Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow: A Freudian Folkloristic Essay on Caste and Untouchability

180 Pages·1997·9.76 MB·English

by  Alan Dundes

as
"A FREUDIAN FOLKLORISTIC ES
TALES OF
ROW AND SPARROW
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/twotalesofcrowsp0000dund
Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow

Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow
A Freudian Folkloristic Essay on
Caste and Untouchability
ALAN DUNDES
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham « Boulder + New York * Oxford
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706
12 Hid’s Copse Road
Cummor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England
Copyright © 1997 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dundes, Alan.
Two tales of crow and sparrow : a freudian folkloristic essay on caste and
untouchability / Alan Dundes.
; cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8476-8456-3 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8476-8457-1 (paper :
alk. paper)
1. Caste—India. 2. Untouchables—India. 3. Psychoanalysis and folklore—
India. I. Title.
DS422.C3D77 1997
305.5’ 122’0954—dce21 97-25277
ISBN 0-8476-8456-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8476-8457-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Printed in the United States of America
™
© The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
This essay is dedicated to the memory of A. K. Ramanujan: poet,
linguist, folklorist, Indologist for the world, but to me, fellow graduate
student, dear lifelong friend, and the person who first aroused my
curiosity about India.
“I regard untouchability as the greatest blot on Hinduism. . . . If we do
not cleanse ourselves of this cursed untouchability, Hinduism and Hindus
are bound to perish.”
M. K. Gandhi, Caste Must Go and the Sin of Untouchability
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1964), pp. 21, 41.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow
Caste
Untouchability
The First Tale of Crow and Sparrow
The Second Tale of Crow and Sparrow
Analysis of the Tales
The Bodily Origin of Caste
Defecation Habits
Freudian Theory in India
Toilet Training in India
The Crackdown Paradox
The Cow Anomaly
Sati (Suttee) and the Theory of Leftovers
Breaking the Rules
Gypsy Defilement as Marginal Survival
Conclusions
Bibliography
About the Author
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