In my college days, I came by some Ceylonese nursery rhymes translated into English by the Ceylonese poet and artist, George Keyt. Probably that was at the back of my mind when I started rendering some nursery rhymes and lullabies from my own language including its dialects into English. Later, I also included specimens from some other indigenous languages with the help of friends who were native speakers.
I actually prepared a manuscript and could induce my friend Dr. Birendranath Datta, an ardent folklorist of our part of the country, to write a foreword for this humble effort of mine.
It was all some twenty years back. Dr. Datta wrote the foreword in 1980!
But, I could not get a publisher or a patron. All knocks at the 'preferment's door' failed to evoke any response and so the manuscript was lying with me not gathering dust because of my wife, but offering some food to the silverfish.
I showed the papers to Dr. Prafulla Mahanta, Director, ABILAC, which, inter alia, has some programmes on indigenous language of Assam. Dr. Mahanta placed the work before the Executive Committee of the Institution and the Committee after review advised me to include some specimens from the Rabha language in my collection. Help came from scholars working for the organisation and I could include some Rabha specimens too.
The riddles came to this collection through a different route. I had edited a children's monthly in the early sixties, (1960) for which I collected riddles from different places and published them. The children seemed to like them; maybe because being imaginative and having word- music of a sort, the riddle amused them with a sense of discovery.
Despite his protestations in "A Word from the Translator" it is someone like Professor Navakanta Barua who is particularly suited for the task of rendering Assamese lullabies (which Professor Barua prefers to call cradle songs) and nursery rhymes (Professor Barua's choice here being in favour of playtime verse) into English. One of the most highly esteemed and influential modern Assamese poets and the writer of at least two major novels centring on Assamese traditional life, Professor Navakanta Barua has always been fascinated by the world of children. Under the pen name of Ekhud Kakaideo he has been producing in an uninterrupted flow over the years, delightful fantasies, stories, poems, playlets and other pieces for children. And to cap it all, he has been for more than two decades a keen teacher of English literature.
It is thus perfectly in the fitness of things that Professor Barua should undertake a project of translating into English such rhymes from Assam's folk life as are particularly connected with children. And is it not but too natural that it should be a job well done ?
That Professor Barua has not embarked upon the venture in a cavalier fashion but with a sense of purpose is evident from the very plan of the project. First, there is the very judicious decision to include renderings of rhymes in some of the tribal languages of Assam apart from those in the major language of the State - Assamese covering dialects from the both the upper and lower districts. It should be borne in mind that the Assamese society is not simply the Assamese speaking society it is a polychrome society into the formation of which have gone the various tribal and non-tribal ethnic and cultural traits, the Sanskrit-linked Assamese language forming a sort of a core.
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