Praveen Kumar

Author and editor of Mythology Blog

I write and edit every article on this site: over 1,500 retold mythological stories and 60 in-depth guides across twenty world traditions. I have been researching, writing, and editing the material since the site's founding.

Background

Mythology Blog began as a personal project to read older stories to my child in a way that felt neither too sanitized nor too academic. What started as informal retellings became, over time, a serious effort to cover the range of mythological traditions the world's languages preserve.

I have no formal degree in classics, comparative religion, or folklore. I do have decades of lay reading in these fields, a strong interest in the mechanics of story, and the discipline to research each retelling from primary sources and reputable scholarship before writing. The site's editorial standard is the one that comes from doing this work for years on end, on my own, one story at a time.

What I do

For every story on the site:

• Research the tradition's primary sources and scholarly work
• Choose a specific version to follow where multiple exist
• Write the retelling in the site's editorial voice: dropped into the action, free of moralising commentary, respectful of the tradition's own tone
• Structure the page with an At-a-Glance fact-card that summarises the key facts before the narrative
• Check facts, names, and attributions before publishing
• Respond to reader corrections and update the story when errors are found

For the 60 character and concept guides, the same process runs with additional sensitivity for living-tradition subjects: primary sources are cited at the corpus level, tribe- and school-specific attribution is preferred over generic labels, and present tense is used where practice remains active.

Traditions covered

Arabic (pre-Islamic and 1001 Nights material), Buddhist and Jain traditions, Celtic (particularly Irish), Chinese, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Finnish (Kalevala), Greek, Indian (Hindu), Indian Tribal (Gond, Santhal, and other Adivasi communities), Japanese (Shinto and folk), Korean, Native American (Lakota, Haudenosaunee, Diné, and many others with tribe-specific attribution), Norse, Persian (Shahnameh and Zoroastrian material), Polynesian (Maori, Hawaiian, and others), Roman, Tamil, Thai and Southeast Asian, and West African (Akan, Yoruba, and others).

Sources and method

For a full account of how research and writing are done, and how living traditions are handled with care, see the About page.

Corrections and contact

Corrections, suggestions, and questions are welcome. Please use the contact page. Feedback from members of the traditions covered on the site is especially welcome; you know things I cannot.

— Praveen Kumar