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| Arthur Ryder, translator: source: wikimedia |
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Reading Diary B Week 13: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins
I'm still continuing to read through Ryder's Twenty-Two goblins. I think my favorite story from this section was about the family that sacrificed themselves for the King, and then the King in the main story says that the King made the biggest sacrifice. I'm starting to get the impression that these stories are satirical because they're so over the top. I'm also wondering now why the story is called the twenty-two goblins when in actuality it's the same goblin each time. I'm hoping there will be a better explanation at the end, but for now I just have a lot of questions.
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Jacob, I am so glad you are reading this book! It is indeed over the top, and I think it is so cool how a Sanskrit classic can make a good impression all these hundreds of years later! But I don't want you to be disappointed that there is just the one goblin, or Vetala in Sanskrit. The title is just Ryder's attempt to render the Sanskrit compound word that is the title of the book: Vetālapañcaviṃśati which is Goblin-Five-Twenty (some versions have 25 stories instead of 22; there are lots of different versions, kind of like how there are lots of different versions of 1001 Nights). If you are curious to see what the Sanskrit is like, here is a transliterated text online: Vetala edition by Murray Emeneau. Like Ryder, Emeneau was a professor at Berkeley. He was still there when I was a student, and even though he was in his 90s, he was still working and researching. Amazing person!
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