ABSTRACT
A set of comical and satirical stories concerning a teacher and his disciples is famous across the subcontinent, and the guru is variously known as Maha Daena Muththa in Sri Lanka; Guru Paramartan, Gooroo Noodle and Guru Simpleton across south and south-eastern India and Niret Guru in and around and beyond Bengal. These stories can be traced to the original work by an Italian priest, Costantino Giuseppe Beschi (1680-1747), who collected, compiled and published these stories of Guru Paramartan in Tamil, which was later translated into English as The Adventures of Gooroo Noodle by Benjamin Babington and translated into various other languages, including the Bengali translation (Niret Gurur Kahini) by Sita Devi, around the second decade of the 20th century.
