| |
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. Though translated from written texts of the last few centuries, many of the incidents and themes derive from remote antiquity.
The first three tales, which are also the longest, are translated from Nepali, Urdu, and Hindi respectively. They reflect the relatively brief periods and changing social circumstances and moral climates in which they were told, in the north of the subcontinent between the outset of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth. The collection also includes a number of anecdotes from medieval Indo-Persian sources and some popular modern Hindi tales. Notes on the sources, background and history of the tales translated, together with some suggestions for further reading, point the way to more detailed study and analysis of their contents.
To the social historian these wonder tales bear many traces of the periods and the particular circumstances in which they were written. Knowledge of their historical background will also contribute to the pleasure of the interested lay reader.ISBN - 0195683639
|
| |
|