Myth-Folklore: Tibetan Folk Tales

This book is part of the Tibetan Folktales unit.

Tibetan Folk Tales by A.L. Shelton with illustrations by Mildred Bryant (1925).

Available FREE texts:
Sacred Texts Archive

Other online sources:
Kindle eBook: 99 cents

Dr. Albert L. Shelton, the author of this book, was a medical missionary and explorer who lived in Tibet for about twenty years in the early 20th century. He set up a mission in Lhasa and carried out diplomatic missions to the Chinese on behalf of the Dalai Lama. He died in 1922, shot by mountain bandits, at the age of 46. The stories in this book were assembled by his widow, Flora Shelton, who also wrote a brief Preface to the book. To find out more, you can read an article by Dr. Shelton, Life Among the People of Eastern Tibet, which he published in the National Geographic magazine in 1921. Each of the stories is prefaced by a Tibetan proverb; I am not sure if the proverbs were chosen by Dr. Shelton or by Mrs. Shelton. Sometimes the proverb relates to the story very closely, and in other cases the connection between the proverb and the story is very loose.