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Bengali Folk Tales
A collection of Bengali folk tales with 32 color illustrations by Warwick Goble.
207 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1883
About the author
Lal Behari Day
44 books6 followersReverend Lal Behari Dey (Bengali: লাল বিহারী দে; also transliterated as Lal Behari Day) (18 December 1824 – 28 October 1892) was a Bengali Indian journalist, who converted to Christianity, and became a Christian missionary himself.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 10, 2022
Sir Richard Carnac Temple, a British India administrator, inspired Lal Behari Dey to draft an amalgamation of those unwritten stories that old women in India recited to little children in the evenings. The author, in his boyhood, heard hundreds if not thousands of fairy tales from a woman known only as Sambhu’s mama. But unfortunately, he had forgotten most of them. The author then began his quest to find others who may bless him with oral treasures.
A Bengali Christian woman, an old barber, an old servant & a couple of old brahmans narrated a few stories. None of them knew English as they were only literate in Bengali. The author translated all the treasures into English & thus, we have this book with 32 colour illustrations by Warwick Goble. I am attaching a sample illustration below. All of them are so gorgeous that I had a hard time settling on one!
The jackal ... opened his bundle of betel-leaves, put some into his mouth, and began chewing them
A Bengali Christian woman, an old barber, an old servant & a couple of old brahmans narrated a few stories. None of them knew English as they were only literate in Bengali. The author translated all the treasures into English & thus, we have this book with 32 colour illustrations by Warwick Goble. I am attaching a sample illustration below. All of them are so gorgeous that I had a hard time settling on one!
The jackal ... opened his bundle of betel-leaves, put some into his mouth, and began chewing them
December 12, 2015
I read this at the same time as Indian Fairy Tales -- some comparisons included.
A number of these will be recognizable to readers familar with European fairy tales as tale types, but little more than that. The differences are plentiful, of which the easiest to note is that the kings habitually have more than one wife, which sometimes goes well and sometimes badly. Indeed, only one tale is recognizable as a tale known in modern pop culture; "The Match-making Jackal" is a form of "Puss In Boots."
Some of the stuff has been translated idiomatically, though less than in Jacobs's; he, for instance, has a number of Rakshasas. Both he and Jacobs have a story about The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead, but though you can recognize the common type, it's not the same tale.
I particularly liked "The Story of the Rakshasas", "Life's Secret," and "The Bald Wife." I also liked "The Story of Prince Sobur" though I think it helped that I read a variant of it before, because when the father, King Lear like, goes to ask his daughters, "By whose fortune do you get your living?" I knew that by "fortune" was meant "fate" or "destiny."
A number of these will be recognizable to readers familar with European fairy tales as tale types, but little more than that. The differences are plentiful, of which the easiest to note is that the kings habitually have more than one wife, which sometimes goes well and sometimes badly. Indeed, only one tale is recognizable as a tale known in modern pop culture; "The Match-making Jackal" is a form of "Puss In Boots."
Some of the stuff has been translated idiomatically, though less than in Jacobs's; he, for instance, has a number of Rakshasas. Both he and Jacobs have a story about The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead, but though you can recognize the common type, it's not the same tale.
I particularly liked "The Story of the Rakshasas", "Life's Secret," and "The Bald Wife." I also liked "The Story of Prince Sobur" though I think it helped that I read a variant of it before, because when the father, King Lear like, goes to ask his daughters, "By whose fortune do you get your living?" I knew that by "fortune" was meant "fate" or "destiny."
December 2, 2018
“There was once a king who had a son. This king had multiple wives - probably, one of which was inevitably evil. Over time the evil wife - who may or may not be a demon - comes between the son and father and eventually drives the son away from home. The son - probably - flees to some other kingdom and encounters some fantastical, magical phenomenon while in exile, changing his fortune for the better. He inevitably crosses path with some woman/girl - usually girl- with out of this world beauty. They quickly fall in love and get married. Something probably happens making the son return to his paternal kingdom where he slays the evil step-mum. THE END”... Or so goes just about every story in this collection. As an individual story, fine, but when each story just becomes some variation of this general format things get tiresome - especially when what you were really hoping for was some allegory/proverb type stories! Alas, a disappointment.
March 18, 2023
Unfortunately I did not enjoy this book. It is a collection of folk tales collected and then written in English. Collections of stories are hard for me to rate and review, some are great and some less than than. I felt that too many of these folktales were too similar or too hard to follow. Although, with all of them I could imagine a grandparent telling the stories to the listening ears of their grandchildren.
August 27, 2022
I loved the illustrations. Some of the wording felt a bit weird, but the Hindu mythology was super interesting.
May 28, 2017
Interesting collection of short stories - full of kings, magical vehicles, poor brahmins, and rakshas.
If you loved the tales in your childhood, these will just help you revisit that world
One bad thing about the book is that some tales are repetitive. A segment can appear in multiple stories - eg a girl is enslaved by 300 rakshas and they can die if someone kills a set of bees who live inside a tank. This same theory appears in two stories.
Similarly many scenes appear in multiple stories.
If you loved the tales in your childhood, these will just help you revisit that world
One bad thing about the book is that some tales are repetitive. A segment can appear in multiple stories - eg a girl is enslaved by 300 rakshas and they can die if someone kills a set of bees who live inside a tank. This same theory appears in two stories.
Similarly many scenes appear in multiple stories.
November 29, 2016
Evidently, an old book of times gone by and when memories served men better and legends intertwined with teachings, ideas and characters from lives - real and virtual.
These stories are quite outdated and i don't think this generation is ever going to sit around bonfires and listen to them with credible attention, but well i was always a sucker for fairy tales. :D
These stories are quite outdated and i don't think this generation is ever going to sit around bonfires and listen to them with credible attention, but well i was always a sucker for fairy tales. :D
September 21, 2016
The first book I read was most probably a fairy tale. I read this book to explore mire such stories but I realised I have outgrown them. I don't think today's kids of the internet generation will also read such books.Times have changed and so have we.
May 22, 2020
Always a sucker for folk tales! This book surprises but keeps you engaged with it's storytelling and simplicity.
January 17, 2018
A good read for someone not used to the Bengali folk tales.
The tales have some repeated themes like the ogre or someone kidnapping princess and making them sleep by tapping with a silver wand and waking them up with a gold wand and few more.
One may have read some stories like the boy with the moon on forehead and stars in the palm in the Amar Chitra Kathas. I remembered having read it. There are many others which I have not read.
On the whole a decent read though there is nothing Bengali about this. Similar folk tales exist in most Indian folklore.
The tales have some repeated themes like the ogre or someone kidnapping princess and making them sleep by tapping with a silver wand and waking them up with a gold wand and few more.
One may have read some stories like the boy with the moon on forehead and stars in the palm in the Amar Chitra Kathas. I remembered having read it. There are many others which I have not read.
On the whole a decent read though there is nothing Bengali about this. Similar folk tales exist in most Indian folklore.
June 23, 2019
Lal Behari Day prefaces this collection of stories with a bit of nostalgia: as a child, he was told hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of folk tales by an old woman who was known as ‘Shambhu’s Mother’. Years later, Day set out to try and compile those stories, only to find that storytellers like the long-dead Shambhu’s Mother seemed to have died out. But some perseverance, and he built up, from various sources, this collection.
Twenty-two stories form Folktales of Bengal: some (especially in the second half of the book) are fairly short and simple, just a few pages long. Others go on and on, spreading across generations of people, with convoluted plots that often seem to begin with one sub-plot, end it, and then go on to a mostly unrelated sub-plot featuring one or more of the same characters, and so on.
There are everyday people here, as well as kings and queens, princes and princelings, andmythological creatures, all the way from Rakshasis to Brahmadityas, to ghosts, to hiraman parrots, to pakshiraje flying horses and birds called bihangama and bihangami, the ‘hot and fresh ordure’ of whose chicks has magical healing properties—and which themselves have prophetic powers. There are some recurring motifs too, like the seemingly dead beauty lying with one golden rod and one silver one beside her, the rods being used to arouse her from her stupor and send her back into it, respectively. There are people (and Rakshasas and Rakshasis) whose lives lie in something completely unrelated.
I found these tales enjoyable: they were interesting, some showed a sense of humour, and there was a joyous unreal escapism about them that was beguiling. Lal Behari Day’s writing is mostly pretty readable, though he does occasionally slip into some odd usages of words (cowboys to describe ‘cow-herds’ or shampooing legs for what sounds like ‘massaging legs’ are examples).
Twenty-two stories form Folktales of Bengal: some (especially in the second half of the book) are fairly short and simple, just a few pages long. Others go on and on, spreading across generations of people, with convoluted plots that often seem to begin with one sub-plot, end it, and then go on to a mostly unrelated sub-plot featuring one or more of the same characters, and so on.
There are everyday people here, as well as kings and queens, princes and princelings, andmythological creatures, all the way from Rakshasis to Brahmadityas, to ghosts, to hiraman parrots, to pakshiraje flying horses and birds called bihangama and bihangami, the ‘hot and fresh ordure’ of whose chicks has magical healing properties—and which themselves have prophetic powers. There are some recurring motifs too, like the seemingly dead beauty lying with one golden rod and one silver one beside her, the rods being used to arouse her from her stupor and send her back into it, respectively. There are people (and Rakshasas and Rakshasis) whose lives lie in something completely unrelated.
I found these tales enjoyable: they were interesting, some showed a sense of humour, and there was a joyous unreal escapism about them that was beguiling. Lal Behari Day’s writing is mostly pretty readable, though he does occasionally slip into some odd usages of words (cowboys to describe ‘cow-herds’ or shampooing legs for what sounds like ‘massaging legs’ are examples).
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews