Vol. 9 No. 2 (2026): March 2026
Articles

Questioning the origin of Southeast Asia’s Cinderella narratives

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  • Sindhy Mianani
Sindhy Mianani
Diponegoro University, Indonesia

Published 27-04-2026

Keywords

  • Cinderella,
  • folklore,
  • shared narratives

Copyright (c) 2026 Sindhy Mianani (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Mianani, S. (2026). Questioning the origin of Southeast Asia’s Cinderella narratives. International Journal of Humanity Studies (IJHS), 9(2), 259-275. https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v9i2.80

Abstract

The varieties of Cinderella-like folklores in Southeast Asia exhibit notable similarities to the tale of Ye Xian from China. Ye Xian, written by Duan Chengshi of the Tang Dynasty, is the earliest recorded version of the Cinderella tale. Given this premise, a more serious problem arises, which challenges Eurocentric claims that privilege Perrault’s version as the definitive origin. Regarding such an issue, this article attempts to trace back the origin and the spread of the Cinderella narratives and their different versions in Southeast Asia as folklore. To conduct this study, comparative literature as well as area studies are used in order to look for the shared narratives between each story. The result shows that shared narratives and motifs between Southeast Asia’s version of Cinderella and the tale of Ye Xian exist. These shared narratives and motifs are believed to have been spread in Indochina and the Malay Peninsula due to their relationship with China in the past.

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