Kathasaritsagara (the Ocean of Story)
by Somadeva | 1924 | 1,023,469 words | ISBN-13: 9789350501351
This is the English translation of the Kathasaritsagara written by Somadeva around 1070. The principle story line revolves around prince Naravāhanadatta and his quest to become the emperor of the Vidhyādharas (‘celestial beings’). The work is one of the adoptations of the now lost Bṛhatkathā, a great Indian epic tale said to have been composed by ...
Note on animals and omens
Note: this text is extracted from Book VIII, chapter 49.
“And in the meanwhile Guṇaśarman left his house to go to the court, and on the way he saw many unfavourable omens. There was a crow on his left hand, a dog ran from the left to the right, a snake appeared on his right, and his left arm and shoulder throbbed. He thought to himself: ‘These evil omens indicate calamity to me without doubt, so whatever happens to me, I hope no misfortune may befall the king, my master’”
Cf. the English superstitions with regard to the raven, crow and magpie (Henderson’s Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, pp. 95 and 96; Hunt’s Romances and Drolls of the West of England, p. 429; Thiselton Dyer, English Folk-Lore, pp. 80, 81). See also Horace, Odes, iii, 27. In Europe the throbbing or tingling of the left ear indicates calamity (Liebrecht, Zur Volks-kunde, p. 827; Hunt, op. cit., p. 480; Thiselton Dyer, op. cit., p. 279). See also Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, vol. ii, p. 813, and Birlinger, Aus Schwaben, pp. 374-378 and 404.
For similar superstitions in ancient Greece see Jebb’s Characters of Theophrastus, p. l63:
“The superstitious man, if a weasel run across his path, will not pursue his walk until someone else has traversed the road, or until he has thrown three stones across it. When he sees a serpent in his house, if it be the red snake, he will invoke Sabazius, if the sacred snake, he will straightway place a shrine on the spot.... If an owl is startled by him in his walk, he will exclaim ‘Glory be to Athene!’ before he proceeds.”
Jebb refers us to Ar. Eccl., 792.——For notes on unfavourable omens see Vol. III, pp. 46n2, 86n1, and for lucky omens pp. 122, 122n1, 171n1 of this volume. For an interesting list of both auspicious and inauspicious omens see R. E. Enthoven, The Folklore of Bombay, 1924, pp. 249-253. —N.M. p.