Week 13 Folk and Fairy Tales from Bangladesh

        This week in class we had physics professor Dr. Shabbir Mian, originally from Bangladesh, guest lecture about folktale traditions from his home country.  He lectured on “Rupkotha” is Bengali and translates literally to English as “beautiful words.”  Rupkotha are fairy tales told to children.  While many characteristics of Bangladesh folk tale traditions are similar to western traditions, there are also some significant differences.
        One difference is that Bangladesh stories do not have “fairies.”  There is magic in the tales, but there are no magical helpers such as fairy godmothers.  The magic simply happens because of some prior cause.  For example, in the tale “Blue Lotus and Red Lotus,” the two step brothers are eaten by the evil queen and are transformed into a golden and an iron egg.  Even though no “fairy” intervened, the magical even still occurred.  Rupkothas also contain some different dramatis personae than western tales.  A few examples of characters that Rupkothas have are demons, ghosts and sons of ministers.
        Another characteristic that separates Bangladesh tradition from western tradition is how far back the literary form of the tales go.  The “Panchatantra” (the five books) was written circa 550 A.D.  This may seem in the distant past until it is compared to an even earlier story book.  The “Jataka” was written in the 5th century B.C.  This is remarkable when one considers that most of the popular western tales took literary form in the 17th and 18th centuries A.D.