Plunging the Ocean: Courts, Castes and Courtesans in The Kathāsaritsāgara

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Plunging the Ocean engages with the voluminous content of the Kathasaritsagara, a text meant for courtly entertainment, locating the various points of its retelling. The volume weaves gender as the
discursive mesh with various themes such as caste, class, occupations, control and flow of resources or wealth, religious practices, sexuality and power structures to highlight the discourse of the text itself. In their
creation and negotiation with the past, the narratives are seen as crucially demonstrating the importance of ‘social space’; in the organization of space itself and in the reflection of social relations of production
and reproduction. The conclusion highlights the contradictions inherent in the characters and plots, in the folk antecedents and monarchical elite appropriation of the kathas, in conformity and subversion. The
structures of power that create systems of knowledge are essentially projected as ominously omnipresent in the ‘Ocean of Stories’.