Folk Tales from Nepal

About the Author Kesar Lall (1927-2012) wrote many books and numerous articles on folklore, culture, travel, trekking, etc., the first of which appeared in 1945 in a magazine published from Bombay, India. His publications include Lore and Legend of Nepal, Nepalese Customs and Manners, Nepalese Book of Proverbs, This Beautiful Nepal, Lore and Legend of the Yeti and about a dozen collection of folktales in Ratna Folklore Series. Some of his stories have been translated into German, Japanese, Hebrew and Swedish and published in Germany, Japan, Israel and Sweden. One story has been made into a telefilm in French in Switzerland.

Preface The welcome accorded to my Lore and Legend of Nepal (J. Lall, Kathmandu), first published in 1961, has given me much encouragement in collecting folk tales from different parts of Nepal. Whereas that book is a collection of stories current in the valley of Kathmandu, this book has tales from Sankhuwa Sabha in the east to Jumla in the west, a stretch of some 400 miles of mountains and hills.

Some of the stories in this book were collected by Miss Chiyo Kato, a Japanese student of folklore, to whom I am indebted for permitting me to make use of her taped material. I have tried to translate the tales as closely as possible to the original Nepali, as told by farmers, housewives, shepherds and porters, to all of whom I am most grateful.

A number of these stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines and in a book form under the title Nepalese Fairy Tales (Sahayogi Prakhashan, Kathmandu, 1978), which has long been unavailable. I am thankful to Ratna Pustak Bhandar for bringing this new edition, which includes some stories from the Kathmandu valley also.

**Contents and Sample Pages**