Reading Diary Week 5: Khasi Folktales

I did a half-reading for this week, and chose to focus on the second half of stories from the Khasi folktales. The tales I read were mostly origin stories involving various animals. The stories were interesting, although I didn't find them as much fun to read as the Georgian folktales.

"The Leap of Ka Likai" is a . . . disturbing cautionary tale against rashly rushing into remarriage. In the story, a woman--Ka Likai--ends up remarrying a cruel man out of a desperate desire to gain the support needed to keep her beloved daughter alive and well. The new husband ends up becoming jealous of his own step-daughter, and eventually kills the girl and proceeds to cook parts of her body, which he later feeds to his unknowing wife. This nasty and twisted story ends with Ka Likai throwing herself to her death down a waterfall, which from then on bears her name and serves as a reminder of the importance of considering carefully the matter of marrying again. Yeah, this was far from my favorite story, but it has taken the dubious honor of being the most unsettling tale I've read so far for the class.

"What Makes the Lightning" is a pretty neat story that explains the origin of lightning. It features a bunch of animals and assorted supernatural beings gathering together for a festival of dancing and music. A prideful lynx by the name of U Kui brings a silver sword to the party and entrances his audience with a graceful dance. A thunder giant  named U Pyrthat asks the lynx if he can borrow the sword and dance a while. Although U Kui refuses at first, he is shamed by the other animals giving over his sword. The giant takes the sword and proceeds to dance, beat on his drum, and then jump into the sky. The result is the first instance of lightning. From then on, the animals knew that thunder and lightning was the result of U Pyrthat dancing in and drumming in the sky while brandishing his stolen silver sword.

One of my favorites in this unit was "How the Cat Came to Live With Man." This story features a cat named Ka Meow . . .  er, rather Ka Miaw. Ka Miaw is a member of a royal household ruled by his brother the tiger. Ka Miaw is a cat who is very proud of her lofty heritage, but her brother unfortunately hordes all the best food and forces the cat into sneaking around at night and eating lowly things like mice and frogs. Ka Miaw is one day sent by her brother to the village of mankind, and it is here where she gets her first taste of being treated kindly. She plays with some human children for so long that she runs late with her errand ends up greatly offending her brother. When she returns to the tiger, the fiercesome feline threatens to beat her. Ka Miaw flees in fear back to the land of mankind, and from then on decides to live beside humans from then on.

"How the Tiger Got His Strength," might have been my most favorite story of this unit. I suppose this is because I like how there is an actual trickster character in this story in the form of the tiger. I liked how the story explains how the tiger became so strong, and how humans, so that they could counter the strength of beasts like the tiger, were blessed with the skill to create weapons that would allow them to oppose beings of greater strength than themselves. I think either this or the cat story would be fun to retell.

Epic lynx (Wikipedia Commons)
Photo taken by Tony Hisgett (2013)