Indo-Iranian Journal 63 (2020) 263–306 brill.com/iij Review Article ∵ A Resurgent Interest in “Hindu Fiction” On and around the Kathāsaritsāgara, with Special Attention to Buddhism Jonathan A. Silk Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
[email protected] A review article on Willem Bollée, A Cultural Encyclopaedia of the Kathāsa- ritsāgara in Keywords: Complementary to Norman Penzer’s General Index on CharlesTawney’sTranslation [Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis 8]. Halle an der Saale: Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg, 2015, 513 pp. isbn 978-3- 86977-123-6. €98,00. Supplemented by Willem Bollée, “Addenda et Corrigenda to ‘Bollée, Willem B., Cultural Encyclopaedia of the Kathāsaritsāgara.’” Zeit- schrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien 32/33 (2015/2016): 175–202. That the first Western introduction to the compendium of tales called Kathā- saritsāgara, composed by Somadeva in Kashmir in the last third of the 11th century, appeared more than two centuries ago is a fact that should give any scholar of Sanskrit or Indology pause. Just how far have we come in these five or six generations of scholarship? The initial presentation took the form of a relatively short mention in the preface to the Dictionary of Sanscrit and English of Horace Hayman Wilson (1786–1860),1 followed shortly thereafter by 1 A Dictionary of Sanscrit and English: translated, Emended and Enlarged, from an Original Com- pilation prepared by Learned Natives for the College of Fort William (Calcutta: Philip Pereira, at the Hindoostanee Press, 1819): ix–xi (he spells the title here Cat’há Sarit Ságara) . This is reprinted in Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, Vol.