The Elephant in the Poem: Everyday Sciences in Sōmadēva’s Scholarly Novel

This paper looks at the encyclopedism of Sōmadēva’s novel, which he is supposed to have written because he was burnt out from too much philosophy, and needed to exercise his creative muscles. However, old habits die hard. In keeping with his literary predecessors in Sanskrit and Prakrit, the Sanskrit poets Bāṇa and Subandhu and the Prakrit novelists Uddyōtana and Haribhadra, Sōmadēva produced a scholarly novel where the abundant excurses and arcana almost seem to obscure the plotline. His poem is a cabinet of curiosities, rich in material from the “worldly sciences” (laukikaśāstra-s) such as Erotics, Equestry and Economics. This paper will reflect on the particular nature of the author’s polymathy, using his accounts of elephants and feasts; with occasional comparisons to his colleague, the Kannada poet Pampa.