VERBAL/ORAL FOLK FORMS

Long narratives: tales and myths; Long oral narratives generallyinclude folktales and myths. The first important question that needs to beaddressed in this regard is, what is a folktale or a myth and are they differentfrom each other? There are no agreed upondefinitions of a folktale. However,most scholars working in the field agree that folktales are generally oral narrativesthatcirculateinagivencommunity,inthe form of stories which are passed onfrom one generation to another verbally, i.e. they are not written down in texts.In other words, people’s memory and not a text is the repository of folktale.Also, it should be noted that, folktale is ageneric or common term given to allsuch kinds of stories or oral narratives that exist across the world.

Folktales are similar to myths in one way. Like folktales, myths are also basedon oral narratives, One of the mostcommon origin myths in Hindu religion is that of the ten incarnations oravataraof the god Vishnu on earth. However, all myths do not use such an abstractconcept of time. In many tribal beliefs,