These Are Translations Of Tales Of Wonder, With Miraculous Or Fantastic Elements From Four Different Asian Languages. A Final Chapter Deals With The Background Of These Still-Current Stories, With Histories That Sometimes Stretch Back To Ancient India. Like New.
Wonder-Tales of South Asia contains translations that Simon Digby has made over the years of tales of wonder, with miraculous or fantastic elements, from four different Asian languages.
The experience of wonder—encompassing awe, bewilderment, curiosity, excitement, fear, dread, mystery, perplexity, reverence, surprise, and supplication—and the ineffable quality of that which is wondrous have been entwined in religion and human experience. Yet strangely, wonder in non-western societies, including South Asia, has rarely been acknowledged or understood. This groundbreaking volume brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the place and meaning of wonder in such varied joyful, tense, and creative sites and moments as Sufi music performances in Gujarat, Tamil graveyard processions, trans women's charitable practices, Kipling's Orientalist tales, village Kuchipudi dance performances, and Rajasthani healing shrines. Offering a synthetic and scholarly reading of wonder that speaks to the political, aesthetic, and ethical worlds of South Asia, these essays redefine the nature and meaning of wonder and its worlds. Taken together, they provide an invaluable research tool for those in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context, and South Asian religions in particular.
Join Amar Chitra Katha on a journey through the folktales from our neighbours! Visit Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan through the stories of adventure, magic, animals and much else. Read about - the unbreakable bond between two brothers, Cho-cho and Che-cho Dorjee; a mother sparrow who receives help from the unlikeliest of animals; and of Pasha, the young warrior who triggers a chain of good deeds; and other such amazing stories! Adapted from the original AMAR CHITRA KATHA comics!
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and goddesses. Dating to the sixteenth century, the stories—pir katha—are still widely read and performed today. The events that play out rival the fabulations of the Arabian Nights, which has led them to be dismissed as simplistic folktales, yet the work of these stories is profound: they provide fascinating insight into how Islam habituated itself into the cultural life of the Bangla-speaking world. In Witness to Marvels, Tony K. Stewart unearths the dazzling tales of Sufi saints to signal a bold new perspective on the subtle ways Islam assumed its distinctive form in Bengal.
A collection of fairy tales, folklore, fables, myths, epics, legends, wonder and magic tales from all around Southeast Asia. Nusantara - A Sea of Tales is the most comprehensive collection of folktales, fairy tales, myths and legends from the Nusantara and Southeast Asian region, and was written to sit alongside the great anthologies of folklore from other parts of the world. Although it is impossible to trace the origins of most of these traditional tales, we do know that these stories were used as a means to discover ourselves and the world around us. Like a living creature, these tales came into existence at some point, and have since evolved and adapted to suit the needs of the community that it finds itself in. The seafaring nature of the people in this region has no doubt contributed to the spread of these tales and explains the fascinating variations across Southeast Asia. These rich and layered tales contain all manner of wonder, marvels and strange curiosities, and have been written to enthral a new audience. The author has delved into the history and the meaning behind these tales but like all good fairy tales and folktales, each reader will extract their own meaning from these stories. The symbols in these stories engage our imagination and challenges us to question, discuss and unravel life's conflicts and mysteries. Herein lies the true power of these stories and the reason why these tales must be preserved and allowed to live and breathe once more.
Our Folktales: The All-time Favourite Folktales from Asia is a collection of eight beloved children's stories from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines and Singapore. In these beautifully illustrated tales, you will meet brave heroes who outsmart others, mystical spells that enchant, talking animals that are full of mischief, and so much more.The diversity and wonder of Asia are found in these precious stories that have been passed down through generations, and now, adapted in this compilation, for your reading pleasure. These stories will not just fascinate young readers, they will also educate because they speak of admirable traits, like strength and determination, family loyalty, and and even, mysterious allegories that reveal history!
Explores the information and communication practices of the Portuguese empire in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century India Empire of Contingency explores the information and communication practices of the Portuguese empire in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century India—a period during which Portuguese imperial ambitions were struggling for survival, while the Mughal empire was at the height of its power and influence. Jorge Flores uncovers the tenuous but ingenious apparatuses of intelligence through which the Estado da Índia (the “State of the Indies,” the name given to the Portuguese political administrative unit in the region between the Cape of Good Hope and East Asia) endeavored to survive in a vast Indo-Persian world shaped by the influence and power of the Mughal empire. Detailing the complex relations that the officials of the Portuguese empire, particularly in Goa, the capital of the Estado da Índia, maintained with the Mughal empire as well as the sultanates of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur in the Deccan region—through information gathering, record-keeping, interpreting, and diplomatic correspondence—the book demonstrates how the Portuguese territories along the western coast of India were substantially incorporated into the vast Persianate cultural sphere spanning from Iran to Southeast Asia. The process of empire-building on the fringes of the Persianate world and the prolonged interaction with the Mughal empire, Ahmadnagar, and Bijapur, Flores argues, led to the irregular, non-linear, and incomplete assimilation of the Portuguese empire into Persianate India. Overturning teleological narratives that portray the workings of (European) empire as the unilateral imposition of power dynamics by a dominant, omniscient actor, Flores reveals how Portuguese imperial administrators were vulnerable participants in a network of relations involving multiple political powers—relations that required enormous bureaucratic and diplomatic effort to understand and successfully navigate. Showing how a European empire was drawn into the political practices and rituals of the Indo-Persian world, Flores decenters the lenses conventionally used to observe the Portuguese empire in Asia and helps us rethink its nature while questioning the boundaries of the Indo-Persian world.