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Author Nath, Madhu Natisar.

Title A carnival of parting : the tales of King Bharthari and King Gopi Chand as sung and told by Madhu Natisar Nath of Ghatiyali, Rajasthan / translated with an introduction and afterword by Ann Grodzins Gold
Published Berkeley : University of California Press, ©1992

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Description 1 online resource (xx, 368 pages) : illustrations
Contents Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Note on Transcription and Transliteration -- 1. Madhu Nath and His Performance -- 2. Naths or Jogis in North India -- 3. Naths in Folklore and the Folklore of the Naths -- Part One: Bharthari's Birth Story -- Part Two: Bharthari's Detachment -- Part Three: The Guru's Lesson -- Part One: Gopi Chand's Birth Story -- Part Two: Gopi Chand Begs from Queen Patam De -- Part Three: Gopi Chand's Journey to Bengal -- Part Four: Instruction from Gorakh Nath -- Afterword: Politics, Love, Death, and Destiny -- Appendix One. The Language of the Bard -- Appendix Two. Proper Nouns Transliterated -- References -- Index
Summary Madhu Natisar Nath is a Rajasthani farmer with no formal schooling. He is also a singer, a musician, and a storyteller. At the center of A Carnival of Parting are Madhu Nath's oral performances of two linked tales about the legendary Indian kings, Bharthari of Ujjain and Gopi Chand of Bengal. Both characters, while still in their prime, leave thrones and families to be initiated as yogis - a process rich in adventure and melodrama, one that offers unique insights into popular Hinduism's view of world renunciation. Ann Grodzins Gold presents these living oral epic traditions as flowing narratives, transmitting to Western readers the interactive dimensions, the moods, and the pleasures of a village bard's performance. Three introductory chapters and an interpretive afterword, together with an appendix on the bard's language by David Magier, supply A Carnival of Parting with a richly detailed ethnographic, historical, and cultural backdrop. Gold gives a frank and engaging portrayal of the bard Madhu Nath and her work with him. She examines the Nath caste and their oral epic traditions as an important stream within North Indian Hinduism, showing how Madhu Nath's versions of Bharthari's and Gopi Chand's well-known tales surface as distinctive moments within complex legendary and historical currents. While embellished with miraculous displays of magical powers and evocative of profound spiritual dedication, the tales translated here are most profoundly concerned, Gold argues, with human rather than divine realities. In a compelling afterword, she highlights the thematic emphases on politics, love, and death. Although both narratives frequently invoke as ultimate authority the causal black hole of fate, they in no way acquiesce to fatalism. Madhu Nath's vital colloquial telling of Bharthari's and Gopi Chand's stories depicts renunciation as inevitable and interpersonal attachments as doomed, yet celebrates human existence as a "carnival of parting."
Notes Translated from Rajasthani
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-365) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Nath, Madhu Natisar.
SUBJECT Nath, Madhu Natisar fast
Subject Tales -- India -- Rajasthan
Folk songs, Rajasthani.
Storytellers -- India -- Rajasthan
Folk singers -- India -- Rajasthan
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Folklore & Mythology.
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
Folk singers
Folk songs, Rajasthani
Storytellers
Tales
India -- Rajasthan
Form Electronic book
Author Gold, Ann Grodzins, 1946-
ISBN 9780520911550
0520911555
0585130558
9780585130552
9780520075337
0520075331
0520075358
9780520075351