Punjabi folklore


Punjabi folklore is a core part of the Punjabi culture. Other important components of Punjabi folklore are farces, anecdotes, idioms, folktales, and sayings.

Research

Origin

argued in his 1884 work, The Legends of the Punjab, that the plot structure of Punjabi folktales and bardic poetry was indistinguishable from one another, albeit with the bardic poems being more textually conservative. This led him to believe that the folktales originated from the bardic literature, existing as degraded derivatives.

Themes

Punjabi folktales commonly incorporate stories involving animals which teach a moral lesson. This is a theme which originated in ancient India, with a surviving example being the Panchatantra of the third century BCE. Other prevalent themes found within Punjabi folklore is a suspcision of those in positions of power, and folly & pretense used for derision.
The heroine in Punjabi folktales can be found inside a fruit or vegetable, which they are named after, or in the form of an animal, such as a mammal or a bird.

History of study

Academic folkloristic research into and the collecting of the large corpus of Punjabi folktales began during the colonial-era by Britishers, such as Flora Annie Steel's three papers on her studies of local Punjabi folktales, with a translation of three fables into English, Richard Carnac Temple's The Legends of the Punjab, Flora Annie Steel's Tales of the Punjab, and Charles Frederick Usborne's Panjabi Lyrics and Proverbs. Native Punjabis have also contributed to this field, with some names being Devendra Satyarthi, Mohinder Singh Randhawa, Amrita Pritam, , Sohinder Singh Wanjara Bedi, Giani Gurdit Singh, and Sukhdev Madpuri, whom have contributed published collections, encyclopedias, anthologies, and renditions in this field of study.

List of Punjabi folklore