Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade Review"Not only does Blackburn collect tales, myths, oral histories, and ritual chants with great sensitivity to the social context of the performance, he also opens up meaningful new cross-border directions in Asian folklore studies. Blackburn's comparative work is sure to encourage further investigations into the complex patterns of migration, cultural diffusion, and economic exchange within the 'extended eastern Himalayas'...the scholarly understanding of the Apatani oral traditions has been firmly cemented through the publication of Himalayan Tribal Tales." Adheesh Sathaye, University of British Columbia, JAS, 69/2
