On Thursday Dr. Shabbir Mian, the physics professor came to our class and taught us about fairy tales from Bangladesh. A big difference between these tales and European tales is that the people that listen to these tales truly believe in what is being told unlike the Europeans. The tales from Bangladesh show the traditions of the people and give us a look into their belief system. Bangladesh is on a delta, meaning that it is surrounded by a lot of water, which makes the landscape very lush and green and it does not have very many tall trees. This landscape plays a large role in many of their tales. If a tall tree is sen in a tale it is important and normally will contain some type of demon in it. Because they are surrounded by a lot of water, their main form of transportation is on boats and a lot of their tales involve crossing the seven seas or rivers. Things commonly seen in the tales are also fishermen and endless supplies of rice because they are important to the culture. The tales that come from Bangladesh are called Rupkotha, which translates into beautiful words. These tales are different because they do not contain fairies like most others and they were made for children and adults alike. These tales originated from five books called Panchatantra in 550 AD. One of the most popular author of these tales is Ashraf Siddiqui and he often wrote about a little bird called a tuntuni. Like tales from the Europeans you can see some similar motifs such as good vs evil, greed vs. generosity, and that evil is punished. The types of characters that you see are demons, monsters, kings and queens and you also see a lot of magic, ghosts, talking animals and all these characters going through transformations. Overall I found this lecture to be very interesting and I learned a lot about the culture and their tales through it.
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