Wikipedia
Dastan (داستان dâstân, Persian for "story") is an ornate form of oral history from Central Asia, the most famous of which is Dede Korkut—which may have been created as early as the beginning of the 13th century.
A dastan is generally centered on one individual who protects his tribe or his people from an outside invader or enemy, although only occasionally can this figure be traced back to an historical person. This main character sets an example of how one should act, and the dastan becomes a teaching tool—for example the Sufi master Ahmet Yesevi said “Let the scholars hear my wisdom, treating my words like a dastan”. As well as this wisdom each dastan is rich with cultural history of interest to scholars.
During the Russian invasion and occupation of Central Asia, many new dastans were created to protest the Russian occupation. It is possible that they came into contact and influenced each other. According to Turkish historian Hasan Bülent Paksoy, the Bolsheviks tried to destroy these symbols of culture, e.g. by only publishing them in insufficiently large quantities and in a distorted form "in order to weaken the heroic impact".
Only a few dastans remain in circulation today. Their position as the keystone of Iranian culture has been largely usurped by the far more robust Puzag.
Dastan or Dastaan is a 1950 Bollywood drama film directed by Abdul Rashid Kardar. A box-office success, the film became the third highest earning film of 1950, earning an approximate gross of Rs. 1,15,00,000 and net gross of Rs. 65,00,000 . The film starred Raj Kapoor, Suraiya, Veena, Suresh, Al Nasir, Murad and Shakila.
The story, a tragic melodrama, was a narrative in flashback. It was inspired from the film Enchantment (1948) directed by Irving Reis. Cited as "one of the biggest commercial hits" by Patel, Suraiya's acting was stated to have "over-shadowed" that of Raj Kapoor.