Tales of Darkness and Light E-Book

Janet Hujon

• Herausgeber: Open Book Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Soso Tham (1873–1940), the acknowledged poet laureate of the Khasis of northeastern India, was one of the first writers to give written poetic form to the rich oral tradition of his people. Poet of landscape, myth and memory, Soso Tham paid rich and poignant tribute to his tribe in his masterpiece The Old Days of the Khasis. Janet Hujon’s vibrant new translation presents the English reader with Tham’s long poem, which keeps a rich cultural tradition of the Khasi people alive through its retelling of old narratives and acts as a cultural signpost for their literary identity. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Indian literature and culture and in the interplay between oral traditions and written literary forms. This edition includes: • Original text • English translation • Critical apparatus • Embedded audio recordings of the original text

Leseprobe

TALES OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT

Tales of Darkness and Light

Soso Tham’s The Old Days of the Khasis

Translated by Janet Hujon

https://www.openbookpublishers.com

Translation and Notes to the Text © 2018 Janet Hujon. Preface © 2018 Mark Turin.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:

Soso Tham. Tales of Darkness and Light: Soso Tham’s The Old Days of the Khasis. Translation and Notes to the Text by Janet Hujon. Preface by Mark Turin. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0137

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World Oral Literature Series, vol. 9 | ISSN: 2050-7933 (Print); 2054-362X (Online)

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-468-8

ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-469-5

ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-470-1

ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-471-8

ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-472-5

DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0137

Cover image: Barapani, Shillong (2009). Photo by Karthik Inbasekar. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikarthik/4438288322, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cover design: Anna Gatti.

All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified.

Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK)

For Ma Wat, Papa and my children

Contents

Preface

Mark Turin

1

Acknowledgements

5

1.

Introduction

7

2.

A Short Biographical Note

17

3.

Khasi Folktales About Darkness and Light

19

4.

Ki Symboh Ksiar (Grains of Gold)

23

5.

Ka Persyntiew (The Flower Garden)

27

6.

Pyrthei Mariang (The Natural World)

31

7.

U Lyoh (The Cloud)

35

8.

U Rngiew (The Dark One)

43

9.

U Simpyllieng (The Rainbow)

51

10.

Ka Ïing I Mei (Home)

57

11.

Ka Meirilung (Gentle Motherland)

65

12.

Lum Lamare (Lamare Peak)

71

13.

Ka Aïom Ksiar (Season of Gold)

79

Bibliography

85

Preface

Mark Turin

© Mark Turin, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0137.14

The World Oral Literature Series was established to serve two primary goals. First, by publishing in a range of innovative digital platforms, the series would challenge and change the shape, format and reach of academic publishing to connect important scholarship with a distributed global readership. Launched in 2012 with a new edition of Ruth Finnegan’s discipline-defining Oral Literature in Africa, and celebrating its ninth volume with this publication, the breadth and quality of the scholarship in this series has made the study of Indigenous oral literature and oral traditions more visible. Second, a consequence of the approach to knowledge distribution taken by the World Oral Literature Series and our partners at Open Book is the amplification of innovative and collaborative publishing partnerships involving Indigenous intellectuals that more traditional academic imprints have been less able to support. Janet Hujon’s beautiful translation of Soso Tham’s The Old Days of the Khasis—so fittingly entitled Tales of Darkness and Light—realizes both of our goals with a gentle grace and formidable literary power.

Dr. Hujon is a writer and member of the Khasi community, an Indigenous and notably matrilineal ethnic group who have long inhabited what are now the states of Meghalaya and Assam in north-eastern India. Born in Shillong, Meghalaya, Hujon first took a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the North Eastern Hill University and then a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of London. A versatile writer and original poet, Dr. Hujon’s work has appeared in publications across Asia, North America and Europe. A self-identified inhabitant of two distinct if intersecting cultures—England and her original Khasi homeland—Janet Hujon is superbly well positioned to have taken on this ambitious project: conveying the subtlety of Soso Tham’s timeless poetry to a global audience in English.

Described by Khasi writer and translator Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih as the “uncrowned, though acknowledged, poet laureate of the Khasis” in 2006, Soso Tham demonstrated his literary acumen and versatility through an important body of work that is narrated, sung and spoken by Khasis to this day, almost 80 years after his death. Janet Hujon captures the spirit of Soso Tham’s writing in ways that are effortless and contemporary. For example, Soso Tham’s reflection on the natural environment that has nurtured and protected his ancestors could be read as a prescient statement on declining ecological diversity and the dangers of climate change:

Our hills were our guardians in the past

Who will keep us from harm in days to come?

With characteristic restraint and dignity, Soso Tham shines a light on the corrupt violence of colonialism and the coercive complicity that it engenders when he writes:

A flatterer adept at placating egos

Swelling the hide of the sun-eating toad

And when like a leech she measures each step

Souls shrivelled by fear stand mutely and watch

Reading Hujon’s compelling translation in an era of political turmoil and ecological collapse, Soso Tham takes the form of an Indigenous intellectual and thought leader, calling out for action, resistance, hope and decolonial love:

Around the world we search for Light

Yet scorn the light that shines at home

Soso Tham offers us a vision of a more equitable and just world, in which:

No tax from land flows into his coffers

For land is common, land bequeathed