Indian Fairy Tales!

Diana

I hope this is the right forum for this. I work with kids and am hoping someone can share some traditional Indian "fairy tale" or folk stories. The type of stories you may have been told by parent or grandparents when you were a child.

If you know any traditional folk tales, I'd love to learn them.

Thanks! Diana

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Hyderabadi

Here is a link to Amar Chitra Katha books on sale in the US. Most of us children of the 60s and 70s grew up reading these 'comics'! Great books.. I bought all that I could lay my hands on for my own two 90s kids last two trips to India.
http://www.desiknowledge.org/?gclid=...JWgQod2yq TMA

While I don't think there are any 'Indian fairy tales' in the western sense of the term, Panchatantra may qualify.

I believe this website has some 'tales':
http://www.panchatantra.org/ :

ALSO:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/ift/index.htm

kpnuts

i loved akbar birbal stories...click here

Diana

Ah! Thank you both for the information and contributions. These will help a lot.

crvlvr

I've heard that many of the stories in the Arabian nights also come from India and China (packaged and presented to the western world as "arabic".)

geeree

Traditional Indian stories for children are usually not fairy tales; they are parables, like Aesop's. Most of these come from the Classical Sanskrit literature (including the Puranas) but some can be traced as far back as the Upanisads, which include many stories. Here are two interesting collections of such parables that you may like:

1. "Stories told by Vinoba Bhave," Ram Shevalkar (Ed.), Parandham Prakashan, Pawnar;
2. "Tales told by Mystics," Manoj Das, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.

Sahitya Akademi is India's National Academy of Letters. The first book was originally published in Marathi, but I think they brought out an English translation after that.

Girish

dzibead

The Jataka tales are similar to the Panchatantra stories - also more like fables, as geeree pointed out.

Amyth

Check http://www.bharatadesam.com for Popular Indian fairy tales, Stories of Birbal and Tenali Rama, Tales of Panchatantra and Vikram Betal Stories...I never get tired listening to these!

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Diana

What a great link! Just spent way too long there.

Next question: How about "nursery rhymes?"

Ever curious...

Amyth

Glad you liked the link and on your next question-
What kind of nursery rhymes -Contemporary Hindi? English? English by Indian Authors? Classic Indian Hindi?

nomad

thanks for the link

but the link to manu smriti is a big piss off. i think that litrature is the root cause of our sad state

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Aishah

Diana - you were asking re nursery rhymes. i suggest you check your local bookshop, stationery shop and see if there are any books there that English medium schools are using for their nursery classes. A little 4 yr old family member here is going to such a school and he has a book 'Rhymes for kids" published by Soni under Flamingo Books - www.sonibooks.com , email:sonipub@ndf.vsnl.net.in. It is an Indian version of some traditional English nursery rhymes but also some I had never heard of and I think made up here.

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