अन्तर्राष्ट्रीय परिधि मे मैथिली साहित्यक ‘कथा-पिहानी’ – मैथिल महिलाक कथाकहिनी पर अमेरिका मे चर्चा

साभारः इलिनोइ विश्वविद्यालय एवं अमेरिकन 

अन्तर्राष्ट्रीय परिधि मे मैथिली-मिथिला
 
अमेरिकाक इलिनोइ (Illinois) राज्य केर The University of Illinois Press द्वारा प्रकाशित पोथी समीक्षा मे मैथिल महिला लोकनि द्वारा कहल-सुनल जायवला खिस्सा-पिहानी (कथा-गाथा) पर एकटा सुन्दर शोध सहितक पुस्तक लिखल गेल अछि। अमेरिकन लोककथा समाज – American Folklore Society केर वेबसाइट पर सूचीकृत एहि पोथीक लेखक छथि बकनेल युनिवर्सिटी केर प्रो. कोरालिन वी. डेविस। नेपाल-भारत केर सीमाक्षेत्र पर रहि रहल महिला केँ ‘मैथिल महिला’ कहिकय संबोधित करैत हुनका द्वारा संग्रहित कथा-गाथा आ कथाकहिनीक शैली एवं महत्व पर कतेको रास समीक्षा कयल गेल अछि। स्यवं इलिनोइ विश्वविद्यालयक वेबसाइट पर एहि पुस्तकक समीक्षा निम्न ढंग सँ कयल गेल भेटैत अछि। हम सब पुस्तक पढिकय अपनहि क्षेत्रक ओहि पारम्परिक कथा-पिहानी केँ भले बाद मे पढि सकब, एखन ई समीक्षा हमरा लोकनिक भाषिक समृद्धि केँ कोना अन्तर्राष्ट्रीय परिधि मे उजागर करैत अछि से सहजहि ज्ञात भऽ रहल अछि। लेकिन आइ हमरा लोकनिक ई भाषा आ समृद्धि पर सवाल ठाढ कयल जा रहल अछि। गौर करू! के थिक ओ व्यक्ति या समूह या सत्ता? जागू मैथिल, नहि तऽ पहिचान मेटा जायत। जातिवादी राजनीति सँ बहुत ऊपर होइत छैक कोनो संस्कृति, सभ्यता आ भाषा-साहित्य। एहि दिशा मे कसगर डेग बढायब जरूरी अछि। समय सँ चेतना हो!
 
हरिः हरः!!
 
पढी पूरा समीक्षाः
 
Maithil Women’s Tales
 
Storytelling on the Nepal-India Border
 
Traces Maithil women’s agency and meaning-making in their contemporary telling of traditional folktales
 
The Maithil women of the Himalayan region have long explored their individual and collective life experiences by sharing stories with one-another. Sometimes fantastical, sometimes including a kind of magical realism, these tales have helped women create community through a deeply personal and always evolving storytelling form.
 
In Maithil Women’s Tales, Coralynn V. Davis investigates how female storytellers weave together their own life experiences–the hardships and the pleasures–with age-old themes. In so doing, Davis demonstrates, they harness folk traditions to grapple with social values, behavioral mores, relationships, and cosmological questions.
 
The Maithil women’s storytelling tradition flourishes against a backdrop of cultural conventions that suppress women’s speech and mobility. Not surprisingly, many tales express the pain of contending with patrilineal household formations, the seclusions of purdah, and an honor system that values modesty and servility in women.
 
Each chapter includes stories and excerpts that reveal Maithil women’s gift for rich language, layered plots, and stunning allegory. In addition, Davis provides ethnographic and personal information to reveal the complexity of women’s own lives, and includes works painted by Maithil storytellers to illustrate their tales. The result is a fascinating study of being and becoming that will resonate for readers in women’s and Hindu studies, folklore, and anthropology.
 
“Davis creates a momentous conversation between herself, her storytellers, and her audience. The part of the brain that enjoys a good story looks forward to getting lost in the next episode, while the social scientist can still pause between stories to wrestle with Davis over the deeper meanings of the plot and characterization. . . . This book is an incredibly creative combination of intriguing story and extensive ethnographic research that serves both as personal entertainment and as an addition to the social science of folkloric studies. In a world where primary orality and secondary orality are ever colliding, stories–and stories about stories–have become the common language.”–Journal of Folklore Research
 
“Clearly a labor of love, and so welcome a feast of tales. . . . Maithil Women’s Tales commendably forges an honest balance between pointing to oppressive gendered circumstances and celebrating women’s diverse strategies to attain some kind of agency, not only in the story worlds, but in their everyday lives.”–Western Folklore
 
“Davis provides a useful contextual analysis of Maithil folktales as told by the women who live along a border zone between India and Nepal. In her reader-friendly analysis she demonstrates that stories often have lives of their own, illuminating not only the nature of the cosmos, but also the relationship between the self and the worlds in which we live. The study provides valuable data on a region and narrative tradition understudied in the scholarly literature on South Asia.”–Frank J. Korom, author of South Asian Folklore: A Handbook
 
“Davis’s engagement with the tales related to Maithil women provides a counterpoint to the usual engagement with their Mithila paintings, the better known of Maithil women’s expressive arts. Here we also learn not only the tales, but Maithil women’s interpretations of them, not only in oral comments but in newly created paintings that highlight what they think are the key components of these tales. A must read for scholars of South Asian oral traditions and a major addition to women’s expressive traditions more generally.”–Susan S. Wadley, author of Wife, Mother, Widow: Exploring Women’s Lives in Northern India
 
“This well-grounded, thoroughly researched study should appeal to a wide audience interested in oral narrative performance and interpretation, not only in South Asia, but more generally in disciplines ranging from folklore and cultural anthropology to narrative theory and gender studies. It shows convincingly how traditional folktales told by Maithil women of Nepal can mount socially effective critiques as resistance to patriarchal social principles that otherwise marginalize these women. It offers much for readers with interest in the dynamics of gender, in oral narrative performance and strategies of its interpretation in social context.”–Margaret Mills, co-editor of South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia
 
Coralynn V Davis is an associate professor of women’s and gender studies and anthropology at Bucknell University.