katha, in the fifth century ce. Three episodes are told in the ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Story’ (Katha/sarit/sagara), a text probably composed in the eleventh or twelfth century in Kashmir but based on a much earlier collection of stories, the no longer extant ‘Great Story’ (Brhat/katha), which was almost certainly known to all of the Sanskrit playwrights. One of these three episodes tells of a celestial magician who disguised himself as Udayana and seduced a woman whom Udayana had intended to take as his co-wife [text 1, ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Story’ (31), in which the co-wife is Kalinga·sena]; another tells us that Queen Vasava·datta magically disguised herself and served the woman whom the king ______
intended to make his co-wife, until the king saw through the disguise by means of her skill in the art of garland-making [text 2, ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Story’ (15–16), the co-wife Padmavati]; and, in a third, Udayana became unfaithful and inadvertently called Vasava·datta by the name of her rival, and, later, secretly seduced—while the queen watched in hiding—yet another rival that she had tried in vain to conceal from him [text 3, ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Story’ (14), Virachita]. This cycle of stories was taken up in three Sanskrit dramas, one by Bhasa, who replaced the magic transformations and disguises with a dream sequence [text 4, ‘Vasava·datta in a Dream,’ Padmavati again], and two by Harsha, who replaced them with a portrait of a co-wife, a magic plant fertilizer and a magic show [text 5, ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace’], and with a play within a play [text 6, ‘The Lady who Shows her Love’]. We may represent the basic plots of these six texts on a chart:________
Text
Genre
What
conceals
Who is
disguised
What
reveals
1. Ocean of the
Rivers of Story
narrative
magic
magician
sleep
2. Ocean of the
Rivers of Story
narrative
magic
queen
garland/
portrait
3. Ocean of the
Rivers of Story
narrative
disguise
co-wife
slip of the
tongue
4. Vasava·datta
in a Dream
play
disguise
queen
dream/
portrait
5. The Lady of the
Jewel Necklace
play
disguise
co-wife
necklace/
portrait/magic
6. The Lady who
Shows her Love
play
disguise
co-wife
play/magic
The Story in the ‘Ocean of the Rivers
of Stories’ (Katha/sarit/sagara)
Let us begin with the story of:
Kalinga·sena and the Magician
King Udayana wanted to make an alliance with a king whose daughter, Kalinga·sena, came to Udayana’s kingdom of Kaushambi and asked him to marry her, which he agreed to do. But Udayana’s prime minister, who did not want this marriage to happen (because he had promised the king’s first wife that she would have no co-wife), intrigued with the astrologers to delay the date of the wedding for six months, during which Kalinga·sena lived in the kingdom. The prime minister mentally summoned a demon (raksasa) named Yogeshvara and told him to watch over Kalinga·sena night and day in order to catch her doing something that would prove her unfit to wed the king. In particular, he advised, “If she were to have an affair with a celestial magician (vidya/dhara) or someone like that, that would be very fortunate. And you must observe the divine lover when he is asleep, even if he comes in a different form, for divine beings assume their own forms when they fall asleep.”
Now, a celestial magician named Madana·vega had fallen in love with Kalinga·sena; he used his magic to come to her room in the form of the king and seduce her. The demon found the magician in his own form, asleep on the bed of the sleeping Kalinga·sena; for he was a divine man and had lost his false form because his magic power to take such a form vanished when he was asleep. The demon called the prime minister, who brought the king to Kalinga·sena’s ________
room; he saw her asleep and the magician asleep beside her in his own form. The king wanted to kill him, but just then the magician was awakened by his magic and he went out and flew away to the sky. In a moment, Kalinga·sena woke up too; she said to the king, “Why did you go away a moment ago and come back with your minister?” The minister explained to her, “Someone who took the form of the king magically deluded you and married you; it wasn’t the king.” And they left. The minister told everything to Vasava·datta, who thanked him.
Udayana kept thinking about Kalinga·sena’s beauty, and one night when he was full of lust he went to her room alone, with a sword in his hand, and asked her to become his wife. But she rejected him, saying, “You should regard me as another man’s wife.” The king withdrew and eventually forgot about her. But the magician, who had overheard the conversation, praised his wife and continued to visit her, though he added, “Even though you are a virtuous woman, you have gotten the reputation of a whore” (‘Ocean of the Rivers of Stories’ 31–34 [6.5–8]).
The magician is revealed in his post-coital repose, the sleep that both allows possession and reveals it. For the Hindus believe that a god or demon who masquerades as someone else in bed is compelled to take his own true form when he loses mental control and hence inadvertently turns off the current from the magic projector in his mind; this happens when he sleeps, gets drunk, dies, gets angry—or makes love, when sexual passion strips away the final illusion, the curse or disguise, and reveals the true identity (Doniger 2000). But in this case the unmasking takes place ________
after the damage has been done, and Kalinga·sena is punished, and calumniated, for not seeing through the trick sooner. Vasava·datta plays no active role; the prime minister, assisted by the demon and, inadvertently, the magician,
