Tony K. Stewart 
Needle at the Bottom of the Sea 
Bengali Tales from the Land of the Eighteen Tides

“Brave and vivid.”—New York Review of Books

These enchanting stories from early modern Bengal reveal how Hindu and Muslim traditions converged on timeless themes of human morality, social culture, and survival.

 

The Bengali stories in this collection are first and foremost tales of survival. Each story in
Needle at the Bottom of the Sea underscores the need for people to work together—not just to overcome the challenges of living in the Sundarban swamps of Bengal, but also to ease hostilities born of social differences in religion, caste, and economic class.

 

Translated by award-winning scholar of early modern Bengali literature Tony K. Stewart,
Needle at the Bottom of the Sea brims with fantasy and excitement. Sufi protagonists travel through a world of wonder where tigers talk and men magically grow into giants, a Hindu princess falls in love with a Muslim holy man, and goddesses rub shoulders with kings and merchants. Across religion, class, and gender, what binds these fabulous stories together is the characters’ pursuit of living honorably and morally in a difficult, corrupt world.

Table of Content

Contents


Introduction 


The Auspicious Tale of the Lord of the Southern Regions

The Rāy mangal of Krsnarām Dās


Scouring the World for Cāmpāvatī 

Gāji kālu o cāmpāvatī kanyār puthi of Ābdul Ohāb


Glorifying the Protective Matron of the Jungle 

Bonbibī jahurā nāmā of Mohāmmad Khater


Wayward Wives and Their Magical Flying Tree

Satya nārāyaner puthi of Kavi Vallabh


Curbing the Hubris of Moses 

Khoyāj Khijir’s Instruction to Musā in Nabīvamśa of Saiyad

Sultān translated with Ayesha A. Irani


Glossary 

Acknowledgments

About the author

Tony K. Stewart is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University and a specialist in the early modern literatures of the Bengali-speaking world. His most recent work is Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination, winner of the 2021 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.