Shobhanasundari Mukhopadhyay
Indian folktale writer (1877–1937)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shobhanasundari Mukhopadhyay (born Shovona Devi Tagore in 1877 in Calcutta; died 26 May 1937, in Howrah[1]) was an Indian writer, known for her collections of folktales. She was the daughter of Hemendranath Tagore and the niece of writer Rabindranath Tagore.
Shobhanasundari Mukhopadhyay | |
|---|---|
Shovona Devi, 1915 | |
| Born | 1877 Calcutta, British India |
| Died | 1937 (aged 59–60) Howrah, British India |
| Other names | Shovona Devi, Shovona Tagore, Shovana Devi, Shovana Tagore |
| Father | Hemendranath Tagore |
| Relatives | Niece of Rabindranath Tagore |
Biography
The fifth daughter of Hemendranath Tagore, Shovona Devi Tagore was raised in an upper-class, English-educated Hindu family in Calcutta (Kolkata).[2][3] She married Nagendranath Mukhopadhyay, who was an English professor in Jaipur.[3]
She died in 1937 at age sixty of complications relating to high blood pressure.[1]
Writing
One of Mukhopadhyay's first projects was an English translation of her aunt Swarnakumari Devi's Bengali novel Kahake?[3][4] After this, Mukhopadhyay became interested in recording local oral traditions and folktales.
The Orient Pearls (1915)
The Orient Pearls: Indian Folklore contains twenty-eight folktales, gathered by Mukhopadhyay herself, some from family servants.[2][5][3] Her prefatory note to the book describes her inspiration and process:
The idea of writing these tales occurred to me while reading a volume of short stories by my uncle, Sir Rabindranath Tagore; but as I have none of his inventive genius, I set about collecting folk-tales and putting them into an English garb; and the tales contained in the following pages were told to me by various illiterate village folks, and not a few by a blind man still in my service, with a retentive memory, and a great capacity for telling a story.[6]
The Orient Pearls was reviewed in publications such as The Dial and The Spectator and appeared in libraries around the world shortly after its publication.[7][8][9] The book brought Bengali folktales to the attention of English-speaking folklorists around the world, who used it as a source in their comparative work, including new forms of computer-aided study.[10][11][12][13] Her stories have been republished in recent academic collections of the writings of Indian women.[14]
Some scholars have positioned Mukhopadhyay's work as similar in method and tone to British colonial ethnography.[2][15] Others describe its similarity to other Victorian short story collections produced in India and elsewhere, filled with subtle ideas about social reform,[16] or as demonstrative of the complex sociopolitical circumstances of translating folktales into the colonizer's language.[citation needed] Others view her interest in local culture as a precursor to Indian nationalism.[17] Another scholar argues that Tagore's preface acknowledges the constrained position of a female author.[18]
Later works
Mukhopadhyay published four books on Indian folklore, religion, culture, and myths for the London-based publishing firm Macmillan between 1915 and 1920. In Indian Fables and Folk-lore (1919) and The Tales of the Gods of India (1920), she includes information on her source material for the stories, something she had not previously done.[3][19]
Works
- To Whom? An Indian Love Story (translation of Kahake? by Swarnakumari Devi, her aunt) (1898[4] or 1910[3])
- The Orient Pearls: Indian Folktales (1915) (At Wikisource; at Archive.org)
- Indian Nature Myths (1919) (open access at Internet Archive)
- Indian Fables and Folk-lore (1919) (transcription project; open access on HathiTrust; open access on GoogleBooks)
- The Tales of the Gods of India (1920)