Vol. 4 No. 7 (2007): Malki and Keema – A Panihari Song - By Heda Jason

Shri Komal Kothari drew our attention to a village folk song from Rajasthan, his home province. The song is about the meeting of a girl and a youth at the village well. It is a well-known theme in village life, since the Biblical times. For some time I looked for oral versions of the song, but found very few: three from contemporary India and four from Southern Slavs, from the eighteenth century. The literary-historical and literary–semiotic aspects of these seven songs are discussed in this article.