Folk Lore of the Konkans

There is perhaps no country in the world where there can be found so many different races settled as in India. Though; shut in the north by the barrier of the earth’s highest mountain ranges, and on the east and west by broad seas India’s surpassing fertility and wealth attracted outside people through the passes of these mountains and over the expanse of these seas, So great has been this attraction that there are found her racial types, languages and dialects in various stages of development and progress, so numerous and varied as to bewilder the ethnologist. Another important feature in the ethnical condition of the country is that the sects, classes and professions have crystallized into castes and tribes. The source of folklore is human society itself, the elemental moorings that are at the root of human society are to be illustrated in folktales and folklores. The day today life of the common man finds its full depiction in the folklore of that region. The present study, collected by the late Mr. A. M. T. Jackson and edited admirably by R, E. Enthoven is a masterpiece on the folklore of the Konkan people inhabiting Gm, Kanara, Cochin, Patnagiri and Bombay etc. etc. The collection is a superb study on the life, manners, superstitions, worship etc, etc.

The book is divided in 11 chapters giving details of-Nature Powers, The Heroic Godlings, Disease Deities, The worship of Ancestors and Saints, The worship of the malevolent dead, the evil eye and the scaring of ghosts, Tree and Serpent worship, Totemism and Fetishism, Animal worship, Witchcraft etc. etc., There is a comprehensive glossary of vernacular terms, occurring in the book.

It is hoped that the book will be welcomed by sociologists, social anthropologists and students of comparative religion.