Needle at the Bottom of the Sea

Bengali Tales from the Land of the Eighteen Tides
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-0-520-38893-2
Verlag: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc/Bloomsbury

Buch, Englisch, 424 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 130 mm x 197 mm, Gewicht: 370 g

Reihe: World Literature in Translation

“Brave and vivid.”—New York Review of Books
These enchanting stories from early modern Bengal reveal how Hindu and Muslim traditions converged on timeless themes of human morality, social culture, and survival.

The Bengali stories in this collection are first and foremost tales of survival. Each story in Needle at the Bottom of the Sea underscores the need for people to work together—not just to overcome the challenges of living in the Sundarban swamps of Bengal, but also to ease hostilities born of social differences in religion, caste, and economic class.

Translated by award-winning scholar of early modern Bengali literature Tony K. Stewart, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea brims with fantasy and excitement. Sufi protagonists travel through a world of wonder where tigers talk and men magically grow into giants, a Hindu princess falls in love with a Muslim holy man, and goddesses rub shoulders with kings and merchants. Across religion, class, and gender, what binds these fabulous stories together is the characters’ pursuit of living honorably and morally in a difficult, corrupt world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stewart, Tony K

Weitere Mitwirkende

Irani, Ayesha A.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Hinduismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Introduction

The Auspicious Tale of the Lord of the Southern Regions
The Ray mangal of Krsnaram Das

Scouring the World for Campavati

Gaji kalu o campavati kanyar puthi of Abdul Ohab

Glorifying the Protective Matron of the Jungle

Bonbibi jahura nama of Mohammad Khater

Wayward Wives and Their Magical Flying Tree
Satya narayaner puthi of Kavi Vallabh

Curbing the Hubris of Moses

Khoyaj Khijir’s Instruction to Musa in Nabivamsa of Saiyad
Sultan translated with Ayesha A. Irani

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Über Autor(innen)

Tony K. Stewart is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University and a specialist in the early modern literatures of the Bengali-speaking world. His most recent work is Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination, winner of the 2021 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.