In too deep: the tale of Vyāsa and Kāśisundarī in Tocharian A

Véronique Kremmer (1)

1 GREI - Groupe de recherches en études indiennes (EA2120)

This is the story of how the mythical sage Vyāsa gets “ditched”. The hitherto untranslated Tocharian A fragments 110 and 111 (THT 743 and 744) contain the story of an ill-fated love affair between Vyāsa and a courtesan named Kāśisundarī, which ends with Vyāsa digging a ditch for his beloved and receiving a blow to the head. The text is established through the comparison with the only known parallel text of this narrative: a commentary on Udbhaṭasiddhasvāmin’s Viśeṣastava, of which only the Tibetan translation survives. This paper presents a new edition of the Tocharian fragments, a translation, and a linguistic and philological commentary.

Keywords: indology; tocharian; buddhism; sanskrit; indo-european; linguistics; philology; central asia

Domains: Literature; Classical studies; Linguistics; Religions; Humanities and Social Sciences

Véronique Kremmer. In too deep: the tale of Vyāsa and Kāśisundarī in Tocharian A: A new reading of THT 743 and 744 (A 110–111). Tocharian and Indo-European Studies , In press, 21. ⟨hal-03839398⟩