Needle at the Bottom of the Sea

by Tony K. Stewart

English 418 pages 1 edition

‘Brave and vivid…[Stewart’s translation] helps the anglophone reader enter this world in which karma supplies the ultimate explanation of the often bizarre adventures of the human spirit so richly explored in these stories.’— The New York Review of Books When the Hindu demigod Daksin Ray and the Sufi warrior Bada Khan Gaji meet in the field of battle with armies of tigers, God must intervene in the form of Satya Pir to broker peace. The two fight again, this time for Gaji’s reunion with his beloved princess Campavati. Then, in Ray’s battle with Bonbibi, the ruling matron of the Sundarbans, it is Gaji’s intervention that saves him from the latter’s wrath. Satya Par, who always watches over his disciples, aids Madansundar’s quest to find his lost merchant brothers. And Khoyaj Khijir (Khwaja Khizr) helps Gaji find the needle at the bottom of the sea, affirming his status as a jinda pir , a ‘living’ saint. Translated by award-winning scholar of early modern Bengali literature Tony K. Stewart, this collection of tales from the Sundarbans brims with fantasy and excitement. Tigers talk, rocks float, waters part and men magically grow into giants in these pir kathas , or stories of miracle-working Sufi saints. Bound together by the different characters’ pursuit of living honourably and morally in a difficult, corrupt world, these classic compositions from the 16th and 17th centuries also demonstrate how popular romances helped add ‘a natural Islamic substrate to local culture’. Vividly retold Hindu and Muslim traditions of Bengal converge in these enchanting tales on timeless themes of human morality, social culture, and survival in the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans.