In Nepal, when people talk about tales, numerous stories which they have heard since their childhood come to mind and their imagination carries them away to the land of never never on the flow of fantastic events and unusual characters. Tales told by grandmothers on cold dark nights are narrated again and again by elderly men in village choutaras, by fellow companions on long, strenuous walks, and by many different tellers at different times in different places. No matter how many times the listener may have heard the tale, the impact is always powerful. The narrator departs forever, the audience may grow old and die, but the tale never perishes. It remains young, eternal and set deep within the thoughts of men and women of all ages. Folklore in Nepal is thus a vital, living force; one of the principle vehicles of beliefs, rituals and. culture.
We may wonder how the world would be if there were no folktales to listen to, no folk art to admire, no folk beliefs to ponder on, and no folk music or dances to enjoy. It would likely be a world of robots.
Each community has its own folklore without which it would likely be culturally dead. Folklore can be thought of as the unwritten history of ancient societies preserved in the minds of people and handed down through the ages through. the medium of a spoken language. Folklore is the oral component of the history of common people and is comprised of the contributions of many anonymous creators. Folklore is first composed by one person, thereafter modified and altered by others, and then transmitted orally from generation to generation, through which it develops into new versions. Folklore is thus a rich store of knowledge gathered by men and women from their experiences over the centuries.
While it is difficult to trace when and where the earliest form of folklore developed, it is certainly a primary manifestation of the human imagination and likely originated in the habits and beliefs of prehistoric people. When we talk about the Age of Imagination, it may be dated back to more than three million years ago when Homo sapiens began to evolve from early hominids such as Homo erectus. We don't know how the predecessors of Homo sapiens thought about their environment, but certainly all races of "modern" man have used and continue to use their eyes and brains to search for answers to the questions "what", "how" and "why".
These questions have opened the door to a comprehension of the universe. Over the millions of years that this search has been going on, the never-ending quest for knowledge and the insatiable curiosity of humans and their predecessors have resulted in many different philosophies and cultural manifestations. The cults that supported these philosophies were likely the folklores of the day which provided humans. with an explanation of the world around them: the natural. elements, the plants and creatures which supplied them with food, the sun, the moon and the celestial galaxy.
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