Travelling Tales: Some Stories from the Middle Himalayas

• Authors: Gokhale Namita
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper presents a fascinating book, which has been very recently released in India from Yatra publishing house—Clever Wives and Happy Idiots. Folktales from the Kumaon Himalayas (New Delhi: Yatra Books 2015). Originally written in Russian in 1875 by the ethnographer Ivan P. Minayev (1840–1890), it records the folktales, myths and legends of the Himalayan region of Kumaon, as also his impressions of the region. His account, preserved as it were in amber and never before translated into English, has both historical and archival value and the charm of rediscovering the folk narrative of Uttarakhand. Two tales from the book, translated by Bulbul Sharma and Madhu Malik, are published as an illustration for this essay.

Keywords

EN

Indian folklore; Pahari folklore; Kumaon; Garhwal; Ivan Minayev; translation

• Publisher: Księgarnia Akademicka
• Journal: Cracow Indological Studies
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 17: Crossing over “on the Birds’ Wings”: South Asian Literature in Local and Global Contexts
• Pages: 133-147

Contributors

author

Gokhale Namita

References

• Blackburn, S. 2008. Himalayan Tribal Tales: Oral Tradition and Culture in the Apatani Valley. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.
• Michon D. 2015. Archaeology and Religion in Early Northwest India: History, Theory, Practice. London-New York-New Delhi: Routledge.
• Minayev I. 1966. Indijskije skazki i legendy, sobrannyje w Kamaonie w 1875 godu I.P. Minajevym. Sost. I.P. Minajev. Moskva: Nauka.
• Minayev I. 2015. Clever Wives and Happy Idiots. Folktales from the Kumaon Himalayas. Collected and Retold by Ivan Minayev, with a foreword by Namita Gokhale. Translated by Bulbul Sharma and Madhu Malik. New Delhi: Yatra Books.
• Ramanujan A.K. 1997. A Flowering Tree and Other Folk Tales from India. Ed. With a Preface by S. Blackburn and A. Dundes. Berkley and Los Angeles, Carifornia: University of California Press.
• Saklani, D.P. 1998. Ancient Communities of the Himalaya. New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company.

Identifiers

DOI

10.12797/CIS.17.2015.17.07