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Chapter 7
Folk Tales in Medieval
Prakrit Literature
JAGDISH CHANDRA JAIN
Folktales are popular stories handed down to us by oral tradition from more or less remote antiquity. These are the relics of primitive society in which magic and sorcery play a significant role. They form a part of culture of primitive men covering their observances, customs, notions, beliefs, traditions, superstitions, and prejudices. In order to fulfil his daily needs, primitive man used magical chants and controlled reality by creating an illusion of reality. He guarded his fields against the ghosts hostile to fertility by hanging a gourd, a broom, and a leaf-cup together with a jackal's head or a black pot with white lines. In order to ward off the forces of evil he called his fellow-beings and performed magical dances : dance for hunt, for good harvest, for rain, for sun, for wind, and so on.
Folk tales reflected the life of primitive people regarding their own origins, the origins of their gods, heaven, the region below the earth, the course of the nature, magical impregnation, survival of progeny, habits of animals, conversation of birds, language of sign, and innumerable riddles. There are tales of flying in the air, walking on the surface of water, immunity to deadly poison, raising the dead to life, carrying water in a sieve, treasure-hunt in an island, transportation of merchants by birds to the island of jewels, cures by
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