Indian Holidays: Myths and Customs

Introduction:

The goal of our collection project was to learn about Indian folklore and traditions by exploring holidays celebrated in India. We decided to collect folklore about Diwali and Ganesh Chaturthi because they are two major Hindu holidays in India, and neither member of the group was very knowledgable about those holidays. Celine grew up in the United States, so she is not very familiar with Indian holidays. Yohann is from India, so he was instrumental in collecting folklore, but he is not Hindu and therefore does not celebrate those holidays.

We ended up interviewing five informants who celebrate those two holidays and we also attended the Diwali celebration at Dartmouth earlier this term. Overall, we collected information about the customs of the celebration of Diwali and Ganesh Chaturti, as well as the origin stories of both of those holidays (which were extremely long pieces of folklore). Ultimately, we realized that the celebratory customs of both holidays are very focused on the religious traditions and stories behind the holidays

Presentation:

Indian Holidays Presentation

Items:

Collectors:

  • Yohann Curmally
  • Celine Guan

Tags/Keywords

India, origin stories, holidays