#BANGLA STORY FOR CHILDREN SERIES#

#BANGLA STORY FOR CHILDREN SERIES#

Both these stories, like others in the collection, depict characters who initially suffer a series of misfortunes, display admirable personal qualities, like courage, kindness and wit, and eventually rise to great fortune. The former is known elsewhere as 'Buddhu Bhutum'. The first section, 'Dudher Sagor', contains the very popular stories 'Kalabati Rajkanya' (Princess Kalabati) and 'Kiranmala', among others. Apart from this, some other poems act as introductions to the collection as a whole, and to each section. The final section 'Shona Ghumalo' (Cutie Sleeps) contains three poems. The book fourteen stories, divided into three sections- 'Dudher Sagor' (Sea of Milk), 'Rooptarashi' (Scary Form), and 'Chyang Byang' (Fish-Frog). His drawings were turned into lithographs for printing. Several illustrations for the collection were also drawn by the author. Within a week, three thousand copies were sold. At this juncture, Dinesh Chandra Sen, impressed by the manuscript, arranged for it to be published by Bhattacharya and Sons, a renowned publisher of the time. However, he found no publisher initially, and had set up a press to self-publish the first book that would be a compilation of the stories he developed from the recorded tales. He recorded this material with a phonograph that he carried, and listened to the recordings repeatedly, imbibing the style. He travelled and listened to Bengali folktales and fairytales being narrated by the village elders. Dakshinaranjan's aunt, Rajlakkhi Debi had given him the duty of visiting the villages in their zamindari. Р”Вakshinaranjan recounts the memories of listening to fairytales told by his mother as well as his aunt, in his own introduction to Thakurmar Jhuli. This would be a method of contending the cultural imperialism of the British. He expressed the need for a swadeshi or indigenous folk literature that would remind the people of Bengal of their rich oral traditions. Rabindranath Tagore notes in his introduction to Thakurmar Jhuli, that there was a dire need for folk literature of Bengal to be revived because the only such works available to the reading public of the time were European fairytales and their translations.

Bangla story for children