What do you think?
Rate this book
A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India
This book of oral tales from the south Indian region of Kannada represents the culmination of a lifetime of research by A. K. Ramanujan, one of the most revered scholars and writers of his time. The result of over three decades' labor, this long-awaited collection makes available for the first time a wealth of folktales from a region that has not yet been adequately represented in world literature. Ramanujan's skill as a translator, his graceful writing style, and his profound love and understanding of the subject enrich the tales that he collected, translated, and interpreted.
With a written literature recorded from about 800 A.D., Kannada is rich in mythology, devotional and secular poetry, and more recently novels and plays. Ramanujan, born in Mysore in 1929, had an intimate knowledge of the language. In the 1950s, when working as a college lecturer, he began collecting these tales from everyone he could--servants, aunts, schoolteachers, children, carpenters, tailors. In 1970 he began translating and interpreting the tales, a project that absorbed him for the next three decades. When Ramanujan died in 1993, the translations were complete and he had written notes for about half of the tales.
With its unsentimental sympathies, its laughter, and its delightfully vivid sense of detail, the collection stands as a significant and moving monument to Ramanujan's memory as a scholar and writer.
With a written literature recorded from about 800 A.D., Kannada is rich in mythology, devotional and secular poetry, and more recently novels and plays. Ramanujan, born in Mysore in 1929, had an intimate knowledge of the language. In the 1950s, when working as a college lecturer, he began collecting these tales from everyone he could--servants, aunts, schoolteachers, children, carpenters, tailors. In 1970 he began translating and interpreting the tales, a project that absorbed him for the next three decades. When Ramanujan died in 1993, the translations were complete and he had written notes for about half of the tales.
With its unsentimental sympathies, its laughter, and its delightfully vivid sense of detail, the collection stands as a significant and moving monument to Ramanujan's memory as a scholar and writer.
270 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
12 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
About the author
A.K. Ramanujan
49 books101 followersRamanujan was an Indian poet, scholar and author, a philologist, folklorist, translator, poet and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Sanskrit, and English. He published works on both classical and modern variants of these literature and also argued strongly for giving local, non-standard dialects their due.
He was called "Indo-Anglian harbingers of literary modernism". Several disciplinary areas are enriched with A.K.Ramanujan`s aesthetic and theoretical contributions. His free thinking context and his individuality which he attributes to Euro-American culture gives rise to the "universal testaments of law". A classical kind of context-sensitive theme is also found in his cultural essays especially in his writings about Indian folklore and classic poetry. He worked for non-Sanskritic Indian literature and his popular work in sociolinguistics and literature unfolds his creativity in the most striking way. English Poetry most popularly knows him for his advance guard approach.
He was called "Indo-Anglian harbingers of literary modernism". Several disciplinary areas are enriched with A.K.Ramanujan`s aesthetic and theoretical contributions. His free thinking context and his individuality which he attributes to Euro-American culture gives rise to the "universal testaments of law". A classical kind of context-sensitive theme is also found in his cultural essays especially in his writings about Indian folklore and classic poetry. He worked for non-Sanskritic Indian literature and his popular work in sociolinguistics and literature unfolds his creativity in the most striking way. English Poetry most popularly knows him for his advance guard approach.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 4, 2016
Ramanujan's book has a collection of stories from mainly South India. I realised I have heard some of these as a child. His notes on the tales were even more fascinating to read. It's interesting to know that a lot of stories are common across the world with regional variations. I couldn't always get the subtexts in the stories but they all made for good reading. It's also amazing how animals & plants talk in these stories just like humans. A kind of magic realism, I am assuming?
January 26, 2021
This book is an amusing read although after a while the stories start to seem limited and a bit repetitive in their structures. They are also dated so reflect the cultural prejudices of their times . This can sometimes make for uncomfortable reading for the contemporary reader.
Overall the book can serve as a light-hearted reprieve from serious reading.
Overall the book can serve as a light-hearted reprieve from serious reading.
February 26, 2018
Returned to my childhood while reading these folktales. I studied Ramanujan's essay on the story 'The Flowering Tree' in college, and that exposed me to a very different perspective on folktales-- even the ones I had thought more "childlike", like those about animals and princes and magic. I read this collection of stories during breaks at my workplace, tearing myself away from reports to quickly read short stories about princesses, apsaras and talking snakes.
I know now that the absurdities in these tales have interesting literary interpretations, and I was also fascinated by the sometimes subversive sexual themes in some of these stories (which I would never have read, had I left folktales back in my childhood where I thought they belonged). While some of the 'illogical' and more magical story arcs are still hilarious to me (prince gets so annoyed with a sage that he throws a turtle on his head and then is reborn as a turtle; goddess Kali's idol in a temple sees a woman who has snuck inside the sanctum sanctorum to sneakily eat food without her husband and is so shocked that it puts its hand on its mouth in an "ayyo!" expression... and so on and so forth), Ramanujan's notes-- unfinished, sadly, as he passed away before completing this-- really help make sense of the motifs and themes within the larger context of folktales all over the world, helping the reader understand how Indian folktales may have resonances in Italian novellas or how the same pattern of story is told all over Europe and Asia. The editors of this collection, Stuart Blackburn and Alan Dundes, contribute to this contextualisation as well, in Ramanujan's absence.
What was also striking was the indispensability of caste and rigid social roles for different communities to many of these stories-- which should not surprise one, but seemed stark all the same, and took away from some of the light-heartedness and magic for me.
I'm a fan of Ramanujan's and can't wait to read more of his academic work on India's literary traditions. Read this book (available for free online!) for a deep exploration of folktales, primarily translated from Kannada, and to see how meticulously Ramanujan has collected and organised this body of stories, for children and adults of all ages and sizes.
Next stop: his collection of translated classical Tamil poetry!
I know now that the absurdities in these tales have interesting literary interpretations, and I was also fascinated by the sometimes subversive sexual themes in some of these stories (which I would never have read, had I left folktales back in my childhood where I thought they belonged). While some of the 'illogical' and more magical story arcs are still hilarious to me (prince gets so annoyed with a sage that he throws a turtle on his head and then is reborn as a turtle; goddess Kali's idol in a temple sees a woman who has snuck inside the sanctum sanctorum to sneakily eat food without her husband and is so shocked that it puts its hand on its mouth in an "ayyo!" expression... and so on and so forth), Ramanujan's notes-- unfinished, sadly, as he passed away before completing this-- really help make sense of the motifs and themes within the larger context of folktales all over the world, helping the reader understand how Indian folktales may have resonances in Italian novellas or how the same pattern of story is told all over Europe and Asia. The editors of this collection, Stuart Blackburn and Alan Dundes, contribute to this contextualisation as well, in Ramanujan's absence.
What was also striking was the indispensability of caste and rigid social roles for different communities to many of these stories-- which should not surprise one, but seemed stark all the same, and took away from some of the light-heartedness and magic for me.
I'm a fan of Ramanujan's and can't wait to read more of his academic work on India's literary traditions. Read this book (available for free online!) for a deep exploration of folktales, primarily translated from Kannada, and to see how meticulously Ramanujan has collected and organised this body of stories, for children and adults of all ages and sizes.
Next stop: his collection of translated classical Tamil poetry!
Read
January 31, 2021A season of #monsoonreads focusing on books & authors from South Asia has overflowed into the rest of the year, as I hoped it would. These stories are often hilarious, clever in a way that makes it obvious why they get passed around, and I like the ones that are clearly just made for the laughs. But many have amazing depth and range for such tiny pieces. They all bear the mark of Ramanujan's translating (smooth consistency that generally doesn't exist in oral tradition), and I do love his writing. I think Ramanujan's characters have slightly more detailed internal lives and emotions than other versions of folk tales I've read. Definitely will hang onto this one.
April 20, 2022
Beyond a point stories were redundant so didn't really enjoy as much. Book felt dragged and was an effort to complete
June 29, 2022
The amount of time I spent on this book while researching was phenomenal and that kind of dried the experience of reading it. However the 1st read is always memorable.
April 27, 2019
Though some tales were fun, quite a few were repetitive, mundane, but then they say a story is a story! Gives insight into the culture of that time & view into traditional Karnataka
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews