Tales from India

Week 7: India and Japan - Assignments - Reading - Resources - Images


Resources

Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1899). You are probably familiar with the Disney cartoon version: but did you know that Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907?

Jataka tales: Part I | Part II | Part III (Buddhist Publication Society). Often the jataka tales are retold for children in English translations, but these translations try to convey the devotional and religious character of the stories.

There is an excellent collection of jataka stories, with illustrations, at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts website.

More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt (1922). In contrast, this is a set of jataka tale translations intended for children.

Fables of Bidpai as told by Maude Barrows Dutton (1908). Unfortunately there is not a version of the ancient Indian "Panchatantra" story collection available on the internet, but the "Fables of Bidpai" derive from the Panchatantra, and repeat some of the most famous stories from that collection.

The University of California Press has put online the complete edition of A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India by A.K. Ramanujan.

Hindu Epics: Mahahbharata and Ramayana

If you are interested in learning about the great Hindu epics, the Mahahbharata (which includes the Bhagavadgita) or the Ramayana, there are some good resources you can consult online.

Mahabharata Resources:

Ramayana Resources:

Joseph Jacobs Online

The following folktale and fairy tale collections by Joseph Jacobs are available online:


Modern Languages / Anthropology 3043: Folklore & Mythology. Laura Gibbs, Ph.D. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You must give the original author credit. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
Page last updated: October 9, 2004 12:52 PM