Kathasaritsagara’s Vetala and Haunted-Place Motifs

Record summary

Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagara, an 11th-century Sanskrit story compendium from Kashmir, incorporates narratives involving vetalas, cemeteries, ascetics, enchanted objects and perilous spaces. Its relationship to earlier works such as the lost Brihatkatha and to parallel story cycles is central to understanding transmission. The text offers identifiable material for comparing South Asian concepts of revenants, liminal landscapes and ritual power, but it is literary narrative rather than eyewitness documentation. Philological editions, manuscript studies and translations are necessary because plot order, wording and supernatural terminology vary across the textual tradition.