Storytelling has different forms and mediums across the globe. But every story has a common purpose no matter the country, community, or medium. They are used to teach lessons, morals, and to entertain people. Across India’s diverse cultures, you will see them each follow their own style of storytelling. While some narrate, others employ props like puppets, dance, and even musical instruments. And others that are told completely through the medium of dance, song, and music. In this blog I will share some of the popular traditional storytelling techniques in India.

Ancient Epics and Folk Narratives

India’s storytelling culture can be traced to its rich history and heritage, including mythological stories that share beliefs and attitudes with their listeners. Great epics like Mahabharat and Ramayan have been very popular mythological stories in India.

Moral Stories

Stories are very powerful means of for education and communication, especially for toddlers. They are extensively used as an approach to teach morals and values to children at an early age. Both reading and listening to stories not only give children the opportunity to enhance visualization and imagination, but also develop creativity and problem-solving skills. By way of stories, the learnings transfer from one generation to the next, and children learn about moral values and to question good and bad behaviour.

Folktales are often about kings and queens, brave hunters, or clever animals. They include moral warnings to avoid lies or theft, not to be greedy, and so on. There are many different stories, and each village has its own versions. Traditionally, mothers and grandmothers narrated or sang these stories to their children and grandchildren at home.

Panchtantra is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables

The Story Box

As storytelling is well integrated into early childhood learning in India, it has become a very influential approach for behaviour change education and an impactful communication tool for working with children, such as with 'Kavad,' an Indian storytelling prop and unique tradition of crafting stories in a box.

Story through Dance, Music, Art, and Drama

Kathakali is a "story play" genre of art and is a major form of classical Indian dance.  The term Kathakalī is derived from Katha (which means "story or a conversation, or a traditional tale", and from Kalā, which means "performance and art". The dance symbolises the eternal fight between good and evil.

Indian puppetry is multifaceted. In India there are numerous forms of storytelling and puppet theatre traditions. Puppetry has played an important role in disseminating knowledge in most parts of the world. Puppetry imbibes elements of all art forms such as literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, and drama, and enables students to develop their creative abilities.

The starting point was the act of storytelling, i.e. the act of conveying the oral literary tradition. Gradually, storytellers started to employ different kinds of visual devices to illustrate their narration (panels, scroll paintings, shadow figures, puppets, and in some cases, even dolls).

Storytelling is enriched by gesticulation, body movements, mime, dance, music, and more. Though this process, the act of storytelling becomes more theatrical in character.

To close, I invite you to explore our work at the Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), and particularly The Planet, CEE’s Discovery Centre, to learn more about how we incorporate this storytelling tradition into our educational programs.