The Oceans of Cruelty: Twenty-Five Tales of a Corpse-Spirit: A Retelling

by Douglas Penick

A new, haunting, unexpectedly relevant rendering of an ancient Indian short story collection by a contemporary author and Buddhist practitioner.

The twenty-five tales included in The Oceans of Cruelty constitute one of the oldest collections of stories in the world, a book that offers both a set of uncanny, unsettling, and unforgettable narratives and a profound meditation on what weird thing it is that drives us to tell and to listen to stories. “Tales of the Vetala” is one of the names under which these stories have made their way from ancient India to the world at large, a Vetala being a corpse-spirit, and the frame story to the collection as a whole tells of a young king who bears the burden of a double spell. He has fallen under the power of a sorcerer, whose demand is that he fetch to him a Vetala to be his servant, and he has fallen under the power of the Vetala itself. Like a bat, the Vetala roosts upside down in the branches of a tree, and night after night the king is driven to take it down and bear it on his back to the burial ground where, once laid to rest, it will fall into the sorcerer's hands.

Night after night, king and spirit make their way from tree to burial ground, and as they do the spirit whispers a riddling story in the king's ear. If the king knows the answer to the riddle, he must tell it; as soon as he tells it, the spirit flies back to the tree. Thus story follows story, the king's labors continue, and neither he nor the spirit finds rest. Only when the king has no idea what the answer to the riddle may be, when he is unable at last to respond to the story at all, will his obligation to the sorcerer be fulfilled and will he be set free, though when that comes to pass—well, that's when the whole story takes a new turn.

Within this framework, The Oceans of Cruelty unfolds a suite of tales of suicidal passion, clever deceit, patriarchal oppression, obligatory self-sacrifice, changing bodies, and narrow escapes from death. Here are all the passions, and here is the play of appearance and desire from which stories are drawn and that make us come back hungry for story, wondering how will the story end and when at last will we be done with all those stories ?

Douglas Penick's recreation of this ancient work brings out all its humor and horror and vitality, as well its unmistakeable relevance in a world of stories gone viral.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Horror, Fantasy, Indian Literature, Classics, India

184 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2024

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very different book than I have ever read before Normally I wouldn’t have picked it up but it was sent to me for my monthly NYBR subscription. It’s a book that contains 25 separate short stories that are being told to the main protagonist by a demon, as he goes through this journey or quest, you could say. This book is strangely very philosophical and the main character as well as the reader is meant to learn lessons within each sub-story. This is a perfect pick for spooky October but also gives the reader a lot to think about long after he has put this book back on the shelf. Anyone would enjoy this book and it’s only 172 pages so what do you have to lose?

[Kyle C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of stories is like a noir version of the Mahabharata. In the Mahabharata, we learn that the sacred epic was originally dictated by the god Ganesh to the sage Vyasa—but the written version we read in front of us is actually just a recollection by Ugrashrava Sauti of an earlier recitation given by another sage, Vyasa's disciple, Vaisampayana, at a feast of the king Janamejaya; at the conclusion, we are also told that by memorizing the Mahabharata, the reader will be purified of their sins and achieve perfection. It is a story meant to be repeated and handed down and its own written form is a record of its many iterations. In Oceans of Cruelty, by contrast, we have an illicit story within a story: in a dream, the poor son of an oil merchant hears the echoes of the seductive stories told by the god Śiva to Pārvatī during their foreplay and lovemaking. The oil-merchant's son immediately tells the stories to his own wife in the morning and Śiva, enraged to hear his own divine tales corrupted in mortal speech, takes vengeance, killing the man, detaching his head and forcing his soul to inhabit the lifeless head. As punishment for his inadvertent transgression, the mortal must spend the rest of his days as a vetāla, a demonic entity cursed to repeat the same stories he heard, over and over again, until a king liberates him. Stories are not a holy devotion like in the Mahabharata; they are a Promethean crime, a theft humankind was never meant to have—and these stories are sinister and distorted versions of the divine originals. Instead of epic stories of valor, of Rama and the Pandavas and their struggles against fate and demons, stories transmitted in a noble bardic tradition, from gods to sages to devotees, we hear tales of conniving brahmins, louche women, decadent men, despotic kings, vicious gods, of debauchery and of human sacrifice and of babies dismembered—harrowing tales stolen from the gods and passed on by demons. If there are noble kings or wise warriors, their tales often culminate in tragic and macabre ends; even if they behave virtuously and come to a happy end, they are, by a perverse logic, often not the exemplary hero.

The twenty five stories in this text are told to king Vikramāditya as he carries the head back to his kingdom completing his duty to return it to a visiting yogi. King Vikramāditya has been condemned to a Sisyphean task: he must retrieve the head of the vetāla but he must not speak with it. If he does, the head will disappear and return to its original spot hanging from a tree in the jungle, and then the king will have to go back, cut the head down again and start his journey all over once more. However, he cannot resist the talking head. Whenever the vetāla poses a question about the story just told, Vikramāditya experiences an unbearable pain until he is forced to respond. While the stories themselves are gruesome, the vetāla treats them like declamatory exercises. For example, in a story about three suitors, a woman is accidentally betrothed to three men (a similar situation to Draupadi in the Mahabharata, as the narrator also notes) but she dies from a cobra bite; one suitor keeps guard of her bones, the second suitor carries her ashes, and the third becomes a devotee of Vishnu and eventually acquires the magic power of resurrection. When the woman is restored by his magic from her ashes and bones, the vetāla asks the king—which suitor should have the right to marry her? The king reasons that it should go to the man who kept her ashes; the man who kept her bones acted like a mother; the man who restored her to life acted like a father; they are prohibited by law from marrying her. So it is with many of these tales, the gothic horror becomes scholastic disquisition, the monstrous tales made into philosophical riddle.

While the king listens assiduously to the head of the corpse, his answers do not always please the vetāla. Vikramāditya starts to feel uneasy about his snap judgments and the corpse in its own elliptical way shows its disagreement: "Of course," the vetāla sighs before vanishing; "You're sure?" he questions the king before disappearing again; "That's outrageous", the vetāla says with more strident force, "laughing with amazement" at one of the king's answers. In many of the stories, King Vikramāditya's default position is to defend the rights of kings: when others do right, they are doing right because it is their duty; when kings do right, they are doing of their own benevolence. Other times, the king aims for the most paradoxical answer: it is not the prince who sacrificed himself for the life of a half-serpent naga but rather the naga, who reported this sacrifice to his family, is the morally superior. The former was a prince and warrior performing his prescribed role; the naga's good deed was more than just the perfunctory expectation. Yet while Vikramāditya explains his answers authoritatively, his responses often seem haughty and dogmatic and incomplete.

In the end, the king is freed from this recursive cycle of storytelling when he is finally unable to answer the corpse's questions. Finally stumped, he is silent and can carry the head back to the Yogi and perform his final task. Unlike the Mahabharata, stories are not cathartic or redemptive. The stories may invite philosophical debate but the need to explain the story only traps the king in the cycle of storytelling even more. The more stories he hears, the more detached from reality he feels. Stories warp his perception of time and his compulsive need to answer and expound just exhausts and enervates him. If there is a moral to these stories it is about the need to avoid moralizing. What these stories suggest is a totally different ethic of reading: to be confounded is to be free.

[S.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many arranged marriages, not nearly enough demons.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the October 2024 New York Book Review Classic selection. It was a perfect one for this time of year if you are into “horror” stories but there is a twist too. That is, while an anthology of 25 Indian folklore tales filled with murder, mayhem and gore at times, there is a philosophical question posed at the end of each story making it more than just a bunch of scary stories. The book is actually a retelling of The Baitâl Pachisi (The Twenty-Five Tales of a Corpse Spirit) which per the Forword is the “oldest story collection in existence. It was written down more than a thousand years ago . . . (Page 3).” It is retold in English and in the same order as The Baitâl Pachisi, though. The premise is that a king, Vikramāditya, is tricked into playing a part of a scheme by a mad Yogi who wishes to control and reshape the world. The king is to bring a vetāla, a corpse that lives, to him but the Yogi warns the king he must not talk to the vetāla or answer his questions (we learn the spell for the king can only be broken if he cannot answer the question). Of course, since the vetāla is doomed itself into retelling these 25 stories of deception from another time, the king enters a loop of storytelling that it seems he can’t get out of. The stories that are told have little concern “with psychology beyond social caste and such arbitrary designations as young, old, beautiful, ugly, brave, cowardly, generous,wise, foolish, personal or poor (page 3). What they show, however, is how the people in them are seized by intense emotions such as hate, love, greed, for example, and are moved to achieve their desires for place and power at any cost. “It is a world of continuous, indiscriminate, impersonal cruelty (page 4).” The vetāla is the demonic element in the tale but his stories demand an explanation- hence why he always asks the king a question such as who was the most virtuous in the story, for example. The king’s “answers do not reconcile but rather expose the irreconcilable gap between the world of passion, enchantment, and transformation and those of law, reason and judgment (page 4).” The stories are delightful, frightful but illuminating. That is, they give insight into human motivations that still resonate today. I enjoyed this book. And it continued my October theme focus of reading scary stories.

[愷怡 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story was really cool! Lots of imagery~

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is held together by a frame - a king must deliver a corpse-spirt to a yogi (who is really a demon), but each time the king speaks, the spirit goes back to the starting point, and the journey begins again. The spirit has the possibility of being freed if he can get the king to whole heartedly believe in the stories.

If you've studied Chaucer, it's a far darker (and far older) Canterbury Tales.

But not entirely dark. The stories are more like parables, designed in part of the king to learn something for he is called upon at the end of each to make judgement (and some of the judgements may surprise you). I do have questions about the surprising number of good thieves that seem to exist here.

It's interesting. Really well told, adapted by Penick. It does make you think about morality and all sorts of things.

[Ben]

I’m not going to rate this. It was immediately apparent that this would only be an enjoyable read from a historic anthropology context. In that light, this collection and translation is a 5 out of 5. Well done.

If I were to rate the stories themselves it would be a 1 out of 5. Or a zero. I found little to admire or value in the (ancient) society depicted and the (sex-obsessed, random) virtues extolled. Having never studied or visited India I have to wonder how these stories look through modern Indian eyes? Hopefully as backwards and weird as I found them.

Wouldn’t recommend, except to gain a historic perspective of this very specific culture.

[John von Daler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penick: Oceans of Cruelty
Karen Blixen once divided comedy and tragedy into respectvely the divine and the mortal. So said the storyteller. This ocean of cruelty too.
Here are Shakespeare as well as the best of situation comedy. Unburdened by the limits of psychology, we follow story after story until the final choice looms periously close to the inevitable end.
No harm that Douglas Penick’s words strike our eyes and ears like silver spoons on crystal glass. A thousand years worth waiting for.

[Natalie Dixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised by this book, not sure what I was expecting but it was interesting and quite readable, nice to read a few stories at a time. Perhaps this is about critical thinking, perhaps about nuance and the grey area and lack of answers, perhaps about stories and humans and the deep bond between them. Written by my clarinet teacher’s partner so obviously I’m a fan

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars personally. I love drama and mytho-poetry, and the historical context of this story is fascinating. I did get quite bored about 19 stories in and skipped to the end, which ended up being so satisfying. This is a book you pick up to pass the time on the train, you can read each story like you’re nibbling at the pages :-)

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat project—not quite a translation, not quite a retelling of an old series of stories. A little like if Christopher Logue wrote the Decameron and set it in ancient India. (If that description excites you, you’re my kind of person.)

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never been extremely interested these sorts of stories, and yet this was actually quite delightful

[Andy Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

what an unusual read! i enjoyed the short-story format, and i enjoyed the questions asked and answers posed for each.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

fun read for something different

[Kenchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely loved it! But at the same time, I wanted it to be over.

[Joe M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy, uncanny, erotic, unusual... this one is perfect for fans of The Arabian Nights, traditional Asian folk tales, or supernatural stories. One of the highlights of my NYRB subscription this year. 

[Oakley C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many reviews I need to write but this book I simply devoured. Totally bizarre, totally brilliant, something like medieval Poe and Borges. Amazing.