Ebook Three Bags of Gold

Tales of a grandfather - that could also have been the title of this book. They are stories which I heard from my parents and grandparents, teachers and elders. They interested me so much that even in later life I continued collecting them from my friends, colleagues and companions in various parts of India.

India has a stock of stories which will never be exhausted. The stories included here are from the length and breadth of the country. You have here tales from Punjab and Assam, Kashmir and Kerala, with those from Bengal, Bombay, Madras, Rajputana, etc. thrown in to add variety and spice. Each one of the sixteen States of India could produce a volume of stories on its own, so that we could easily have sixteen volumes of Indian folk tales, if not more!

Nor would that exhaust the reservoir of Indian stories. The tales of animals and birds of the kind that formed the basic material for AEsop's Fables; stories of Vikramaditya, Vararuchi and others which prove by their nature that several of the Arabian Night Tales had their origin in India, are all there for us to choose from. The great epic Mahabharata with over a lakh of verses, gives us endless stories ranging from very short episodes, a few lines in length, to very long stories, each one of which could form a small book by itself. Add to them the stories from the Ramayana and the multitude of religious tales in the eighteen Puranas and one can easily estimate the voluminous literature that India has in this line. Even that would not exhaust the store, for one would have to add the parables in the Upanishads which teach the highest philosophy through the medium of stories.