Himalayan Tribal Tales

Download or read book Himalayan Tribal Tales written by Stuart H. Blackburn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of an oral tradition in northeast India is the first of its kind in this part of the eastern Himalayas. A comparative analysis reveals parallel stories in an area stretching from central Arunachal Pradesh into upland Southeast Asia and southwest China. The subject of the volume, the Apatanis, are a small population of Tibeto-Burman speakers who live in a narrow valley halfway between Tibet and Assam. Their origin myths, migration legends, oral histories, trickster tales and ritual chants, as well as performance contexts and genre system, reveal key cultural ideas and social practices, shifts in tribal identity and the reinvention of religion.