Tales of the Sun, or Folklore of Southern India

Sastri, Pandit NatesaProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
392K words
Chapters
40

Tags

English Originals Folk Literature Local NarrativeOral StoryStory CollectionSouth Asian CultureExotic CultureColonial AmericaComparative MythologyFolk CustomsFolk LegendMythological Imagery

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India by Cleeve and SastriAuthor: Sastri, Pandit Natesa,Language: English, Class: GR: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Folklore, Release Date: Aug 7, 2011

Editor's review

This is a collection of South Indian folktales compiled by Pandit Natesa Sastri, an English translation belonging to the public-domain literature of folklore and anthropology. Its value lies first in its documentary quality: the stories come from South Indian oral tradition and preserve local beliefs, animal fables, trickster tales, and karma motifs in their original form, allowing comparison with Indian story traditions such as the Panchatantra. Second, it is readable: the narratives are short and the plots straightforward, suited to fragmentary reading and easy oral retelling. The Project Gutenberg edition is a free electronic text without modern annotations, so readers must supply cultural background themselves. It is best treated as "material" rather than a "definitive text"; note that the translation's language bears period traces and that some values are distant from today's. Suitable for folklore enthusiasts, comparative literature readers, and English-language readers.

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Reading tips

  1. Read by theme rather than in order, starting with animal or trickster tales.
  2. After every few stories, record motifs and ending types for comparison with other folktale collections.
  3. Mark unfamiliar deities or customs, then look up the background after finishing the chapter.
  4. Try retelling a story aloud to feel the narrative rhythm of oral tradition.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40

FAQ

Are these stories fairy tales for children? Not entirely. They come from South Indian oral tradition, and many contain adult-oriented motifs such as karma, deception, and punishment; the narration is straightforward, but the values belong to their era of origin. Some pieces can be selected and told to children, but read them first and screen out unsuitable content.
Does this edition have annotations or an introduction? According to the source, the book is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, classified under folklore, with no mention of modern scholarly annotations or an introduction. When encountering background such as local deities or caste customs, readers must consult other sources.
Can I understand it without knowing Indian culture? At the story level, yes; most plots are simple and straightforward. But some motifs relate to local beliefs, and without background a layer of meaning is lost. Read through once for the stories, then look up recurring images; understanding will deepen noticeably.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Sastri, Pandit Natesa Author · Indian

Sastri, Pandit Natesa was an Indian Tamil scholar, writer, and folklore researcher. Public information about him is limited, and many details of his life are difficult to verify. He is known for compiling Indian folk tales; his representative work, Tales of the Sun or, Folklore of Southern India, collects solar myths and folk legends circulating in South India and presents the plain style of oral narrative in the Tamil region. His writing is mainly documentary and editorial, with a straightforward language that seeks to preserve the original form and local color of the stories, allowing these scattered folk legends to be kept in textual form. Such work offers readable primary material for later understanding of South Indian folk beliefs and narrative traditions, and holds a certain significance in the early compilation of Indian folklore.