Tibetan tales in Sinhala

Professor Sunanda Mahendra

FOLK LITERATURE: Folk tales can be classified into various groups. Some of them have stemmed from the religious sources in the orient predominently Buddhism and Hinduism and in the occident Christianity.

Then there are some other sources such as the fairy tales, lives of gods, goddesses and saints, the tales of wonder, tales of fantasy, and the patterns of behaviour believed to be those of devils, demons, travellers and seafarers.

These tales as translated from an English source titled as Tibetan tales is by the well-known folklorist Ralston, who had access to a previous German source that has been influenced by a Sanskrit source brought to Tibet from India.

The Sinhala translation by Chandrasri Ranasinghe: Tibbatiya Janakatha (Godage 2006) comes from the English source with a long introduction, which traces firstly the aspects such as the geographical location, the struggles encountered by the Tibetans to exist inclusive of the various cultural facets of the same, and secondly the pre-Buddhistic era, the influences from various other cross-cultural traits, and thirdly, the Buddhistic renaissance and the rise of the indigenous Tibetan culture culminating in the British rule with challenges to the beliefs and rituals inherent to Tibet.

essential ingredients

In this long illuminating introduction Ranasinghe uncovers quite a number of factors as essential ingredients that go into the background reading of the main texts consisting of the tales, mostly influenced by the three oriental Indian works, jatakas, panchatantra, and kathasarit sagara.

Ranasinghe, a translator of several more tales from various countries and sources commonly seen in folklore around the world, this time attempts to add one more to his treasury in order to prove the long string of religious connections the Tiebetans had derived from Indian sources, enabling the reader to fathom the intensity and similarity of the common and uncommon motifs with their counterparts of Mahayanism.

In this long introduction, a mention is made of the great physician Jivaka. Ranasinghe though mentions various foreign stories linked to them, it looks as if he is not quite aware of some of the more modern creative works based on the Buddhistic sources.

One example is my own recreated work titled as Jivaka vata [Godage 2004], which was discussed by some of our scholars as a significant contribution laid on the champu kavya (verse-prose blend narrative style) tradition, but presented as a surrealistic creative work.

But I am pleased to see the translated work titled in Ranasinghe's collection as Rajavededuru Jivakayano, which to my mind is similar to the story as found in the Sinhala classics such as Saddharamaratnakaraya and Butsarana. Ranasinghe also deals much space on the comparison of the motif of the faithless wife, who so falls prey to a physically deformed person as found in the central story of the Cullapaduma Jatakaya, and passed on to other sources.

I am aware of a number of Sinhala folktales, which envelope this theme as the central creative motif where the frailties of women are brought to the forefront highlighting their lecherous qualities undermining the pious qualities of faithfulness to husbands.

Perhaps this motif came to be highlighted as a result of the spread of Brahminism in Indian culture, where the place of women was safeguarded as sanctified entity.

wretchedness

In order to show the frailties of women, the folk-narrators had the constant habit of over emphasizing the wretchedness as against the virtues culminating in formulating an ideology of anti women factor which is visible not mainly in the religious stories but predominantly in the more mundane folk tales as found by the common folk, with the intention of magnifying some of the common frailties of women and to redicule them.

Perhaps the Buddhistic theme of sympathising with the women is mostly reduced to the minimum in these stories giving more emphasis to the Braministic thoughts as the guiding factor.

This collection of Tibetan stories shows the various cross currents that existed in the creative flux in the orient as well as in the occident influencing each other for a more healthy exercise in the understanding of the cross cultural and religious studies. The collection includes fables similar to those of the Aesopian and the La Fontaine types.

For a student of folklore and creative communication, this should prove yet another treasure trove.

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