Myths & folktales from Arunachal Pradesh: Tara Douglas & Jatwang Wangsa's illustrated book is a valiant effort to preserve oral history

Members of the Wancho tribe in Arunachal Pradesh, and cover of 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh: The Stories of Our Ancestors'. (Images via Wikimedia Commons and Niyogi Books)

The eastern-most state of India, Arunachal Pradesh borders China to the north, Bhutan to its east and Myanmar to its southwest. Some parts of it continue to be remote and difficult to access for outsiders. Case in point: the Upper Wancho villages in Longding district that are home to fewer than 300 households. Besides the poor connectivity, there's another hurdle to cross before you can visit this area: a Protected Area Permit is needed to access parts of this "geopolitically sensitive region," writes Tara Douglas, co-founder of the UK-based Adivasi Art Trust. Douglas has been gathering stories, oral narratives and memories from Arunachal Pradesh for upwards of five years now. Her latest collection of stories - 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh: The Stories of Our Ancestors' - is co-collected, written and beautifully illustrated with Jatwang Wangsa, who is a teacher in Longding, a member of the Wancho Cultural Society and a tribe-insider (his father was a storyteller in Kamhua Noknu village which also makes an appearance in this book).

There are reasons to recommend this project. First, stories tell us much about the people who tell them, their beliefs and way of life. Short of visiting and interacting with the people and the place, local stories might be the best introduction to them yet. Consider the first story in 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh'. It begins with two black-and-white comic-book-style illustrations by Srijit Gupta and a story about the relationship of humans to God. Unlike the Christian myths, earth is not categorized as less-than-heaven in this story and God is not given any special attributes - except cunning - compared with first man. Instead, God in the sky/heaven and the first man are said to have been brothers, with the former having deceived his older brother into descending to a gorgeous earth and staying there!

Illustration by Srijit Gupta in 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh: The Stories of Our Ancestors' (Niyogi Books)

"The Wancho stories are repositories of indigenous knowledge about the use of plants, agricultural and hunting practices, rituals and social customs. The traditional knowledge, that includes practical skills for organic modes of fishing, water management, ethno-medicine and the preparation of handicrafts, was transmitted in an informal manner in the family by parents and grandparents," writes Douglas in the introduction to the book. A little later in the introduction, she writes: "There are mythical stories to contemplate the primary themes of the origins of the world and of humankind... Numerous elementary and often humorous folktales are inclined to reflect on the outcomes of particular actions and guide moral behaviour..."

Second, folktales also offer a peek into how the people who tell them explain the world around them and disseminate ideas about what is acceptable behaviour in that society. For that reason, cultural anthropologists have been studying them for decades. To this effect, consider story 3 in the collection. Titled 'The Boy Who Became a Fish', the story is about an orphan whose dead mother returns from the otherworld - 'jumpu' - daily to cook for him. When he spots her one night, she decides to take him to jumpu with her. Even before you've ceased to be amazed at this idea of easy passage from the world of the living to the otherworld, there's a crisis. The live boy can't get along with the children of jumpu, and has to make the reverse journey to the world of the living. So that he's not scared to go alone, his mother hands him an egg with instructions to break it open in a shaded, cool spot. The boy, however, forgets the instruction. When the yolk spills out in a sunny spot, it causes the sun to close its eyes. Darkness ensues. The story goes: "The boy cried and cried, and he called on all the creatures to wash the face of Sun and remove the egg yolk." Except when this is done, the sun becomes too hot for the boy, and he jumps into the "Lake of No Return". Before jumping, though, he proclaims that no one from his clan - the Dokam Gayam - should ever eat the kind of fish he's destined to become once he jumps in: catfish.

Incredibly visual, evocative and fantastical, the short stories are just marvellously entertaining (of course, it is also a marvel that these stories are unknown to so many of us who grew up in India on a diet of both local and international stories).

Illustration by Tara Douglas in 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh: The Stories of Our Ancestors' (Niyogi Books)

Apart from "creation myths and explanatory tales", the book contains "folktales and animal stories... (where) in contest with stronger opponents, the weak hero always enjoys the favour of the storyteller", there are "oral histories" - "the spoken memories of the Wancho storytellers convey(ing) realistic, fluid portraits of reality and human nature: of lived experiences, its textures, sights and senses at a particular period in history". There are stories in this collection about "migration and war" and the first known instance of "headhunting" - an old and now-discontinued practice of beheading opponents to gain higher status in the martial community that also got a mention in OTT series Patal Lok 2 on Amazon Prime - among the Wancho tribe. There are stories also of famine and "the sharing of food and the practice of hosting community feasts".

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Speaking about the India-China war in an interview with Moneycontrol in September 2024, Major General Ian Cardozo (Retd) had said something that has stayed with this writer. He said while marching to the North-Eastern border, his contingent heard about a surprising loss - an army officer was killed by an indigenous tribal from a headhunting community. "It (the fighting in this part of the North-East) was as though we had moved 1,000 years back in history because we were interacting with warlike tribes who were fighting with each other with swords and bows and arrows, spears, daggers, helmets, shields. There was a case where we heard that an officer had been killed by these tribes... We took for granted that they are Indian citizens, so they are OK, but they were wild tribes, so we had to be very careful. We had the Chinese in front of us on the border and we had tribes behind us who we had to be careful about... Every day was an adventure because we were supplied by air and the dropping zones were about 4,000 feet below us. The planes were circling down on the dropping zone 4,000 feet below..."

This incident goes back more than 60 years. In the meantime, attempts to know much more about the North-East Indians have been academic, sporadic and still far from adequate. To be sure, there have been attempts to bridge the gap - with the Union North-East ministry organizing a North-East festival in the Capital in December 2024 and Nagaland's Hornbill music festival opening up the eight North-Eastern states to Indian "mainlanders" in more meaningful ways. But the average Indian (this writer included) would still be hard-pressed to say much about the region or its people.

Books like 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh' can perhaps be a happy - and entertaining - antidote to this ignorance/antipathy.

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Finally, to leave you with one last fable from the book: A tiger and tortoise are about to race - tigers appear often in these pages. When the tiger lets out an intimidating "Khunkhalo!" roar, a row of tortoises shout back as one in an unexpected show of strength. Angered by this, the tiger throws his opponent - the tortoise - into a bush. Forgetting the race, the tortoise then tells the tiger that if the tiger really wants to hurt him, he should throw a rotten log his way. The tiger does so. When the tiger returns to check what's become of the tortoise, he finds him well and well-fed on the log he'd been tricked into supplying. Angrier still, the tiger is about to throw a rock at the tortoise when the tortoise suggests another punishment: "Bang me on your knee if you want to kill me." The tiger, of course, breaks his knee in the process.

Just a page and a half long, and accompanied by an illustration by Tara Douglas, the story is every bit as fun and educative as the much-better-known fable of the rabbit and the tortoise. The learnings, too, are more nuanced: strategy eats brute strength for breakfast; and when in trouble, keep calm and think your way out of it!

Illustration by Tara Douglas, in 'Myth, Memory & Folk Tale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh'. (Image via Niyogi Books)