The book Tales of Ancient India, translated from the Sanskrit by J.A.B. van Buitenen, provides much information about the world in which these stories are set. The translator notes some of the social dimensions of these stories in his Introduction, where he notes the growth of the importance of commerce and profit as seen in these stories, the particular place of the sea in the Indian imagination, the social roles of the Indian woman, the importance of travel, and the special place accorded the merchant in these stories, along with a great number of social types reflecting the realities of Indian society of the time:
The merchant's part in the culture which these tales embroider has been emphasized here because he is the forgotten man of India. But he is not the only hero. You will find a parade of hermits, harlots, and kings carrying a goodly number corpses and skulls about (9).
The translator further notes that he has deliberately reduced the number of religious stories and morality tales because so many have already been disseminated and has also left out the large number of animal tales for the same reason. What remains gives a picture of the development of various societal attitudes and beliefs.
The society depicted is clearly a hierarchical one, and what social mobility there is in this time occurs with merchants increasing their wealth and their social position. At the same time, these stories show a mixture of social types such as would not occur in a society where the different levels of the hierarchy were kept far apart. In the first section, "The King and the Corpse," a number of tales are told to the king in question by a Vampire, who sues each story as a test of the ability of the king to discern meaning in these tales. The king is acting at the behest of a mendicant who needs a brave man to help him perform a magic spell, and the king fits the bill and willingly sets out to help the man. The corpse the k...