compendious recital of the adventures of Nala and Damayanti . The stories continue till the thirteenth book. The next book ( Saktiyasas ), the tenth, is important in the history of literature , as it includes the whole of the Panchatantra . We also have in this book
5285-401: Is evidence of more than one moat. The city extended to an area of approximately 6.5 km. The city shows a large extent of brickworks indicating the density of structures in the city. The Buddhist commentarial scriptures give two reasons for the name Kausambi/Kosambī. The more favoured is that the city was so called because it was founded in or near the site of the hermitage once occupied by
5436-441: Is judged a fit bride for the son of the king. The two last books are composed of narratives told by Naravahanadatta, when on a visit to his uncle Gopalaka at the hermitage of Kashyapa. He repeats those stories which were communicated to him when he was separated from Madanamanchuka, to console him under the anguish of separation. ( Padmavati ) is the love story of Muktaphalaketu, a prince of the Vidyadharas, and Padmavati, daughter of
5587-504: Is mostly in the Lokas beyond earth, and the dramatis personae are the Nagas or snake-gods of Patala and the Vidyadharas. This is further illustration of the mode in which Naravahanadatta may fulfil the prophecy. In the ninth book ( Alamkaravati ), Naravahanadatta is distraught on the disappearance of his favorite bride Madanamanchuka after throwing open the doors of the inner quarters. He
5738-511: Is presented as a stage show by the fictional eponymous band, and one of its songs, "A Day in the Life" is in the form of a story within a dream. Similarly, the Fugees album The Score is presented as the soundtrack to a fictional movie, as are several other notable concept albums , while Wyclef Jean 's The Carnival is presented as testimony at a trial. The majority of Ayreon 's albums outline
5889-450: Is presented as a story told by a narrator about Edward Mordrake , and the song "Fish and Bird" is presented as a retold story that the narrator heard from a sailor. In his 1895 historical novel Pharaoh , Bolesław Prus introduces a number of stories within the story, ranging in length from vignettes to full-blown stories, many of them drawn from ancient Egyptian texts, that further the plot, illuminate characters , and even inspire
6040-441: Is presented as a translation of a found manuscript by (fictional) Cide Hamete Benengeli . A commonly independently anthologised story is " The Grand Inquisitor " by Dostoevsky from his long psychological novel The Brothers Karamazov , which is told by one brother to another to explain, in part, his view on religion and morality. It also, in a succinct way, dramatizes many of Dostoevsky's interior conflicts. An example of
6191-426: Is prophecised to be a king of the Vidyadharas. The main focus of the sixth book ( Madanamanchuka ) is the marriage of the young prince Naravahanadatta with Madanamanchuka the daughter of Kalingasena, a princess whose mother is a celestial nymph. Kalingasena had been enamoured of Udayana, and desires to wed him. Udayana wants to marry her; but as he has two wives already, his chief minister argues against it. A friend of
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6342-401: Is short and recounts the adventures of two young Brahmans, who have secret marriages with a princess and her friend. The incidents are curious and diverting and similar to the contrivances by which Madhava and Makaranda obtain their mistresses in the drama entitled Malatimadhava by Bhavabhuti . The two next books, the fourteenth ( Panca ) and fifteenth ( Mahabhisheka ), the scene of action is
6493-662: Is the French term for a similar literary device (also referring to the practice in heraldry of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield). The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a " frame story ", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. Typically, the outer story or "frame" does not have much matter, and most of the work consists of one or more complete stories told by one or more storytellers. The earliest examples of "frame stories" and "stories within stories" were in ancient Egyptian and Indian literature , such as
6644-399: Is the fantasy genre work The Princess Bride (both the book and the movie ). In the movie, a grandfather is reading the story of "The Princess Bride" to his grandson. In the book, a more detailed frame story has a father editing a much longer (but fictive) work for his son, creating his own "Good Parts Version" (as the book called it) by leaving out all the parts that would bore or displease
6795-585: The Bṛhatkathāmañjarī agree in the number and the titles of the different lambhakas but, after lambhaka 5, disagree in the order of them. However, all the books of the same name in both versions overlap with each other exactly (excluding a few minor details), except for two. Book 8 ( Vela ) in Kṣemendra is a combination of Book 11 ( Vela ) and the beginning of Book 14 ( Panca ) in Kathāsaritsāgara . Considering that Kṣemendra composed two near faithful extracts of
6946-567: The Darya-yi asmar was retold not in artificial prose ( nasr-i musajja‘ ) aimed at connoisseurs but rather in simple prose with features that remind of an oral recital. In the Persian narrative we encounter a mix of adaptation techniques: some sections display a transfer close to the Indian version, whereas most parts indicate a more narrative approach. This means that special attention was given to
7097-505: The Kathāsaritsāgara and the other recensions. M. Lacôte’s conclusions, which are developed with great perspicacity, may be summarised as follows. The manuscript came from Nepal, the work of a Nepalese writer, by name Budhasvāmin. It is dated to the eighth to the ninth century CE and is based upon the Paiśāci original. It lacks many of the subsidiary tales in the Kathāsaritsāgara , and thus the main narrative stands out concerned predominantly with
7248-637: The Kukkutārāma , the Ghositārāma , the Pāvārika-ambavana (these being given by three of the most eminent citizens of Kosambī, named respectively, Kukkuta, Ghosita, and Pāvārika), and the Badarikārāma . The Buddha visited Kosambī on several occasions, stopping at one or other of these residences, and several discourses delivered during these visits are recorded in the books. (Thomas, op. cit., 115, n.2, doubts
7399-568: The Neil Gaiman series The Sandman feature an endless series of waking from one dream into another dream. In Charles Maturin 's novel Melmoth the Wanderer , the use of vast stories-within-stories creates a sense of dream-like quality in the reader. The 2023 Christian fictional novel Just Once by Karen Kingsbury features a series of three nested stories, all centering around the main characters of Hank and Irvel Myers: This structure
7550-458: The Panchatantra , tales from the Kathāsaritsāgara (or its related versions) travelled to many parts of the world. Kathāsaritsāgara consists of 18 lambhakas ("books") of 124 taramgas (chapters called as "waves") and approximately 22,000 ślokas (distichs) in addition to prose sections. The śloka consists of 2 half-verses of 16 syllables each. Thus, syllabically, the Kathāsaritsāgara
7701-446: The dramatic tension and also makes more poignant the inevitable failure of the relationship between the mortal Hans and water sprite Ondine. The Two-Character Play by Tennessee Williams has a concurrent double plot with the convention of a play within a play. Felice and Clare are siblings and are both actor/producers touring "The Two-Character Play". They have supposedly been abandoned by their crew and have been left to put on
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#17327868348987852-536: The 7th to 5th centuries BCE, and was subsequently strengthened by brick walls and bastions, with numerous towers, battlements, and gateways but according to archaeologist G. R. Sharma, who led the archaeological excavation of the city, the rampart was built and provided with brick revetment between 1025 BC and 955 BC and the moat was excavated at the earliest between 855 and 815 BC. Carbon dating of charcoal and Northern Black Polished Ware have historically dated its continued occupation from 390 BC to 600 A.D. Kosambi
8003-509: The Buddha's Parinibbāna . It was also the most important halt for traffic coming to Kosala and Magadha from the south and the west. The city was thirty leagues by river from Benares (modern day Varanasi ). (We are told that the fish which swallowed Bakkula travelled thirty leagues through the Yamunā , from Kosambī to Banares ). The usual route from Rājagaha to Kosambī was up the river (this
8154-527: The Buddha's refusal as an insult to herself, and, after her marriage to King Udena (of Kosambi), tried in various ways to take revenge on the Buddha, and also on Udena's wife Sāmavatī, who had been the Buddha's follower. A great schism once arose among the monks in Kosambī. Some monks charged one of their colleagues with having committed the offence of leaving water in the dipper in the bathroom (which would let mosquitoes breed in it), but he refused to acknowledge
8305-743: The Calcutta College and from three India Office MSS. lent him by Dr Rost. In 1889 Durgāprasād issued the Bombay edition, printed at the Nirṇayasāgara Press, which was produced from Brockhaus’ edition and two Bombay MSS. This is the latest text now available. In 1919, N. M. Penzer first approached Tawney with the suggestion of reissuing his Ocean of the River of Streams . But he revised and published Tawney’s 2 volumes in 10 volumes in 1924. The first volume gave an introduction of Hindu fiction and
8456-604: The Clay Sanskrit Library, published by New York University Press. The translation was based on the Nirnaya Press’s 1915 edition of the Sanskrit text, the edition favored by Sanskritists today. Currently available are 2 volumes of the projected 7-volume edition. Story within a story A story within a story , also referred to as an embedded narrative , is a literary device in which a character within
8607-594: The Egyptian " Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor " and Indian epics like the Ramayana , Seven Wise Masters , Hitopadesha and Vikrama and Vethala . In Vishnu Sarma 's Panchatantra , an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales are told with one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four layers deep, and then unexpectedly snapping shut in irregular rhythms to sustain attention. In
8758-675: The High Castle , each character comes into interaction with a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy , which was written by the Man in the High Castle. As Dick's novel details a world in which the Axis Powers of World War II had succeeded in dominating the known world , the novel within the novel details an alternative to this history in which the Allies overcome the Axis and bring stability to
8909-430: The Kashmir redactions there exists a Sanskrit version of Guṇāḍhya’s work, bearing the title Bṛhatkathāślokasaṃgraha, i.e. the “Great Tale: Verse Epitome.” Only about six of the twenty-six lābhas are currently available. Its discoverer and editor, M. Félix Lacôte, had published ( Essai sur Guṇāḍhya et la Bṛhatkathā , Paris, 1908) along with the text an elaborate discussion of all the questions of higher criticism relating to
9060-537: The Kashmirian Brahmin Sumdevbat […] had shortened” and which “someone had undertaken during Zayn al-‘Abidin’s reign”, being fraught with Arabic expressions, in a more readable style.” In conformity with the Sanskrit text, the Persian adaptation is likewise divided into eighteen main chapters, called nahr (rivers), each subdivided into several mauj (waves). This translation was discovered around 1968-9 (National Museum, New Delhi no. 62.1005). It
9211-510: The National Museum, have these coins in their collections. It is possible that Pushyamitra Shunga may have shifted his capital from Pataliputra to Kaushambi. After his death, his empire was divided (perhaps amongst his sons), into several Mitra dynasties . The dynasty of Kaushambi also established hegemony over a wide area including Magadha , and possibly Kannauj as well. All sources cite Kausambi as an important site during
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#17327868348989362-486: The Old Testament, Ovid, and One Thousand and One Nights. Both the tales he tells of his family (going back to his grandfather) and the embedded folk tales, themselves embed other tales, often 2 or more layers deep. In Sue Townsend 's Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years , Adrian writes the book Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland , in which the character Jake Westmorland writes a book called Sparg of Kronk , where
9513-558: The Sky (which adopts the conceit that it is a book from the future by an author called Gen Jaramet-Sauner), and J. R. Rasmussen's "Research" in the anthology Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II . Steven Barnes 's novelization of " Far Beyond the Stars " partners with Greg Cox 's The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh (Volume Two) to tell us that the story "Far Beyond the Stars"—and, by extension, all of Star Trek itself—is
9664-537: The Sunset ) propose the idea that every real universe is a fiction in another universe. This hypothesis enables many writers who are characters in the books to interact with their own creations. Margaret Atwood 's novel The Blind Assassin is interspersed with excerpts from a novel written by one of the main characters; the novel-within-a-novel itself contains a science fiction story written by one of that novel's characters. In Philip K. Dick 's novel The Man in
9815-601: The Vajjian monks of Vesāli wished to excommunicate Yasa Kākandakaputta, he went by air to Kosambī, and from there sent messengers to the orthodox monks in the different centres (Vin.ii.298; Mhv.iv.17). It was at Kosambī that the Buddha promulgated a rule forbidding the use of intoxicants by monks (Vin.ii.307). Kosambī is mentioned in the Buddhist scripture Samyutta Nikāya . The archaeological excavation conducted by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at Kausambi revealed
9966-584: The action of the play. In Francis Beaumont 's Knight of the Burning Pestle (ca. 1608) a supposed common citizen from the audience, actually a "planted" actor, condemns the play that has just started and "persuades" the players to present something about a shopkeeper. The citizen's "apprentice" then acts, pretending to extemporise, in the rest of the play. This is a satirical tilt at Beaumont's playwright contemporaries and their current fashion for offering plays about London life. The opera Pagliacci
10117-507: The actual adventures of Naravāhanadatta, a hero of Guṇāḍhya’s own invention. Kathāsaritsāgara was translated into Persian in Kashmir during the reign of Zayn al-‘Abidin (r. 1418/20-1470) under the name of Bahr al-asmar (“Ocean of Stories”). Nowadays this version is not extant; it is known solely through the evidence from other sources. A likely reference to it can be found in the Rajatarangini by Śrīvara (fl. 1459-1505). Śrīvara,
10268-470: The adventures of Naravahanadatta, son of the legendary king Udayana, his romances with damsels of great beauty and wars with enemies. As many as 350 tales are built around this central story, making it the largest existing collection of Indian tales. Somadeva declares that his work is a faithful though abridged translation of a much larger collection of stories known as the Bṛhatkathā , or Great Tale written in
10419-630: The attention of the Western world to this storehouse of fables. In 1824, he gave a summary of the first five books in the Oriental Quarterly Magazine . The first edition of the work was undertaken by Professor Brockhaus. In 1839 he issued the first five chapters only, and it was not till 1862 that the remaining thirteen appeared. Both publications formed part of the Abhandlungen der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft . It
10570-552: The authenticity of the stories connected with the Buddha's visits to Kosambī, holding that these stories are of later invention). The Buddha spent his ninth rainy season at Kosambī, and it was on his way there on this occasion that he made a detour to Kammāssadamma and was offered in marriage Māgandiyā , daughter of the Brahmin Māgandiya. The circumstances are narrated in connection with the Māgandiya Sutta. Māgandiyā took
10721-639: The book which Guṇāḍhya had composed. It was a huge compilation, incorporating not only many particular stories from heterogeneous sources, but even whole books such as the Pañcatantra , the Vetālapañcaviṃśati and the story of Nala . The charge of abridging, obscuring and dislocating the main narrative is valid, not against Somadeva and Kṣemendra, but against predecessors, whose work of amplification had been completed, so far as completion can be predicated, perhaps two or three centuries earlier. Apart from
10872-489: The brother of his wife Vasavadatta, and, accompanied by his wives and ministers, goes to Mount Kalanjana. A heavenly chariot descends, and conveys them all to heaven. Gopalaka, inconsolable for the loss of his brother-in-law, soon relinquishes his regal state of Kosambi to his younger brother, Palaka, retires to the White Mountain, and spends the rest of his days in the hermitage of Kashyapa . We have then an account of
11023-470: The calumnies against women, and with stories relating the tricks of professed cheats. Somadeva tells us that the Kathāsaritsāgara is not his original work, but is taken from a much larger collection by Guṇāḍhya, known as the Bṛhatkathā . Kṣemendra, the Sanskrit aesthete from Kashmir, had written his Bṛhatkathāmañjarī , a summary of the Bṛhatkathā twenty or thirty years previously. The Kathāsaritsāgara and
11174-555: The celebrated epics: the Bharatamanjari and the Ramayanamanjari , it is more probable that it was Kṣemendra, and not Somadeva, who drew up the faithful reproduction of the old Paisaci poem. Kathāsaritsāgara is considered to have better charm of language, elegance of style, masterly arrangement and metrical skill. Also, Kṣemendra’s collection is a third the length of the Kathāsaritsāgara , the printed text amounting to
11325-409: The character Sparg writes a book with no language. In Anthony Horowitz 's Magpie Murders , a significant proportion of the book features a fictional but authentically formatted mystery novel by Alan Conway, titled 'Magpie Murders'. The secondary novel ends before its conclusion returning the narrative to the original, and primary, story where the protagonist and reviewer of the book attempts to find
11476-465: The characters that Melville went on to create and develop . Instead of discarding the ideas altogether, Melville wove them into a coherent short story and had the character Ishmael demonstrate his eloquence and intelligence by telling the story to his impressed friends. One of the most complicated structures of a story within a story was used by Vladimir Nabokov in his novel The Gift . There, as inner stories, function both poems and short stories by
11627-453: The charge and, being himself learned in the Vinaya , argued his case and pleaded that the charge be dismissed. The rules were complicated; on the one hand, the monk had broken a rule and was treated as an offender, but on the other, he should not have been so treated if he could not see that he had done wrong. The monk was eventually excommunicated, and this brought about a great dissension. When
11778-506: The companions and councilors of the young prince. The book contains the famous story of Jimutavahana . The fifth book ( Caturdarika ) records the adventures of Saktivega who became king of the heavenly beings termed Vidyadharas, a class of spirits who reside upon the loftiest peaks of the Himalaya mountains. While a mortal, he possessed superhuman longevity and faculties including clairvoyance and extrasensory perception . Naravahanadatta,
11929-486: The content and process of the text and novelist was discussed rather than the lives of the patients. In this way subconscious defenses could be circumvented. Farmer took the real life case-studies and melded these with adventures of his characters in the series. The Quantum Leap novel Knights of the Morningstar also features a character who writes a book by that name. In Matthew Stover 's novel Shatterpoint ,
12080-458: The creation of 1950s writer Benny Russell. The book Cloud Atlas (later adapted into a film by The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer ) consisted of six interlinked stories nested inside each other in a Russian doll fashion. The first story (that of Adam Ewing in the 1850s befriending an escaped slave) is interrupted halfway through and revealed to be part of a journal being read by composer Robert Frobisher in 1930s Belgium. His own story of working for
12231-484: The elegant and pointed sentences strewn about here and there with a good taste. Source: The Kathāsaritsāgara is a large work. Each book comprises a number of stories loosely strung together, by being narrated for the recreation or information of the same individuals, or arising out of their adventures. These are Udayana , king of Kosambi , and his son Naravahanadatta. The marriage of the latter with various damsels of terrestrial or celestial origin, and his elevation to
12382-676: The epic Mahabharata , the Kurukshetra War is narrated by a character in Vyasa 's Jaya , which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana 's Bharata , which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata . Both The Golden Ass by Apuleius and Metamorphoses by Ovid extend the depths of framing to several degrees. Another early example is the One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabian Nights ), where
12533-573: The exposure of a murderer (although not a king). The play I Hate Hamlet and the movie A Midwinter's Tale are about a production of Hamlet , which in turn includes a production of The Murder of Gonzago , as does the Hamlet -based film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead , which even features a third-level puppet theatre version within their play. Similarly, in Anton Chekhov 's The Seagull there are specific allusions to Hamlet : in
12684-501: The fabulous region of the Vidyadharas. In the first, the prince Naravahanadatta, realises that his queen Madanamanchuka was abducted by Manasavega the Vidyadhara , marries additional five women of Vidhyadhara ( Vidhyadhari ) and finally kills Manasavega to regain his queen. In Mahabhisheka, Naravahanadatta is crowned emperor of the Vidyadhara people. In ( Suratamanjari ), the sixteenth book, Udayana, resigns his throne to Gopalaka,
12835-634: The famous story of Usha and Aniruddha . In the next book ( Ratnaprabha ) Naravahanadatta marries Ratnaprabhā a Vidyadhari who was prophesied to be his bride; the wedding is celebrated at the palace of her father Hemaprabha, on one of the snow-crowned summits of the Himalaya. When the married couple return to Kosambi the young bride persuades her husband to throw open the doors of the inner quarters, and allow free access to his friends and associates. “The honour of women,” she affirms, “is protected by their own principles alone; and where these are corrupt, all precautions are vain.” This arrangement not only emancipates
12986-577: The fashioning of individual characters. Jan Potocki 's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1797–1805) has an interlocking structure with stories-within-stories reaching several levels of depth. The provenance of the story is sometimes explained internally, as in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien , which depicts the Red Book of Westmarch (a story-internal version of the book itself) as
13137-409: The final chapter. As this progresses characters and messages within the fictional 'Magpie Murders' manifest themselves within the primary narrative and the final chapter's content reveals the reason for its original absence. Dreams are a common way of including stories inside stories, and can sometimes go several levels deep. Both the book The Arabian Nightmare and the curse of "eternal waking" from
13288-513: The first act a son stages a play to impress his mother, a professional actress, and her new lover; the mother responds by comparing her son to Hamlet. Later he tries to come between them, as Hamlet had done with his mother and her new husband. The tragic developments in the plot follow in part from the scorn the mother shows for her son's play. Shakespeare adopted the play-within-a-play device for many of his other plays as well, including A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labours Lost . Almost
13439-401: The general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade . In many of Scheherazade's narrations, there are also stories narrated , and even in some of these, there are some other stories. An example of this is " The Three Apples ", a murder mystery narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story, after the murderer reveals himself, he narrates
13590-435: The goblins, which enables him to receive the narrations as they are told him by the metamorphosed yaksha or pishacha. Gunadhya having heard the stories, extending to seven hundred thousand stanzas, wrote them with his blood, for there was no ink in the forest. He then offered the work to Satavahana , king of Pratishthana , who rejected it with abhorrence, on which the author kindled a fire in the forest, and reading it aloud, to
13741-404: The grammarian; notices of historical persons and events, as of the accession of Chandragupta Maurya ; and traditions of the origin of celebrated places, as of that of Pataliputra . One of the best-told stories in the whole work occurs here. Upakosha the wife of Vararuchi, becomes during the absence of her husband, the object of the addresses of the king's family priest, the commander of the guards,
13892-521: The great edification of spirits and goblins, and birds and beasts, he burned it leaf by leaf as he finished the perusal. The news of this proceeding at last reached the king, and he repented of what he had done, and repaired to Gunadhya to solicit the gift of the work. The sage consented to present the king with the hundred thousand verses that had not yet been consigned to the flames. Satavahana took it to his capital, and having received an explanation of it from two of Gunadhya's disciples, he translated it from
14043-542: The king of the Gandharvas. The former is condemned by a holy person to become a man, and he is thus for a season separated from the latter. He is, after a short time, restored to his station and his wife. The last book ( Visamasila ) has Vikramaditya or Vikramasila, son of Mahendraditya, king of Ujjain, for its hero, and describes his victories over hostile princes, and his acquirement of various princesses. These are interspersed with love adventures, some of which reiterate
14194-523: The king to demand her hand from Matanga, her father . Matanga consents on condition that the Brahmins of Ujjain eat in his house. Palaka issues orders that eighteen thousand Brahmins, shall dine with the Chandala. The Brahmins are in great alarm, as this is a degradation and loss of caste, and they pray to Mahakala , the form of Siva especially worshipped in Ujjain, to know what to do. He commands them in
14345-446: The language of the pishachas. The second book ( Kathamukha ) commences that part of the original narrative which was supposedly not consumed, and records the adventures of Udayana , king of Kosambi, a prince of great fame in Sanskrit plays and poems, and his marriage with Vasavadatta, princess of Ujjain . The major sub-stories include the tales of Sridatta, Devasmita and Lohajangha. The third book ( Lavanaka ) describes his marriage to
14496-526: The lost Paisaci dialect by Guṇāḍhya . But the Kashmirian (or "Northwestern") Bṛhatkathā that Somadeva adapted may be quite different from the Paisaci ur-text , as at least 5 apparent descendants of Guṇāḍhya's work exist — all quite different in form and content, the best-known (after the Kathāsaritsāgara itself) probably being the Bṛhatkathāślokasaṃgraha of Budhasvamin from Nepal . Like
14647-409: The main character Fyodor Cherdyntsev as well as the whole Chapter IV, a critical biography of Nikolay Chernyshevsky (also written by Fyodor). This novel is considered one of the first metanovels in literature. With the rise of literary modernism , writers experimented with ways in which multiple narratives might nest imperfectly within each other. A particularly ingenious example of nested narratives
14798-480: The main story. On the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles , each episode was framed as though it were being told by Indy when he was older (usually acted by George Hall , but once by Harrison Ford ). The same device of an adult narrator representing the older version of a young protagonist is used in the films Stand by Me and A Christmas Story , and the television show The Wonder Years and How I Met Your Mother . In The Amory Wars ,
14949-425: The matter was reported to the Buddha, he admonished the partisans of both sides and urged them to give up their differences, but they paid no heed, and even blows were exchanged. The people of Kosambī, becoming angry at the monks' behaviour, the quarrel grew apace. The Buddha once more counselled concord, relating to the monks the story of King Dīghiti of Kosala, but his efforts at reconciliation were of no avail, one of
15100-593: The monks actually asking him to leave them to settle their differences without his interference. In disgust, the Buddha left Kosambī and, journeying through Bālakalonakāragāma and the Pācīnavamsadaya, retired alone to keep retreat in the Pārileyyaka forest. In the meantime the monks of both parties repented, partly owing to the pressure exerted by their lay followers in Kosambī, and, coming to the Buddha at Sāvatthi, they asked his pardon and settled their dispute. Bakkula
15251-490: The morals of the novels through plot descriptions of his stories. Books such as Breakfast of Champions and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater are sprinkled with these plot descriptions. Stanisław Lem 's Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius from The Cyberiad has several levels of storytelling. All levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl. House of Leaves is the tale of
15402-409: The murder of Hamlet's father in the main action, and Prince Hamlet writes additional material to emphasize this. Hamlet wishes to provoke the murderer, his uncle, and sums this up by saying "the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Hamlet calls this new play The Mouse-trap (a title that Agatha Christie later took for the long-running play The Mousetrap ). Christie's work
15553-437: The night there; when he and one of his wives are asleep, the other, seeing the youths, invites them to approach her, and to encourage them, shows them a hundred rings received from former gallants, notwithstanding her husband's precautions, who keeps her locked up in a chest at the bottom of the lake. The youths reject her advances; she wakes the genie who is going to put them to death, but the rings are produced in evidence against
15704-525: The now long-lost Bṛhatkathā in Sanskrit. Presently available are its two Sanskrit recensions , the Bṛhatkathamanjari by Kṣemendra and the Kathāsaritsāgara by Somadeva. The author of Kathasaritsagara , or rather its compiler, was Somadeva , the son of Rāma, a Śaiva Brāhman of Kashmir. He tells us that his magnum opus was written (sometime between 1063-81 CE) for the amusement of Sūryavatī, wife of King Ananta of Kashmir, at whose court Somadeva
15855-417: The origin of the tales contained in the collection to Shiva , who, it is said, related them in private conversation with his wife, Parvati , for her entertainment. One of the attendants of the deity, Pushpadanta, took the liberty of listening, and he repeated them, under the seal of secrecy, to his wife, Jaya, a sort of lady’s maid to the goddess. Jaya takes an opportunity of intimating to her mistress that she
16006-433: The other famous story-collections like Panchatantra , Hitopadesha etc. Volumes 2 to 10 published the original translation with extensive comments. Penzer invited different scholars to write forewords to each volume resulting in nine excellent essays dealing with all aspects of the great collection. A project to translate the full work into modern English prose, translated by Sir James Mallinson, began to appear in 2007 from
16157-402: The outer story, but also in the real world. When a story is told within another instead of being told as part of the plot, it allows the author to play on the reader's perceptions of the characters—the motives and the reliability of the storyteller are automatically in question. Stories within a story may disclose the background of characters or events, tell of myths and legends that influence
16308-521: The performance of all or part of the play, as in Noises Off , A Chorus of Disapproval or Lilies . Similarly, the musical Man of La Mancha presents the story of Don Quixote as an impromptu play staged in prison by Quixote ' s author, Miguel de Cervantes . Kosambi Kosambi ( Pali ) or Kaushambi ( Sanskrit ) was an ancient city in India, characterized by its importance as
16459-570: The period. More than three thousand stone sculptures have been recovered from Kausambi and its neighbouring ancient sites –7 Mainhai, Bhita, Mankunwar, and Deoria. These are currently housed in the Prof. G.R. Sharma Memorial Museum of the Department of Ancient History, University of Allahabad , Allahabad Museum and State Museum in Lucknow . The excavations of the archaeological site of Kosambi
16610-452: The play broadly mirror those of the novel and give the character Oedipa Maas a greater context to consider her predicament; the play concerns a feud between two rival mail distribution companies, which appears to be ongoing to the present day, and in which, if this is the case, Oedipa has found herself involved. As in Hamlet , the director makes changes to the original script; in this instance,
16761-416: The play by themselves. The characters in the play are also brother and sister and are also named Clare and Felice. The Mysteries , a modern reworking of the medieval mystery plays , remains faithful to its roots by having the modern actors play the sincere, naïve tradesmen and women as they take part in the original performances. Alternatively, a play might be about the production of a play, and include
16912-535: The play is presented before an audience of two of the characters, who comment upon the action. From references in other contemporary works, Kyd is also assumed to have been the writer of an early, lost version of Hamlet (the so-called Ur-Hamlet ), with a play-within-a-play interlude. William Shakespeare 's Hamlet retains this device by having Hamlet ask some strolling players to perform The Murder of Gonzago . The action and characters in The Murder mirror
17063-407: The plot, or even seem to be extraneous diversions from the plot. In some cases, the story within a story is involved in the action of the plot of the outer story. In others, the inner story is independent, and could either be skipped or stand separately, although many subtle connections may be lost. Often there is more than one level of internal stories, leading to deeply-nested fiction. Mise en abyme
17214-403: The poet laureate at the court, refers to the commissioning of the translation of Sanskrit works into Persian and vice versa by his patron Zayn al-‘Abidin, among them a translation of “a digest of the Bṛhatkathā ” ( bṛhatkathāsāra ) which may refer to the Kathāsaritsāgara . Another Persian version was commissioned in the second half of the 16th century during Akbar 's reign and accomplished by
17365-461: The prince's tutor, and her husband's banker. She makes assignations with them all: each as he arrives is quickly followed by his successor, and is secreted only to be finally exposed and punished. Malyavan, or Gunadhya, in consequence of a dispute with a rival Brahmin, forgoes the use of the Sanskrit, Prakrit and Deshya, or vernacular languages. He afterwards learns the Paisachi language, or that of
17516-399: The princess, a nymph of air, is also opposed to the match, and a variety of tales are recited on either side in support of the reasoning for and against the union. In the end, a spirit of air, in love with the princess, assumes the form of Udayana, and in this identity weds her. She reconciles without remedy, and has a daughter, Madanamanchuka who is the bride of Udayana's son. The book features
17667-423: The protagonist Mace Windu narrates the story within his journal, while the main story is being told from the third-person limited point of view. Several Star Trek tales are stories or events within stories, such as Gene Roddenberry 's novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , J. A. Lawrence 's Mudd's Angels , John M. Ford 's The Final Reflection , Margaret Wander Bonanno 's Strangers from
17818-456: The protagonist receives a small book from a baker, in which the baker tells the story of a sailor who tells the story of another sailor, and Sophie's World about a girl who is actually a character in a book that is being read by Hilde, a girl in another dimension. Later on in the book Sophie questions this idea, and realizes that Hilde too could be a character in a story that in turn is being read by another. Mahabharata , an Indian epic that
17969-485: The rank of king of the Vidyadharas , a class of heavenly spirits, are the leading topics of most of the books; but they merely constitute the skeleton of the composition, the substance being made up of stories growing out of these circumstances, or springing from one another with an ingenuity of intricacy which is one of the great charms of all such collections. The first book ( Kathapitha ) is introductory, and refers
18120-401: The reader or viewer, or can act as examples to teach lessons to other characters. The inner story often has a symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story. There is often some parallel between the two stories, and the fiction of the inner story is used to reveal the truth in the outer story. Often the stories within a story are used to satirize views, not only in
18271-409: The real every-day life. Hence it is that even in the miraculous and fantastical facts and events that make up the bulk of the main story and of a great deal of the incidental tales the interest of the reader is uninterruptedly kept. His lively and pleasant art of story-telling — though now and then encumbered with inflatedness or vitiated by far-fetched false wit — is enhanced also by his native humor and
18422-525: The region. Kosambi was one of the greatest cities in India from the late Vedic period until the end of Maurya Empire with occupation continuing until the Gupta Empire . As a small town, it was established in the late Vedic period, by the rulers of Kuru Kingdom as their new capital. The initial Kuru capital Hastinapur was destroyed by floods, and the Kuru King transferred his entire capital with
18573-653: The river, was Udayana/Udena's park, the Udakavana , where Ananda and Pindola Bharadvaja preached to the women of Udena's palace on two occasions. The Buddha is mentioned as having once stayed in the Simsapāvana in Kosambī. Mahā Kaccāna lived in a woodland near Kosambī after the holding of the First Buddhist Council . Already in the Buddha's time there were four establishments of the Order in Kosambī –
18724-555: The ruins of the fort attests to the existence of Mauryan military presence in the region. The Allahabad pillar is an edict issued toward the Mahamattas of Kosambi, giving credence to the fact that it was originally located in Kosambi. The schism edict of Kaushambi (Minor Pillar Edict 2) states that, "The King instructs the officials of Kausambi as follows: ..... The way of the Sangha must not be abandoned..... Whosoever shall break
18875-421: The sage Kusumba (v.l. Kusumbha). Another explanation is that large and stately neem trees or Kosammarukkhā grew in great numbers in and around the city. In the time of the Buddha, its king was Parantapa, and after him reigned his son Udena (Pali. Sanskrit: Udayana). Kosambī was evidently a city of great importance at the time of the Buddha for we find Ananda mentioning it as one of the places suitable for
19026-458: The sayings of the people of India […].” The second type of strategy encountered is that of inserting poetic quotations from the pool of Persian poetry such as Gulistan , Divan-i Hafiz , Divan-i Salman-i Savaji , Manzumat-i Sharaf al-Din Yazdi , Nizami 's Khusrau-u-Shirin , Makhzan al-Asrar , Haft paykar , and various others. Professor H. H. Wilson was the first European scholar who drew
19177-441: The second wife, Padmavati, princess of Magadha and his subsequent conquests. This book is especially rich in mythological sub-stories like Durvasa and Kunti , Urvashi and Pururavas , Indra and Ahalya , Sunda and Upasunda &c. The fourth book ( Naravahanadattajanana ) narrates the birth of the son of Udayana, by Vasavadatta, Naravahanadatta; at the same time sons are born to the chief ministers of Udayana, and they become
19328-472: The son of Palaka falling in love with a young girl of low caste, a Chandali , and different stories illustrative of odd couples. Palaka's ministers argue that the very circumstance of the prince's being enamoured of the Chandali is a proof that she must be a princess or goddess in disguise; otherwise it were impossible that she should have attracted the affections of any noble individual. They therefore counsel
19479-420: The stories of their predecessors in a manner that validates a belief stated in the sixth tale that "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present and by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future." The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon has several characters seeing a play called The Courier's Tragedy by the fictitious Jacobean playwright Richard Wharfinger. The events of
19630-462: The stories that his friend Pushpadanta had narrated. The recitation of the stories forms also the limit of the pishacha’s sojourn amongst mortals. The two demigods, Pushpadanta and Malyavan, are born as two Brahmins , named Vararuchi and Gunadhya , and their adventures as mortals constitute the subject of several tales. Some of these possess much local interest: we have in them literary anecdotes relating to celebrated works and authors, as to Panini
19781-459: The story within a story influences the reality of the story he has been telling, so that what happens in "The Mad Trist" begins happening in "The Fall of the House of Usher". Also, in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes , there are many stories within the story that influence the hero's actions (there are others that even the author himself admits are purely digressive). Most of the first part
19932-536: The subject of an epic puppet theater presentation. Another example is found in Samuel Delany 's Trouble on Triton , which features a theater company that produces elaborate staged spectacles for randomly selected single-person audiences. Plays produced by the "Caws of Art" theater company also feature in Russell Hoban's modern fable, The Mouse and His Child . Raina Telgemeier 's best-selling Drama
20083-680: The subjects to a new capital that he built near the Ganga-Jamuna confluence, which was 56 km away from the southernmost part of the Kuru Kingdom, and is now known as Prayagraj , previously called Allahabad . During the period prior the Maurya Empire , Kosambi was the capital of the independent kingdom of Vatsa , one of the Mahajanapadas . Kosambi was a very prosperous city by the time of Gautama Buddha , where
20234-612: The titular character. The most notable examples are " You Are Old, Father William ", " 'Tis the Voice of the Lobster ", " Jabberwocky ", and " The Walrus and the Carpenter ". Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio 's Decameron are also classic frame stories. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , the characters tell tales suited to their personalities and tell them in ways that highlight their personalities. The noble knight tells
20385-450: The transmission of the narrated story and not to the preservation of as many textual features as possible. One of the adaptation techniques applied in the Kathāsaritsāgara is the use of explanations and glosses to single words that refer to persons, objects or concepts. The translator-compiler ‘Abbāsī remarks, for example, that “this story is elaborated upon in [other] Indian books”, or comments on certain passages by adding: “[…] according to
20536-526: The unfaithful wife, and she is cast away with the loss of her nose. The eleventh book ( Vela ) is one huge story, that of Vela, a damsel married to a merchant's son focusing on their shipwreck, separation and re-union. The twelfth book ( Sasankavati ) narrates the huge tale of Mrigankadatta, prince of Ayodhya. The narrative is similar to Daṇḍin 's Dashakumaracharita , the Tale of the Ten Princes, in which
20687-468: The unity of Sangha, whether monk or nun from this time forth, shall be compelled to wear white garments, and to dwell in a place outside the sangha." In the post-Mauryan period a tribal society at Kosambi (modern Prayagraj district ) made cast copper coinage with and without punchmarks. Their coinage resemble the Damaru -drum. All such coinage has been attributed to the Kosambi. Many Indian museums, such as
20838-429: The veracity of the previous layer, or is challenged by the succeeding layer. Presuming each layer to be a true telling within the overall story, a chain of events is created linking Adam Ewing's embrace of the abolitionist movement in the 1850s to the religious redemption of a post-apocalyptic tribal man over a century after the fall of modern civilization. The characters in each nested layer take inspiration or lessons from
20989-420: The whole of The Taming of the Shrew is a play-within-a-play, presented to convince Christopher Sly , a drunken tinker, that he is a nobleman watching a private performance, but the device has no relevance to the plot (unless Katharina's subservience to her "lord" in the last scene is intended to strengthen the deception against the tinker ) and is often dropped in modern productions. The musical Kiss Me, Kate
21140-462: The woman most likely to care for it well. This kind of play-within-a-play, which appears at the beginning of the main play and acts as a "frame" for it, is called an " induction ". Brecht's one-act play The Elephant Calf (1926) is a play-within-a-play performed in the foyer of the theatre during his Man Equals Man . In Jean Giraudoux 's play Ondine , all of act two is a series of scenes within scenes, sometimes two levels deep. This increases
21291-410: The women from jealous restraint, but also triggers a subsequent series of tales, with the prince's companions as narrators. The stories that then ensue (for e.g. Somasvamin, Sringabhuja and Rupasikha) are about the conduct of women; some are tales of revenge. The eighth book ( Suryaprabha ) is devoted to the adventures of a prince named Suryaprabha, who became king of the Vidyadharas. The scene of action
21442-600: The world – a victory which itself is quite different from real history. In Red Orc's Rage by Philip J. Farmer a doubly recursive method is used to intertwine its fictional layers. This novel is part of a science-fiction series, the World of Tiers . Farmer collaborated in the writing of this novel with an American psychiatrist, Dr. A. James Giannini. Dr. Giannini had previously used the World of Tiers series in treating patients in group therapy. During these therapeutic sessions,
21593-434: Was a fortified town with an irregular oblong plan. Excavations of the ruins revealed the existence of gates on three sides-east, west and north. The location of the southern gate can not be precisely determined due to water erosion. Besides the bastions, gates and sub-gates, the city was encircled on three sides by a moat, which, though filled up at places, it still discernible on the northern side. At some points, however, there
21744-409: Was constructed using bricks and stones and two layers of lime were plastered on it. The palace had a vast network of underground chambers and the superstructure and the galleries were made on the principle of true arch . The four-centered pointed arch was used to span narrow passageways and segmental arch for wider areas. The superstructure of central and eastern block was examined to have formed part of
21895-459: Was done by G. R. Sharma of Allahabad University in 1949 and again in 1951–1956 after it was authorized by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in March 1948. Excavations have suggested that the site may have been occupied as early as the 12th century BCE. Its strategic geographical location helped it emerge as an important trading center. According to James Heitzman, a large rampart of piled mud was constructed in
22046-425: Was edited by Dr. Tara Chand and Prof. Syed Amir Hasan Abidi. It is worth mentioning that today only two manuscripts of the Persian version are available; both are incomplete and contain only 8 out of the original 18 chapters of the Sanskrit version each, which Chand and ‘Abidi based their edition upon. In contrast to other examples from similar kind of literature like Abu al-Maʿali Nasrullah Munshi’s Kalila va Dimna ,
22197-651: Was parodied in Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound , in which two theater critics are drawn into the murder mystery they are watching. The audience is similarly absorbed into the action in Woody Allen's play God , which is about two failed playwrights in Ancient Greece. The phrase The Conscience of the King also became the title of a Star Trek episode featuring a production of Hamlet which leads to
22348-405: Was poet. The tragic history of Kashmir at this period - Ananta’s two sons, Kalaśa and Harṣa, the worthless degenerate life of the former, the brilliant but ruthless life of the latter, the suicide of Ananta himself, the self-immolation of Sūryavatī on his funeral pyre, and the resulting chaos - forms as a dark and grim background for the setting of Somadeva’s tales. The frame story is the narrative of
22499-616: Was the route taken by Ananda when he went with five hundred others to inflict the higher punishment on Channa, Vin.ii.290), though there seems to have been a land route passing through Anupiya and Kosambī to Rājagaha ). In the Sutta Nipāta (vv.1010-13) the whole route is given from Mahissati to Rājagaha, passing through Kosambī, the halting-places mentioned being: Ujjeni , Gonaddha , Vedisa , Vanasavhya , Kosambī, Sāketa , Sravasthi/ Sāvatthi , Setavyā, Kapilavasthu / Kapilavatthu , Kusinārā , Pāvā , Bhoganagara and Vesāli . Near Kosambī, by
22650-459: Was the son of a banker in Kosambī. In the Buddha's time there lived near the ferry at Kosambī a powerful Nāga -king, the reincarnation of a former ship's captain. The Nāga was converted by Sāgata, who thereby won great fame. Rujā was born in a banker's family in Kosambī. Citta-pandita was also born there. A king, by name Kosambaka, once ruled there. During the time of the Vajjian heresy, when
22801-653: Was this text which C. H. Tawney used for his excellent translation ( Ocean of the River of Streams ) published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the Bibliotheca Indica , 1880-1884 (the index not appearing till 1887). Brockhaus’ edition was based primarily on six MSS., though in the second part of the work he apparently had not so many at his disposal. Tawney was not satisfied with several of Brockhaus’ readings, and consequently made numerous fresh renderings or suggestions largely taken from MSS. borrowed from
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