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ABSTRACT
Dastangoi, the art of Urdu storytelling is said to have died in 1928 when its last great practitioner Mir BaqarAli died an anonymous death in Delhi. With him passed away the centuries 'old art of spontaneously composing and performing stories of epical length. All that the tradition left behind was tomes of stories, extending to about 46 volumes of over a thousand pages each. With no clues into the actual practice of Dastangoi, the legendary Urdu scholar Shamsur Rahman Faruqi set to work to collect the volumes and do a study of it. Over the last 25 years he not only managed to collect the entire works but has also produced a six volume study of the form. His works inspired me to start performing from the stories. Over the last six years, the modern stint of Dastangoi has seen over 200 shows, with over a dozen people incorporated into the form. The article will trace a brief history of the tradition, how it got to be revived, whether it is a revival, a rebuilding or something else altogether, the major new experiments made to it and the future ahead.
INTRODUCTION
The act of preserving valuable cultural patrimony is central to museum institutions. But many intangible cultures that have travelled down the centuries are part of the India's continuing and living museums. The six-year old endeavour to revive the Mughal-era storytelling tradition of Dastangoi aims at keeping alive art forms with which we can explore both our past and present.
DASTANGDI: A SHORT HISTDRY
The word Dastangoi refers to the art of storytelling, it is a compound of two Persian words 'dastan' and 'goi' which means to tell a story. Dastans were epics, often oral in nature that were recited or read aloud. Telling tales of adventure, magic and warfare, dastans mapped new worlds and horizons, encountered the unseen and protected the hero through many travails and lovers as he moved on his quest. The hero's adventures could sometimes parallel the mystic quest, at other times the story narrated a purely profane tale. In the process of telling the story the narrators freely borrowed tropes and themes from other stories, thus it was that Rumi's 'Masnavi' and 'Arabian Nights' both came to...