Description: In Myths of Middle India Verrier Elwin, India's outstanding pioneering anthropologist, assembles 540 tribal myths of origin from Central India, all recorded in the course of ordinary field-work and nearly all for the first time. These are arranged subject-wise in 23 chapters which are in turn divided into four broad subject categories (Parts), namely, 'Man and the Universe', 'The Natural World', 'Human Life', 'Human Institutions', to facilitate reference and comparison. Each myth recorded is preceded by the name of the tribe to which it relates and the place where it was recorded. In the Introduction to each chapter, which analyses the relevant category of myths and assigns origins, other myths from the region and also from other parts of India are recorded and parallels drawn. In his Introduction to the book, Elwin describes it 'as a sort of Aboriginal Purana. Like a Purana, it abounds in fantastic stories, unusual names and far-fetched analogies. Like a Purana it reveals without embarassment or self-consciousness theories of the origins of life and the sexual function .... I have thought it my duty to record the myths exactly as they were given to me.'. For an anthropologist researching myths of origin this work provides very rich source material in a comparative perspective, and for the lay reader a fund of wonderful and bizarre stories.

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