Indian legends

thumb|The first page of oldest surviving Panchatantra text in Sanskrit thumb|An 18th-century Pancatantra manuscript page in Braj ("The Talkative Turtle")

thumb|upright=0.85|Nepalese manuscript of the Hitopadesha, c.1800

The Kathāsaritsāgara ("Ocean of the Streams of Stories") (Devanagari: कथासरित्सागर) is a famous 11th-century collection of Indian legends and folk tales as retold in Sanskrit by the Shaivite Somadeva from Kashmir.

collection of Indian tales

thumb|Prabhāvatī and the Parrot Śukasaptati, or Seventy tales of the parrot, is a collection of stories originally written in Sanskrit. The stories are supposed to be narrated to a woman by her pet parrot, at the rate of one story every night, in order to dissuade her from going out to meet her paramour when her husband is away. The stories frequently deal with illicit liaisons, the problems that flow from them and the way to escape those crises by using one's wits. Though the actual purpose of the parrot is to prevent its mistress from leaving, it does so without moralising. At the end of the

Tutinama (), literal meaning "Tales of a Parrot", is a 14th-century series of 52 stories in Persian. The work remains well-known largely because of a number of lavishly illustrated manuscripts, especially a version containing 250 miniature paintings commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the 1550s. The Persian text used was edited in the 14th century from an earlier anthology 'Seventy Tales of the Parrot' in Sanskrit compiled under the title Śukasaptati (a part of katha literature) dated to the 12th century. In India, parrots (in light of their purported conversational abilities) are popu

various fables, including Aesop's

thumb|300px|Illustrated of Mekhala and Ramasura, from a samut khoi of Thai poetry in the second half of the 19th century. Now in the collection of [[Bavarian State Library, Germany.]]

Grimm fairy tale

story from the Arabian Nights

story of one of Gautama Buddha's past lives

The Divyāvadāna or Divine narratives is a Sanskrit anthology of Buddhist avadana tales, many originating in Mūlasarvāstivādin vinaya texts. It may be dated to 2nd century CE. The stories themselves are therefore quite ancient and may be among the first Buddhist texts ever committed to writing, but this particular collection of them is not attested prior to the seventeenth century. Typically, the stories involve the Buddha explaining to a group of disciples how a particular individual, through actions in a previous life, came to have a particular karmic result in the present. A predominant them

thumb|Manohara as depicted in Phap Nang Ngam Nai Wannakhadi ("Illustrations of Ladies in Literature"), an illustrated book by Thai people|Thai artist [[Hem Vejakorn.]] Manohara is the kinnari (half-woman, half-bird) heroine of one of the Jataka tales. Typically referred to as Manohara and Prince Sudhana, the legend appears in the Divyavadana and is documented by stone reliefs at Borobodur. Versions of the story are reported in the literature of Southeast Asian countries, and similar stories about a bird maiden and a mortal man can be found in East Asia.

prince of Sailkot

Persian collection of romantic tales

Indian collection of folk tales

Bhojpuri folklore

Indian fairy tale

one of the Jataka tales

collection of allegorical stories by Amir Khusro written in Persian in the early 13th century

folk legend from Karnataka, India

thumb|right|250px|The Sonva Mandap in the Chunar fort, the place, where according to a popular belief, [[Alha married Sonva]] The term Alha Khand is used to refer to poetic works in Bhojpuri and Bagheli and other regional languages which consists of a number of ballads describing the brave acts of two 12th-century commanders in chief from rajput clan ( Alha and Udal ), generals working for king Paramardi-Deva (Parmal) of Mahoba (1163–1202 CE) against Prithviraj Chauhan (1166–1192 CE) of Ajmer. The works have been entirely handed down by oral tradition and presently exist in many recensions, wh

Persian fairy tale

Wikimedia list article

Buddhist collection of stories

thumb|upright=0.85|Title page of the Latin edition of The Fables of Syntipas, 1781 Syntipas is the purported author of the Seven Wise Masters, a cycle of stories of Indian and Persian origin popular in medieval literature. He first appears in Arabic renditions as an Indian philosopher who lived around 100 BC.

Bengali fairytales

In Hindu and Jain traditions, the muṇḍana ceremony marks a boy's entry into formal education, involving the tying of a sacred thread around the torso and a girdle made of munja grass around the waist, typically at the age of seven. He is known as Munjya when he puts on the munja grass girdle.