''Madanakamaraja Katha'' is a collection of

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union terr ...

n folktales. It goes by several similar names, such as ''Madanakamarajan Kathai'' in

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

and ''Madana Kamaraju Kathalu'' in

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode ...

. It collects stories told in South India, some of which are also found in Sri Lanka. The frame story, like that of the ''

Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

'', involves the narration of stories to gain time. The prince Madanakāmarāja falls in love with two women he sees in a painting. He instructs his friend, a minister's son, to find them both and bring them to him, after which he will choose and marry one, and the minister can marry the other. The friend sets off, finds the two women, and starts bringing them home. As he does not know which of them will be his wife, he manages to keep them off by narrating them the several stories that make up the collection. The Tamil text was published in 1848 and 1855 and translated by S. M. Natesa Sastri as "Dravidian Nights" in 1886. The translation contains twelve stories in all. Although it was important as a collection of folktales, it did not have much effect on Tamil ''literary'' culture. The 1941 film

Madanakamarajan ''Madana Kama Rajan'' () is a 1941 Indian Tamil-language adventure film directed by B. N . Rao and produced by S. S. Vasan. It was the first film for Vasan as producer for Dindugal Amirtham Talkies. Plot ''Madana Kama Rajan'' is tale of the adv ...

was broadly based on this work.

References

External links

* Indian folklore Tamil-language literature 1848 short story collections Indian fairy tales Indian literature Indian legends 19th-century Indian books {{Tamil-stub