Ancient literature

Stories for children were being told and written in the Indian subcontinent  in very ancient times.  The Panchatantra (loosely, five frames or five texts) was a collection of fables meant to wheedle two doltish princes into more kingly behavior.  Some people think its structure of story-within-story, with multiple narrators, influenced the Arabian Nights, and indirectly, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  The Jataka Stories, tales of the Buddha’s lives, form another famous story collection.  Over time they have passed from religious teaching into popular literature.  We don’t know the authors of these early works.  In ancient times, painters, sculptors, and writers were supposed to serve their art (and their patrons) in humility, and so such work was often not signed.

Through the centuries, a strong tradition of visual art and oral story continued to grow in the region.  Under Muslim rule, it acquired influences from Persia and the Arabian world.  During Akbar’s time, in particular, something began to flourish that we today would term “multiculturalism.” The Hindu epic, the Ramayana, was translated into Persian, and illustrated (by imperial decree) by both Muslim and Hindu artists working together. A subimperial version of this kind of manuscript is in the collection of the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. With the emergence of new religions (e.g., Sikhism) and the arrival of successive immigrant groups (Parsis from Persia, Syrian Christians), and finally the coming of the colonial powers (the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the English) art and story acquired new elements while struggling to maintain old traditions.

During the colonial years under the British, while the histories of the two countries clashed and intertwined, new technologies changed the face of Europe, and children’s books began to acquire a place in publishing in England.  Naturally, characters and images from the subcontinent started to appear in stories for English children.  And so we have Kipling’s Jungle Book and Kim, and Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo, books that are still being rehashed in endless versions.  Such stories were told from the outside in.  They were written by white people about brown people, and they were meant to be read by other white people.  The races were different and unequal, no matter if the writer’s intentions were benign.  It’s the way the world was.