Situated in the lap of the Himalayas, Arunachal Pradesh is a unifying abode of diverse ethnic communities following their own distinct tongues and cultures. There are 26 major tribes and hundreds of sub tribes with more than 90 languages being spoken. But amidst this plurality, there is one common feature among all the communities, that is that they are great storytellers.
Without any authorised script of their own, they preserved their stories of time in their memories and disseminated them through word of mouth. This is how they were passed down to subsequent generations. When they took the form of chants, the stories were narrated by shamans and rhapsodists in social gatherings and at occasions like birth, marriage and at death ceremonies. They were didactic in nature and were meant to teach collective beliefs.
When we talk about the literature of Arunachal Pradesh we mean both the oral and the written.
Oral literature is a manifestation of folklore and comprises…