Tales of the Ten Princes

Reading so much prose fiction from the ancient Greek world and the Roman Empire has pushed me to the east, to enjoy fiction from India and other parts of Asia. While it is not a novel, Dandin's Tales of the Ten Princes uses the frame story of Rajahavana reuniting with his fellow allies as they plan to defeat the king who unseated Rajahamsa, his father. As each prince (descendants of other kings or royal ministers to Rajavahana's father) reunites with Rajavahana, they regale him (and the reader) with their various exploits, ruses, adventures, battles, and supernatural encounters across the Indian subcontinent. 

Not surprisingly, like the various inset tales in Apuleius's The Golden Ass other works of fiction from the Greco-Roman world, many of Dandin's tales here revolve around magic, banditry, trickery, love at first sight, forest tribes, court intrigue, courtesans, proper conduct (or lackthereof), and merchants (there are allusions to Chinese silk, and even Greek sailors and merchants) with access to great wealth and exotic goods. Moreover, Kama, the Indian Eros or Cupid, is constantly invoked and present in the text, much as in the Greek romances. Indeed, various references to Hindu sacred texts, Jains, Buddhists, ascetics, and the pantheon of gods makes it clear that a proper understanding of this text requires a deep immersion into Indian history, epics, and religion. Similarly, one requires such a background to understand many of the allusions in the Greek romances, but the Western reader will already possess some of the requisite background knowledge.

Since most of the princes engage in various forms of immoral conduct or trickery, including sleeping with a married woman in one case, to gain their kingdom, the narrative seems to gain much of its humor and traction from the contradiction between proper ethics and the reality of lived experience. These characters are far less noble than the lovers of Greek romances, but one cannot help but admire and enjoy their misdeeds and adventures. Unfortunately, some of the tales repeat the same types of ruses and the convoluted stories within stories within another story structure can lead to confusion. Perhaps fewer princes and more attention on Rajavahana would have created a more compelling central thread, as in the case of Lucius in The Golden Ass. Nontheless, it is an engaging work that takes the reader on a journey across the various social classes, castes, kingdoms, and beliefs of India in the 7th century, and perhaps an Eastern variant of the picaresque tales of Western fiction.