Tribal Myths & Legends of Orissa: The Story of Origins

Dr. Biyotkesh Tripathy, with degrees from the Universities of Calcutta and Wisconsin, retired as the Professor and Head of the Department of English, Utkal University in 1996. He had also headed the English Departments of Himachal Pradesh University (Shimla) and Berhampur University (Berhampur). He is widely travelled and has lectured at the Universities of Buffalo, Wisconsin, Hong Kong, Trier, Cambridge (Downing College), and Taipei (Center for European Studies). Since retirement he has engaged himself assiduously in collecting the intangible oral heritage of the tribal people of Orissa. He has now the single largest collection of tribal myths, legends, tales, songs and lore, which is housed in The National Museum of Mankind (Bhopal) and The Archives of Traditional Music and Folklore, University of Indiana (Bloomington). He has books on D.H. Lawrence and on the American novel. He is also a creative writer in Oriya and English, with two novels and a short story collection in Oriya, and two novels in English (Baba Bug; and The Vagrant). His last book, English-English-Oriya Dictionary (Oxford University Press) was released in 2004.