Art of storytelling

We like to believe that human beings are the only animals who can tell stories, and who find enjoyment in listening to a story. We do not know if animals too share their stories among themselves, and in what manner their stories are told.

Man could have begun to tell his stories long before he developed speech, as we can see from cave paintings. Once man learned to speak, he began to tell his stories, and when he learned to write, he put then down as books, but now we are going back full circle to listen to stories again as audio books, which means we need not learn how to write or read anymore.

Prof. Sunanda Mahendra has published a book ‘Katha Kalava, Samarambhaya Vividatvaya saha Vyaprutiya Pilibanda Satahan Pelak’, on the Art of Story Telling, its origin, diversity and spread. He begins his story with the oft quoted line, “Everybody has a story to tell”. Telling stories, one after the other, is a standard custom even today, at a funeral, specially in the night, when friends, relations and even total strangers get together in small groups.

The stories begin with the immediate death, on how it happened, and then to similar incidents in the past, medical negligence, ignorance, crime or poverty. Later on, after midnight stories are told about ghosts, and horror.

It would have been the same among prehistoric cultures, they too would have shared their stories when they had gathered on an evening, around a log fire, with time on their hands. Prof. Mahendra reminds us that the story teller himself enjoys the narration, and sometimes if there is no one to listen to the story, man narrates it to a tree or a rock. This we find among our folk beliefs, that a bad dream should be told to a thorny shrub, first thing in the morning.

Perhaps man has always told his stories first to himself in silence, before he tells it to others. In our minds we develop the story, we try different beginnings, situations, endings, use different words, expressions, and when we are satisfied with it ourselves, then we tell the others. Before we began to write things down, we could always keep on changing, improving on our story. We also needed prompting, so we do not miss any part of the story as we recite.

Odyssey and Iliad are good examples of how long epic poems could be composed, memorized and recited. This skill would have been developed during many generations of story telling, using verbal formulae or groups of words. Stories have been used by all religious leaders and their disciples, to explain their philosophy, their message and the teachings. Prof. Mahendra takes us back through time to 3200 B.C. Egypt, 850 B.C. Greece and to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, medieval English Canterbury Tales, Decamaran and Panchatantra.

Jataka stories are one more example mentioned by Prof. Mahendra, where he traces their development. He mentions the misguided attempt to interpret the Jataka stories as ‘short stories'. The 547 stories compiled in the ‘Pansiya Panas Jataka’ has become a sacred object among the Buddhists. In Pali they were known as Jatakattakatha.

These stories had been collected from all over the Asia region, and hence the familiarity with other stories in many other countries. But these tales had been woven into stories of the Buddha's past lives, and as a means to explain the Buddha Damma to the laity.

The Jataka stories in turn influenced many a saga, drama, poem and painting in India and neighbouring countries. Prof. Mahendra finds similarities in Ashvagosha's Sutralamkaraya and Somadeva's Samskrit work, Katasaritsagara. The present Jataka story book we have with us had its origins during the Kurunegala era.

There is no confirmation of the identity of the authors, but many consider it to be the work of Weerasingha Pritiraj. Mahavamsa mentions the interest of several kings who encouraged the translation of the Pali Jataka into Sinhala.

The second half of the book contains stories, extracts from ancient stories and the creations of the modern authors. For the reader familiar with early forms of story telling this would give an opportunity to ponder over what he had read in the past. He may even find stories here he had not read before. To the younger generation this should wet their appetite to pursue further the various forms of the story, as it developed through the ages, right up to the modern day short story and the novel.

When he comes to the modern short story, he has categorized the different genre, the diverse branches into which the early stories have grown. But these categories have been labelled because of man's urge to organize, arrange and place everything in a neat order, which sometimes could be a hindrance to the serious aesthete. In this book we also get a few lesser known fables attributed to Aesop.

Prof. Mahendra quoting Herodotus, says Aesop was the greatest story teller. It was Herodotus who first mentioned Aesop in his ‘History'. All his tales have moral endings and are relevant today, as they were 2700 years ago. Yet there are those who doubt if Aesop ever lived, that tales that had grown over the ages had been put down by one or several authors, which were attributed to Aesop.

It could be like the stories we now accept as those of Andare, mentioned by Prof. Mahendra in his book, that Andare was honoured as ‘Sadda Vidda Palanga Patira Patabendige’ by Rajasinghe II, Prof. Sunanda Mahendra concludes with the words “the boundaries keep shifting in modern story telling, but in studying them we are confining ourselves to tiny cages”.

Let us take his cue: break out of our cages and stretch the boundaries beyond the horizon.

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