"ocean of the streams of stories") is a famous 11th-century collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales as retold by a Saivite Brahmin

Brahmin

Brahmin Brahman, Brahma and Brahmin.Brahman, Brahmin and Brahma have different meanings. Brahman refers to the Supreme Self...

 named Somadeva.

Nothing is known about the author other than that his father's name was Ramadevabatta. The work was compiled for the entertainment of the queen Suryamati, wife of king Anantadeva of Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

 (r. 1063-81).

It consists of 18 books of 124 chapters and more than 21,000 verses in addition to prose sections. The principal tale is the narrative of the adventures of Naravahanadatta, son of the legendary king Udayana. A large number of tales are built around this central story, making it the largest existing collection of Indian tales. It notably also contains recensions of the Panchatantra

Panchatantra

The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...

in Book 10; and the Vetālapañcaviṃśati, or Baital Pachisi

Baital Pachisi

Baital Pachisi or Vetala Panchavimshati , is a collection of tales and legends within a frame story, from India. It was originally written in Sanskrit....

, in Book 12.

The Katha-sarit-sagara is generally believed to derive from Gunadhya's Brhat-katha, written in Paisachi dialect from the south of India. But the Kashmirian Brhat-katha from which Somadeva took inspiration may be quite different from the Paisachi one as there were two versions of the Brhat-katha extant in Kashmir, as well as the related Brhatkatha-sloka-samgraha of Buddhasvamin from Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

. Like the Panchatantra

Panchatantra

The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...

, tales from this (or its main source book the Brhat-katha) travelled to many parts of the world.

The only complete translation into English is by C. H. Tawney (1837–1922), published in two volumes (1300 pages in all) in 1880. This was greatly expanded, with additional notes and remarks comparing stories from different cultures, by N. M. Penzer, and published in ten volumes ("privately printed for subscribers only") in 1924.

Another translation was to be published in seven volumes by the Clay Sanskrit Library

Clay Sanskrit Library

The Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of books published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation. Each work features the text in its original language on the left-hand page, with its English translation on the right...

, translated by Sir James Mallinson, but it published only two volumes, reaching up to canto 6.8, before the publisher ended operations.