Dogri Folk Tales

The language of about five million Dogras, Dogri has a rich oral literature and folk tales form a substantial part of it. There are over seven hundred Dogri folk tales which have been collected and printed so far. This volume is the first attempt to bring out the English translation of some of these folk tales.

The tales in this volume provide a peep into the backyard' of Dogra culture. Here gods and goddesses assume human forms and join human beings to drive home some important truth or moral lesson. Anything is possible in this world of make-believe but the values enshrined in the tales are clear. Quite a few tales included here have a king, prince or princess as the main character; the reason being that Duggar was for long a land of rajas, and petty Zamindars and feudal chiefs. There are also some interesting women-centred tales portraying their superior intelligence out witting men.

Shivanath (1925-2014) was a polyglot and in every sense of the term a renaissance man. Coming from a humble but refined background, he became the first person from Jammu region to qualify for the IAS. His Dogri writing and translations have appeared in magazines like Kashmir Affairs, Cultural Forum, Quest, Indian Writing Today and the Hindustan Times. Some of his important works are A History of Dogri Literature; Churning of the City; Cheten Di Chit Kabari; Dogri Sahitya Parchol, the translation of Sahitya Akademi award-winning novella, Nanga Rukh; Echos and Shadows, a selection of Dogri short stories; and Listen Girl, translation of Ai Ladki, a novella by Krishna Sobti. He is the recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award.

Dogri is the language mountainous, sub mountainous and adjoining plains areas the northwest between Pir Panjal and Dhauladhar mountain ranges to north and plains of the south. one of the eleven languages of Hindustan enumerated by Amir Khusro in Nuh-Slipthr 1317 and today one the twenty two languages recognised the Sahitya Akademi, the National Academy of Letters.

language a and varied literature and substantial part of it. About seven hundred Dogri tales have been collected and published so twenty collections. Way in the third fourth decade this of Pennsylvania University collected about hundred Dogri folk tales during period worked as teacher English the Prince Wales College, Jammu. in 1960s, of his students Mrs. Norico Maida came from America Jammu and collected hundred folk tales for her Doctorate. no Dogri folk tales in English translation have been seen print.

The Bibliography Folklore India lists only Dogri folklore, viz., "Shadow and Sunlight"-a selection of some Dogri-Pahari folk songs edited by Dr. Karan Singh and published Asia Publishing House in 1962. "Folk Tales from India" edited the late Prof. A.K. Ramanujan and published the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library Pantheon Books, New York, contains 122 folktales from 22 Indian languages. have six tales from Punjabi and five from Kashmiri, two languages bordering and sandwiching Dogri, but none from Dogri. This lack and prompting from the late Shyama Charan Dube, induced me to prepare