Kathasaritsagara’s Vetala and Spirit Episodes

Record summary

Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagara incorporates the Vetala tales and numerous episodes involving ghosts, demons, ascetics, enchanted corpses, and beings encountered at cremation grounds or crossroads. It offers a large comparative corpus for studying how apparition-like encounters function inside romance, wonder tale, satire, and religious storytelling. The anthology is not a catalogue of claimed supernatural events; its stories are framed as literary narrative and draw on earlier materials, including the Brihatkatha tradition. Textual reconstruction and the identification of source layers remain uncertain.