A TREASURE HOUSE OF RAJASTHANI FOLKLORE

Vijaydan Detha, an important writer of Rajasthani prose in the 20th century, drew his reader into the complex world of the common folk of Rajasthan while bringing alive the magic of folklore

- Neha Kirpal

With more than 800 short stories to his credit, late Vijaydan Detha is the most important writer of Rajasthani prose in the 20th century. Born in 1926, Bijji or the Shakespeare of Rajasthan, as he was fondly known, belonged to the Charan caste, a caste of bards, primarily patronised by the royal courts and feudal lords. His father Sabaldan Detha and grandfather Jugtidan Detha were well-known poets of Rajasthan.

Traditional folklore

Rebelling against the traditions of his caste, he made the common man and woman his main sources of inspiration. Moreover, he sought to make the traditional oral literature of Rajasthan-tales and folklore-his source of literary creativity. He drew inspiration from writers such as Anton Chekhov, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore, whom he considered his gurus, and like them, he too chose to write in his mother tongue. He spent nearly five decades of his life collecting folk stories from in and around his village Borunda in Marwar, and retelling them in his inimitable style. Along with musicologist Komal Kothari, Bijji founded Rupayan Sansthan, an institute that documents Rajasthani folklore, art and music. He published 14 volumes of stories-called Bataan Ri Phulwari-based on the traditional folk stories of Rajasthan.