Folktales from India
Jul. 13th, 2014 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliFolktales from India by A.K. Ramanujan
Titled with care, since there is a lot of regional differences. The Muslim vs. Hindu are the most pronounced and easy to see. All of them, of course, have the possibility of polygamous unions. Very common for a heroine's problem to be not her jealous sisters, nor her annoyed mother-in-law or stepmother-in-law, but her precursors as queen.
Tales of sillies, tales of cunning scoundrels, animals tales, pure fairy tales. . . often with fillips unrecognizable from European tales. A "Love Like Salt" opening where the father wants to know whether his daughters deem their prosperity owing to his fate or theirs leads not to three balls but to a Feather of Finist the Falcon type tale. Kind and unkind girls where the girls are half-sisters -- one's mother got all the inheritance, and the other widow has to spin, and her daughter loses the cotton to the wind. A rajah who loses his arms and legs and still gets chosen by a princess of China as her bridegroom. And a lot more.
Titled with care, since there is a lot of regional differences. The Muslim vs. Hindu are the most pronounced and easy to see. All of them, of course, have the possibility of polygamous unions. Very common for a heroine's problem to be not her jealous sisters, nor her annoyed mother-in-law or stepmother-in-law, but her precursors as queen.
Tales of sillies, tales of cunning scoundrels, animals tales, pure fairy tales. . . often with fillips unrecognizable from European tales. A "Love Like Salt" opening where the father wants to know whether his daughters deem their prosperity owing to his fate or theirs leads not to three balls but to a Feather of Finist the Falcon type tale. Kind and unkind girls where the girls are half-sisters -- one's mother got all the inheritance, and the other widow has to spin, and her daughter loses the cotton to the wind. A rajah who loses his arms and legs and still gets chosen by a princess of China as her bridegroom. And a lot more.