Introduction:

• We collected Pakistani superstitions from various Pakistani students on campus to better understand Pakistani culture and hopefully find parallels to the superstitions common in American culture. Our informants were undergraduate Pakistani students at Dartmouth College who were predominantly born in Pakistan and spent a majority of their life there. They all agreed that superstitions played a large role in Pakistani culture, and some offered interesting insights into how belief in superstitions differs among social classes as a result of education. We asked our informants to share information about themselves and their background, and then discuss any superstitions that they experience that were distinctly Pakistani, i.e their parents told them about these superstitions or they were commonly believed in Pakistan. It is interesting to note that while our informants came from a variety of places in Pakistan, rural and urban, they shared a lot of the same superstitions, and these superstitions shared common themes and parallels to american society. By looking through the superstitions we collected, you will appreciate the prevalence of superstition in Pakistani culture and, hopefully, be surprised at how similar these superstitions are to the folklore you have heard in your own life.

Presentation:

Pakistani Supersitions Presentation

Items (Superstitions):

• Food
• Marriage
• Good Luck
• Bad Luck
• Jinn
• Miscellaneous

Collectors:

• Sheherzad Mohydin
• Edric Wung
• Ian Kelsey
• Rajiv Ramaiah

Tags/Keywords

• Pakistani Superstitions, Customary Folklore