Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Interpretation of Fairy Tales
- 2 Creativity and Tradition in the Fairy Tale
- 3 The Ultimate Fairy Tale: Oral Transmission in a Literate World
- 4 A Workshop of Editorial Practice: The Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmarchen
- 5 Old Tales for New: Finding the First Fairy Tales
- 6 Helpers and Adversaries in Fairy Tales
- 7 ‘Catch if you can’: The Cumulative Tale
- 8 Unknown Cinderella: The Contribution of Marian Roalfe Cox to the Study of Fairy Tale
- 9 Hans Christian Andersen's Use of Folktales
- 10 The Collecting and Study of Tales in Scandinavia
- 11 The Wonder Tale in Ireland
- 12 Welsh Folk Narrative and the Fairy Tale
- 13 The Ossetic Oral Narrative Tradition: Fairy Tales in the Context of Other Forms of Traditional Literature
- 14 Russian Fairy Tales and Their Collectors
- 15 Fairy-Tale Motifs from the Caucasus
- 16 The Fairy Tale in South Asia: The Same Only Different
- 17 Rewriting the Core: Transformations of the Fairy Tale in Contemporary Writing
- General Index
- Index of main tales and tale-types
16 - The Fairy Tale in South Asia: The Same Only Different
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Interpretation of Fairy Tales
- 2 Creativity and Tradition in the Fairy Tale
- 3 The Ultimate Fairy Tale: Oral Transmission in a Literate World
- 4 A Workshop of Editorial Practice: The Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmarchen
- 5 Old Tales for New: Finding the First Fairy Tales
- 6 Helpers and Adversaries in Fairy Tales
- 7 ‘Catch if you can’: The Cumulative Tale
- 8 Unknown Cinderella: The Contribution of Marian Roalfe Cox to the Study of Fairy Tale
- 9 Hans Christian Andersen's Use of Folktales
- 10 The Collecting and Study of Tales in Scandinavia
- 11 The Wonder Tale in Ireland
- 12 Welsh Folk Narrative and the Fairy Tale
- 13 The Ossetic Oral Narrative Tradition: Fairy Tales in the Context of Other Forms of Traditional Literature
- 14 Russian Fairy Tales and Their Collectors
- 15 Fairy-Tale Motifs from the Caucasus
- 16 The Fairy Tale in South Asia: The Same Only Different
- 17 Rewriting the Core: Transformations of the Fairy Tale in Contemporary Writing
- General Index
- Index of main tales and tale-types
Summary
No longer is it a truth universally acknowledged that all fairy tales are of Indic origin. The area now collectively known as South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and in this context Tibet) has undoubtedly transmitted many tales to neighbouring regions, but it has also received, preserved and transformed others. The task of determining the direction of transmission is at best demanding and painstaking, and at worst arid, subjective or even impossible; a more rewarding line of enquiry is to investigate what changes are made when a given tale, story unit or motif is transmitted from one culture to another, in whichever direction. A third category - those tales which have not, or not yet, been reported outside the area - deserves much more study than it has so far received. Do any of these tales have distinctive features which betray their South Asian origin, or couldthey theoretically have been composed elsewhere? An essay of this length cannot hope to deal comprehensively with every question; I shall therefore concentrate firstly on a few representative tales, and secondly on patterns of research, past and future, perforce leaving aside vast areas and numerous major authorities.
Use of terminology devised to be appropriate to Europe complicates any enquiry into South Asian tales. In the Indic context, ‘oral’ cannot be equated with ‘folk’, nor ‘written’ with ‘literary’. Texts which, by European standards, are clearly ‘literary’, ‘religious’ or even ‘philosophical’ in nature have been transmitted without the aid of writing, or alongside written versions, and also alongside texts which can be defined as ‘folktales’, and the degree of cross-fertilisation should not be underestimated or disregarded. Whatever may be the case elsewhere, the major Indic literary creations contain a considerable amount of so-called ‘folk material’ and, more importantly, are themselves the source of a great many folk narratives. The problem is to decide which is which.
Nor should South Asia be regarded as in any sense homogeneous. Only from the outside has the area ever been seen as a unit.
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- A Companion to the Fairy Tale , pp. 239 - 252Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2002