A shaman chants to make the sun rise in the Apatani valley, high in the eastern Himalayas. A comparative analysis of this oral text, its ritual context and performer reveal the core ideas of local society, including fertility and cohesion.
Stuart Blackburn, Ph.D. (1980) in Folklore and South Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He has published several books on oral tradition and culture in India, including (with Michael Aram Tarr) Through the Eye of Time: Photographs of Arunachal Pradesh, 1859-2006 (Brill, 2008) and Himalayan Tribal Tales: Oral Tradition and Culture in the Apatani Valley (Brill, 2009).
