Tiwa Folk Tales: The Tiwas (also called Lalungs), a Mongoloid race, are a very important ethnic tribal nationality living basically within the Central zone of Assam consisting of Karbi Anglong, Morigaon and Nowgong districts. Although they have separate identities in respect of dress, language or culture till the other day, they are now mostly an assimilated group with the greater Assamese society almost in very sphere. Their folklore including folk-tales are rich in content and heritage albeit in oral tradition. These folktales are basically prevalent in the Tiwa villages situated in the Karbi Anglong district which is, however, dominated by Karbi-speaking tribes. One of the rich sources of knowing culture, of the tribals, as we know, are the folk tales. These tales are the most important medium of creating mass awareness about the cultural heritage, traditions and social values. The folk tales of Tiwa tribal's of Assam like their counterparts living in other places depict intimate relationship between tribals and the forests. The worship of gods and goddesses, human relationship and a largely egalitarian society are also well reflected in the tales. It is to be noted that without a real modern urban ambience, Assam's tribal zones have truly been zones of thoroughly agrarian villages with their innate charm of folk music, dance, songs and other arts like tales belonging to folk tradition. These are equally true in case of Tiwas too. These folk tales are epitomes of simple and rustic ways of rural life with abundant expressions of weal and woe, religions belief, superstition magic and even sorcery.
Joykanta Sarma (b. 1943), Formerly a deputy editor of Assam's premier daily Dainik Assam and correspondent of the Economic Times and Economic and Political Weekly, he has twenty two books to his credit including Modern Bodo short Stories, Rabha Folk Tales published by Sahitya Akademi. A prolific writer in Assamese and English, he has two socio-political books in Assamese, Gandhir Pora Sastriloi and Gandhir Dukhar Dinbor. He has a short-story anthology titled Nistaranga apart from a few translation works like Pakhi Uri Jowat. His edited book Chintabid Sahityik Sambadik Kedar Nath Goswami won the AAPCU award in 2006. He translated from Bodo and Assamese into English and they were published in different journals like Indian Literature and Pratibha India. Currently, he is engaged in folklore (including folk tales) works of the North-East region.
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