Tale
Tales from Thakurmar Jhuli
ঠাকুরমার ঝুলি
Synopsis
Princes changed into birds, rakshasis who keep a life shut away somewhere other than in a body, neglected queens, younger sons sent to seek a remedy at the end of the world, a fox schoolmaster whose tricks end up turning against him, and two human-faced birds who foretell the future to those who deserve it. The tales are short, interspersed with rhymes and songs, and were told in the villages before being written down.
Context
Charged by his aunt with travelling over the family's lands, the author heard there stories that the city had forgotten, collected for the most part around Mymensingh. He recorded them on a phonograph he carried with him, replayed the cylinders until he had absorbed their tone, then rewrote them in a prose of his own. No publisher wanted them: he set up his own press, and it was Dinesh Chandra Sen, struck by the manuscript, who had it published by an established publisher. Tagore wrote the preface, saying that the children of Bengal should be given back their own tales rather than translations from Europe.
Who it is for
Short tales, to be read aloud, with the author's drawings. They exist in English, in a selection of twelve stories; in French, nothing.
Prizes and reception
Three thousand copies sold in the first week, in the midst of the swadeshi campaign; reissued without interruption since 1907, it has become part of the childhood of the two Bengals.