By Mahesh Paudyal
In this write-up, I am reflecting on Folktales from Nepal Himalayas, a collection compiled and translated by Ramesh Kumar Limboo, Tek Bahadur Karki, and Rishiram Adhikari. Published by Sangri-la Books, the collection compiles 49 short tales, which have been named, “Namsami-Kesami Myth and Other Folktales”. Namsami-Kesami Myth refers to a story of two bothers with these names coming from Limboo community in eastern Nepal. Other tales compiled in the book have been picked from various other locations, including central and western Nepal. Limboo and Chepang myths, among others, make a special attraction of the book. As the editors have asserted, the stories have been collected to ‘conserve and keep alive such invaluable practice of tale-telling tradition, which are to be shared to the new generation.’ The eclectic tales accommodated in the book bring forth diverse worldviews, societal collective unconscious, and the archetypes living in these societies along the Himalayan belts of Nepal. Owning mainly to their remoteness and their rootedness in the hinterlands, the tales feature even non-human characters, especially animals and bodiless spirits, as is a characteristic of folk tales from around the world. As for example, the very opening tale, “Namsami-Kesami” features animals as playmates of the girl Khappura. “Samekwa Pu” features a woman taking birth in the form of a bird, while “Lendermoore” features as cow as its central characters. Apart from stories solely about animals, like “A Tiger and a Cat” and “The Camel and Jackal” which give an echo of Aesop’s fables, there are stories featuring humans and animals together, which has two fundamental reasons. First, the tales belong to a time when such symbiotic relation existed among the humans and animals, and second, most ancient worldviews and treatises, including the Kirat Mundhum, imagine the entire ecosystem as a family with both human and non-human members born of the same parents. For example, the Limboos, after a tale in the Mundhum, believe that all living beings, human or non-humans, are progenies of Sumnima, the primordial mother.
The tales reproduce many global archetypes we can also find in folktales in other communities. This allows what Derrida would calls teleopoiesis, or a random mapping of themes across distances. It also confirms that there are archetypes that operate in the same way across the world, no matter how distant the places are from one other. This further leads to another hypothesis: the folks, in their pure nascent imagination, think in the same way. It is only the later division along practical and theoretical lines of thought, including religion and philosophy that inspired people to think differently.
The stories in this collection reproduce many archetypal themes like step-mothers’ coercion, sibling rivalry for privilege or legacy, magic, folk justice, trickster figures and demoms, right versus wrong, punishment and reward, victory of the good over evil, vice verses virtues, the wise versus the fools and breathtaking mysteries and ghosts. Some others showcase the villagers’ belief systems, including their shamanical experiences.
A quick look at the regions these tales encompass reveals that they are most predominantly collected form regions where the Limboos, the Tharus and the Chepangs live, though there are a few from other regions. The hills and plains of eastern Nepal, Chitwan and its vicinity, and a few districts in the middle western part of Nepal form the source of these tales.
Tabling them thematically, stories like “Namsami-Kesami”, “An Afflicted Sister” and “A Real Sister” are tales of sibling rivalry. The former is about two brothers, Namsami and Kesami, born to the same mother as a human and a tiger. The latter is about two sisters, the younger one envying her sister’s husband, and hatching plots against her own sister, including throwing her down a well or tying her atop a tree, only to be discovered and punished later.
Stories of wit, one tricking the other, also forms another good chunk of the collection. Some of these stories have the humans as characters, and others animals. Such stories include “A Tiger and a Cat”, “The Camel and the Jackal”, “A Smart Woman”, “A Reprisal” “The Clever Nephew”, “Doing Justice”, “Jal Bir”, “Tit for Tat”, “A Clever Nephew” etc. What these stories have in common is an evil character, who is tricked and vanquished by the other, who uses ideas and wits. One weakness of this collection, however is that vague titles like “Tit for Tat” rob the story of from their cultural rootedness and dilute their identity.
Another important class of the stories here is those that reproduce the step-mother’s stereotype, featuring step-children in peril. Such stories include “A Step-Mother”, “Sime and Bhume” — stories that narrativize step mother’s ill-treatment, children’s suffering, and their rescue by some magical power, some deus-ex-machina.
A good chunk of the stories here are those about human-animal relationship, fundamentally highlighting kindness from animals. they reproduce the mythical symbiotic arrangement our forefathers imagined for a balance in the shared worlds. The story also have a provision of punishment for those who try to rupture this human-nature relationship, and most often, the guilty is a human character. Stories like “The Story of Kumari Mung” make us think of such relations, which are ruptured by human interference. The story features a man Tanthula, who is in love with a bird, Kumari Mung. When the boy’s parents kill the bird, his song resurrects it from its feathers and bones, and the two get united, while the cruel parents die. “An Afflicted Sister” also reproduces this theme. In this story, an girl, hated by her sister-in-laws, finds animals like sparrows, snakes and tigers helping her, before her brothers come to her rescue. Another story, “A Farmer and a Crab” features a farmer befriending a crab, who forecasts bad weather and allows the farmer time to save his crops. But following a wicked suggestion by a neighbor, the farmer traps the crab, hurts its head and hangs it in his field to ward away pests. A mouse cuts the ropes and rescues the crab, but the crab can no longer speak. As a result, it cannot make weather forecast and the farmer is devastated the next flooding season. Another story, “Lamentation of Bulbul” features a bulbul and a golden statue. At the behest of the statue, the bulbul pulls out all the golden components from its body and distributes them to the poor and the needy, until the statue is bare and pulled down, and the bird shot blaming it for the misfortune of the statue. The story gives an echo of Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince.”
Stories of regret “Semekwa Pu”, the story of magical turn of luck “The Darling Pumpkin” origin myth, “Lendermoore: The Mysterious Cow” form yet another category.
A few stories explain the origin of certain social tradition or scientific realities that have lasted till our own days. For example, “The Brahman and Mushroom” explains why Nepali Brahmans usually do not eat mushroom believing it to have grown out of a dead Bhraman’s body.”Yeba-Kanchha” explain the process of the evolution of a shaman in Limboo society while “Sime and Bhume” besides being a story of step-mother and her children, tells how the tradition of worshipping tribal deities Sime and Bhume by the Chepang Community and others has evolved. “Tanki Saag and a Girl” explains why the Chapangs love to have a tanki tree around their houses. It’s because, a girl, who loves the leaves of this tree, is kidnapped by a king for her beauty and taken to the palace, where, for want to the leaves, she dies in spite of the affluence of the palace. “The Great-Barbet” explains an eastern myth explaining why the sun is in the sky, and why nyauli, a song bird, is always heard lamenting. The story features a nyauli, whom the sun marries, but deprives her of her rightful medicine. Ashamed, the sun goes to the sky leaving the bird lamenting all the time. “The Murder of a Jogi” explains the origin of the name of a place called Jogimara in Dhading. “A Wild Cat and a Wild Garlic” explains that the wild garlic is stunted for making a swarm of ants fall on the cat’s mouth, when the latter was attempting to take honey from one of its branches. Another story, “The Mukkumlung and Sheep”, explains how the culture of worshipping Goddess Pathivara originated in Taplejung. It is because, on worshipping her, she helped the shepherds get back their lost stock of sheep. “Evasion of Sati” features a woman, who left her husband’s pyre, all naked, to save herself from becoming a sati. A story from Chitwan, it explains why people around Saktikhor still believe that a naked woman appears at midnight around there. “Sagune Deity” is about a houseless deity that roosts inside a liquor pot and bites the mistress of the house when she tries to open it. She falls sick, and a shaman comes to appease the deity. Since that day, the culture of making time to time offering to Sagune has lasted in Sunuwar people of Panchthar District.
Some stories reassert popular folk beliefs. For example, the story “Destiny” reasserts that whatever fate has decided can, in no way, be undone. The story features Fate, who determines a child to die at thirteen of snake bite, and in spite of a thousand attempts to avoid it, the same happens. “A Story of Ras Ghurau” narrativizes a flood scene, out of which, a magical boatman Ras Ghurau, rescues the villagers. The villagers believe that as long as the boatman is around them, no flood can do them any harm.
A few stories in the collection make a mockery of rustic foolishness. “Entrapping a Tiger” is about the villagers’ attempt to snare a tiger that was causing havoc in the village. As suggested by the village chief, they try to snare it, but are not decided about the length of the trap. When they approach the king, he suggests them to measure the tiger first, which is in itself an absurd suggestion.
There are some stories which reveal some unsolved mysteries still in vogue in Nepal’s villages. “Miyanglung” is about a mystery in which a cat metamorphoses into a stone and is consecrate near a resting mound. Some travelers, out of innocence, use it to make a fireplace, only to see it quiver as fire started flaming out. Startled, one of the men stabbed it. To their dismay, it bled and mewed. They put the fire off and restored it back to its place as a deity. “Bhulaune Jhar” is about a plant that makes people forget everything when they go around it. They have to wait for shamans to come and perform their spells to call their lost memory back. “Revelation of a Mysterious Tree” is about a tree, under whose shade people rested, and often they died. The mystery was accorded to some evil spirit, until a home-coming soldier discovered it to be a swarm of bugs that bit and killed people. “Harital” is about an ailment, probably a tap-worm case, that caused many deaths, but people believed such deaths to make the families richer. The mystery, however, has remains unsolved.
There also are moral stories, which reward the good and punish the evil. Some of such stories have also been citied in other categories before. Pure moral stories include “Consequence of Greed” and “Jal Bir” etc.
Many stories in the collection are about ghosts, spirits and such mysterious, bodiless entities. “An Esoteric Incident” doesn’t have a story as such; it mentions a ghostly incident of the fall of wet pebbles and loss of shoes and slippers at one Mr. Sharma’s house, which stops after calling a shaman and getting some rituals performed. It recapitulates a system of belief in the villages, where they consider the shamans capable to warding off ghosts and evil spirits. The story of “Aamchoke Setu” tells a story of the ghosts giving him he-goat and some basmati rice in reward for his offering them flowers, sandal wood and fruits. “An Encounter with the Dead Spirit” is about Prem Khatri, who on his way home along a reportedly ghost-haunted spot, finds a companion in a man and they walk together. On the way, Prem asks the man what he thinks about the rumors of ghost here. The man says he has no idea, as he was dead twenty-five years back. Having said this the man disappears. He was a ghost. “The Devaniya Ghost” is about ghosts hurling stones and wooden pieces on people carrying logs through a desolate road in Jhapa. The mystery has not be resolved, but this incident has had deep psychological impact on growing children. “The Old Woman on a Flat Stone” mentions a flat stone where a woman ghost lives. One day, two young men returning from a shamanic performance, saw this woman as they were resting. The younger one stoned the woman, and the latter ran away. It entails that be it men, ghosts or gods, they avoids stupid people. The stupid ones have no remedy. “Koyakhole Ghost” is about a mock funeral procession the ghosts carry out as promotion to someone’s death in a village in Tehrathum. “Kichkanya: Story of a Female Spirit” is about a female ghost, the spirit of a dead girl, a traveler encounters midway around Balaha, while he is going to Khanar to meet his relatives and take tika from that. When the ghost asks him to stop, he hurls stones at her and runs away. People still believe in the existence of ghosts in this area. “A Scary Experience” is about a wild man visiting a family and bothering children in Khotang. It would come and imitate whatever the people did. The head of the family consulted an elderly man, who gave him ideas to chase the wild man through a trick. The idea was to massage his own body with ghee, which the wild man would certainly imitate. Seizing the moment, the house-owner applied oil on the wild man’s body when he really reappeared. The oiled body caught fire before long. The wild man ran away and vanished into the river. But the land became barren, yielding nothing but sorghum.
Seen this way, the stories offer a regional and thematic eclecticism and invite a variety of theories and methods to read and understand them. One underpinning theoretical unity lies in the fact that barring a few stories like “Tit for Tat” or “The Camel and the Jackals” which are more like universal fables and could be set in any location in the universe, other stories allow a scrutiny of the collective Nepali unconscious and the rustic world view, the folk judicial system, the guiltless harmony with nature, the reward and punishment mechanism, the parent-children relations and the relation of the human with spirits and deities. This way, they are a great source of primary reading materials for researchers and a literary feed for pure readers.
The compilers deserve a great applause and commendation for compiling these tales from various oral informants scattered in different parts of the country, transcribing them, and launching in the form of a book. It opens an avenue for researchers and readers to further interact and work in this domain. Many thanks.
The book, however, has two flaws, one simple, and the other serious. The simpler flaw is that, the compilers are confused what a myth is, and what a folktale is. They have mixed them, making it a salad bowl. They would have done better if they had presented them in separate sections and had written a note in the editorial to highlight this difference. Second, a very serious observation is that the English language as found in the published form of this book is far from being grammatically correct, figuratively beautiful and acceptably standard. English language is the weakest part of this collection. In fact, it is sub-standard. The reading doesn’t give a literary feel. The errors are too many to be cited here.
[Paudyal teaches at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, and is a practicing storywriter, poet and critic.]