Churning the milky ocean for stories

PREMA SRINIVASAN

A. K. Ramanujan has retold folk stories and chosen to include oral tales rather than literary texts in his book "Folktales from India". He has arranged them as a book of poems so that they have a definite scheme and relationship, despite their diverse origins.

In Indian culture, the art of story telling has always been a popular form of entertainment. The story form, a universal favourite with mankind , has been described as one of the greatest gifts of India to the world. The folklore of India was on the verge of disappearance when a few pioneers, mostly missionaries and European scholars, began the arduous task of compiling them. In 1859, T. Benfy held that there was an unmistakable stamp of Indian origin in most of the fairy tales of Europe. "The same stories with different convolutions and setting have made a full circle and reached us through Grimm and Aesop". Scholars like Dimock have commented on the ease with which Indian stories could get into some of the famous collections of the world like Arabian Nights, the fables of La Fontaine, the stories of Grimm which prove the point that these tales have an appeal that is timeless. "Folktales from India" is a selection of oral tales from 22 languages selected and edited by A. K. Ramanujam.

In his introduction to the text, the author compares a folk tale to a poetic text that carries some of its cultural contexts with it. Folklore with its roots firmly established in the popular tradition, pervades childhoods, families and communities in an amazing manner. Any student attempting to study the culture of a land like India needs to familiarise himself with the folklore besides making a routine study of the classics of literature. Sudhir Kakar in his "Indian childhood: cultural ideals and social reality", points out that "much of the teaching and transmission of Hindu cultural values to the next generation takes place through the narration of stories and parables by mothers, grandmothers and others in the circle of the extended family". It is not surprising then, that in India, as elsewhere in the world, every kind of cultural practice or cultural performance is indebted to oral traditions and folk forms.

The present collection is retold by the author, who has been careful to include only oral tales from various regions of India rather than literary texts. These tales are carefully arranged as a book of poems so that they have a definite scheme and relationship, despite their diverse origins.

It has been said that although 100 languages abound in India, only 15 of these languages are written, read and spoken by 95 per cent of the people of the land and each of them is spoken by several million people. Literature in a language like Tamil goes back to 2000 years and in several others like Bengali and Gujarati, at least 800 years. In addition to these written literatures, there are oral traditions - riddles, proverbs, songs, ballads, tales and epics and so on. Ramanujam explains how these folk texts pervade all other texts and is not merely confined to the rural societies. In his words "city, village, factory and kitchen" Hindu, Buddhist and Jain, Christian, Muslim "cultures" are "all permeated by oral traditions, jokes, tales, beliefs and rules of thumb not yet found in written texts."

Folklorists in the bygone days had a number of tasks to perform. They told the tales to coax children to gulp down their meals or narrated them as bedtime tales. They are narrated to keep adults awake, to make monotonous tasks lighter. When farmers gathered to watch crops or cattle, or roll bidis, the tedium of such routine chores is relieved by a spot of story telling. Ritual tales are told on special occasions like 'vratakathas' narrated during shivarathri or some such occasion when the religious folk keep awake. The story "Brother's day" (Rajasthan) is one such for it explains the origin of Brothers' day when brothers give long skirts and wraps to their sisters and sisters should curse their brothers so that they live long. Tales are also told to drive home a point in political speeches, religious discourses and legal discussions.

R. K. Ramanujam has followed a pattern while arranging these tales taking into account the major languages, the authenticity of the available collections in English and the oral narratives listed in international indexes. Certain favourite genres and themes appear again and again despite the fact that the author has excluded myths, legends and written texts. They are arranged in 11 cycles, each consisting of 8 or 11 tales. Each cycle has one or more of the following tales:

Male-centred tales where the hero sets out in search of adventure and the story ends with the hero's advancement in the material world, complete with a bride of his choice. We can recall a number of fairy tales following this story scheme usually very popular with the younger audience.

Women-centred tales begin with the wedding and the heroine often outwits stupid male protagonists. The husband is usually a weakling in need of wife's superior intelligence. The woman as wife, mother or daughter, usually solves the problems the men cannot untangle. Birbal's daughter in "Akbar and Birbal" stories is a good example of this particular stereotype. The women in these stories do not conform to the Sita image depicted in the puranas. Ramanujam rather compares them to the boisterous heroines of Shakespearean comedies.

Tales about family life are aplenty. Here the folklorist had only to rely on real life situations he was confronting everyday and these were relevant to the mental make- up of the listening audience. All the complex relationships between brothers, sisters, inlaws, the familial bonds, rivalry, betrayal, cruelty and incest are explored. The motif of wicked stepmothers as in the famous "Hansel and Gretel" abounds. In "Teja and Teji" (Assam) the stepmother sells them after beating them soundly and can be considered as an interesting stereotype figure.

Grounded in our ancient mythology, the oral tradition also abounds in quasi-religious stories dealing with gods, demons and other supernatural beings. The tale titled "Untold Stories" relies heavily on the supernatural but also has a moral tag - why few people in this region trust a Gond. The gond in the story is an ungrateful master to the loyal servant who saves his life from the wrath of the "untold stories" A large number of humorous tales have been included to amuse the desultory reader. It is not just coincidence that figures of authority like kings, gurus, gods and mothers-in law, tigers and demons are portrayed as stupid and easily outwitted by the clever protagonist. Tenali Raman's trickster stories have survived the march of time only because of the earthy humour packed in the anecdotes describing his escapades.

Animal tales are the most ancient and they are found in the Jataka and Panchatantra tales greatly enjoyed by children. They are also in the nature of didactic fables dealing with the nature of power qualities of leadership. Wit and cunning are the weapons of the weak, with which the smaller animals get the better of wicked tigers and wily snakes.

The characters in these stories are given to the telling of tales. The emboxing of story within story, a technique found in Arabian Nights probably had its origin in India. The very first story "Tell it to the walls": is about an old woman's irrepressible urge to tell her story to someone; otherwise, she gets ill. She has to tell her story in order to lighten her burden. A book such as this, Ramanujam says, is motivated by such a need. "If you know a tale you owe it not only to others but to the tale itself to tell it; otherwise it suffocates... stories are a part of a pervasive process in society. They are gifts... that must be given and received... communities and generations depend on such exchanges and transfers. These tales selected with loving care by Ramanunjam take the reader on a guided tour around India's vast repertoire of folklore and unwritten stories, offering an insight into the culture of the time and place to which they belong.

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