Mahabharata: The Tharu Barka Naach - Hardcover

Meyer, Kurt; Pamela Deuel

9780966674224: Mahabharata: The Tharu Barka Naach

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0966674227 ISBN 13: 9780966674224

Publisher: South Asia Books, 1999

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Folk dances and songs, interpreting the Indian Mahabharata. translation, introduction and notes excellent on literary tradition and folk culture

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From the Author

For generations, the Tharu farmers of Dang Valley Nepal performed their version of the Mahabharata to win the blessings of the gods. The songs were handed down from father to son only through oral tradition until one farmer taught himself to read and write his Tharu dialect so that he could preserve the tradition. I came upon his manuscript in 1993 but learned that the dances had ceased in the 1960's. The publication of this translation (from Tharu dialect into Nepali into English) coincides with the revival of the performance of the Tharu Mahabharata in the autumn of 1998. In the spirit of the folk art tradition, this book is illustrated with Tharu folk art.

From the Inside Flap

In 1993 Kurt Meyer and Pamela Deuel, on a routine research trip in Nepal's Tarai lowlands, learned that farmers in one Tharu village had once performed a folk version of the Mahabharata, know in Tharu as the Barka Naach, the "big dance." Meyer and Deuel learned that although the tradition had died out, a few older villagers still recalled the songs and dances of this important religious festival. When they were told that a collection of songs and song fragments existed in writing, they decided to help revive the tradition and to publish the collection of songs. In autumn 1998, the villagers of Dang Valley performed the Barka Naach for the first time since the early 1960's. It is hoped that the 1998 festival will lead to the continuing revival of the Barka Naach among the Dangaura Tharu in future years.

Few outsiders have seen this other Nepal or the folk traditions of the Tharu, whose unique artistic tradition of the Barka Naach is published here for the first time. As Mahatawa Chandra Prasad Chaudhary told Meyer and Deuel, "We are afraid of losing our Tharu culture, which is deteriorating day by day. The main purpose of reviving the dance is to maintain Tharu culture so it can continue to survive. For this purpose my father, with the help of Naraharinath Yogi and Badrinath Yogi, wrote a book describing the role of the Barka songs in Tharu culture."

Who are the Tharu of Nepal? They are believed to be the first people to live in the Tarai, the tropical lowlands that border India. Few people realize that the Tharu are Nepal's fourth largest ethnic group in Nepal, numbering over one million people. They origins are unknown, but whatever their beginnings, they successfully settled the dense jungle, developing a remarkable resistance to the deadly malaria which kept other people out until DDT eliminated the disease in the 1960's. The Tharu became the cultivators of the Tarai and turned the region into the breadbasket of Nepal.

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