ABSTRACT
In an effort to bridge the disciplinary gap between Indology and South Asian folklore studies, this essay analyses the ‘fluid’ textual dynamics of Shivadasa’s Vetāla-pañcaviṃśati, or Twenty Five Tales of the Animated Corpse, a medieval Sanskrit anthology of riddle-tales peppered with proverbial verses. Arguing for a move away from the false dichotomy of oral folklore vs. written literature and towards a distinction between fixed texts and fluid textual traditions, this essay examines the textual dynamics of one well-known vetāla tale, ‘The Wife and the Thief’ (ATU976). A closer look at how folk narratives, riddles, and proverbs collide within various Sanskrit renderings of this tale suggests that Shivadasa’s Vetāla anthology belonged to a ‘fluid’ Sanskrit public culture, which was propagated through written manuscripts and actively shaped by scribal communities in medieval India.
