Tale
Folktales of Bhutan
Kunzang Choden · 1994
Synopsis
The collection brings together thirty-eight tales and legends that the author heard as a child in Bumthang. A shepherd saves the son of the king of the Lu and is rewarded with a magic dog that becomes a woman; a grieving hoopoe carries the body of his wife across rivers, forests and mountains; a nun leaves the world to meditate in solitude; a threatened little girl is protected by the moon, Acho La La. Helpful animals, forces of nature and Buddhist precepts recur from one tale to the next.
Context
Published in Bangkok in 1994 by White Lotus, the book was the author's first, followed in 1997 by Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti. Two Indian researchers read in it in 2026 prescriptive narratives, which hand down the cultural values and the ethic of nature proper to Bhutan, and draw from it a study in ecotherapy. Her publisher presents her as the first to have set down the country's oral tradition in English, for fear of seeing it lost during modernisation.
Who it is for
For entering the Bhutanese imagination through tales of oral tradition, between Buddhism and Himalayan nature.
Prizes and reception
Priyanka Kalita and Rupam Kumar Das see its author as the standard-bearer of Bhutanese literature.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.