Archives
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A Review of In Quest of Indian Folktales: Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and William Crooke - By Maria Kaliambou
No. 10 (2010)(To be added)
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Redefining Archaeology and the Ethno-history of Pre-colonial Singhbhum - By Asoka Kumar Sen
No. 10 (2010)Conventionally archaeology stands for the remains of cities, palaces, temples, statues etc as well as numismatic findings often emanating from centralized power centres. As these remains often do not historicize ethnic communities, we are forced to redefine the very term archaeology when we attempt a reconstruction of ethno-history. But as we redefine archaeology to include survivals of a different genre, like ponds, mango groves, sasandiri (gravestone) and also such evidences of linguistic archaeology as villages and arable land names, a new vista of information opens up before us. In the absence of centralized polity, these remains were mostly promoted by the community. Hence these constituted a different genre of archaeology, which may be termed as social rather community archaeology. With this inclusive archaeology, the present essay seeks to reconstruct the ethno-history of the pre-colonial Singhbhum, the available corpus of which is both sparse and fragmentary. It may be argued that the cause behind this ethnographic lack was the lingering faith in the conventional meaning of archaeology, the remains of which in Singhbhum mostly belonged to the time and the people which either predated the advent of the tribal groups or related non-tribal people living here. These often create the notion of specific cultural spaces that embodies archaeological layers representing multiple village histories to support Bernard Cohn’s famous words that ‘There is not one past of the village but many.’
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Archives as Empowering Resource Centres for Communities The Digital Community Archives of the National Folklore Support Centre, Chennai - By Anupama Sekhar
No. 10 (2010)This article is reproduced from Mapping Cultural Diversity—Good Practices from Around the Globe published by the German Commission for UNESCO and the Asia-Europe Foundation in November 2010. The publication is a project of the U40-programme “Cultural Diversity 2030”. The electronic version of the publication is available for download from http://www.unesco.de. Based on the DCA projects of National Folklore Support Centre, Chennai , this paper explores Digital community Archive initiatives as suitable models for preserving intangible heritages.
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Folk legends as Mirrors of Peoples Experiences: The Virgathas of Kumaon and Garhwal - By Mily Roy Anand
No. 10 (2010)The Central Himalayan region popularly known as Uttarakhand, comprising Kumaon and Garhwal, has a rich tradition of people’s history and culture but has not been given adequate attention by historians and scholars. No doubt one is struck by the traits which bear similarity to those found in the plains and other areas, or those that have been borrowed from them or derived from a common origin. A closer look into the history and culture only reveals the distinctiveness of what can be termed as the pahari culture vis-à-vis its caste structure, ecological conditions, religious beliefs and practices, festivals, folk songs and legends. An interesting genre of folk legends of Kumaon and Garhwal is what is popularly known as virgathas , also called pavadas They are the tales of kings and chieftains who once ruled the hills and valleys of Kumaon and Garhwal , and relate mostly to the period when this region was subject to internal feud and strife between petty chieftains. A study of these gathas reveals the perceptions and beliefs of the pahari people at a time when they were subject to much instability due to political conditions. Vigathas therefore constitute an important source of understanding better, the experiences of the people of this region, which has otherwise been largely neglected by academics and scholars.
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The Folk Process through New Media - By Joycee James
No. 10 (2010)Besides television and cinema, mobile phones and digital texts like the e-mail have emerged as efficient facilitators of the folk process. Most of the narratives thus transmitted are in the form of small tales, anecdotes, jokes, humorous one-liners, and riddles. This paper explores the dissemination of folktales through email and mobile phones. The author of these stories is the transmitter of the message, and like the traditional storyteller he is not the creator of tales: what he or she does is a retelling. This paper explores the narratives in selected texts like the email and SMS over mobile phones to illustrate the folk process through the new media. The study involves field work for the collection of e-mail and SMS narratives. This was done in several stages over a period of six months. In the first stage, I made casual enquiries at around fifty homes in Chennai (Tamil Nadu, India) and Thrissur (Kerala, India) regarding email and SMS narratives. Through this enquiry, I gathered information about the kind of narratives transmitted. During the second stage, I interviewed thirty five respondents in Chennai in the age group of fourteen to fifty five who participated in tale transmission. Of the thirty five, fourteen were software engineers. The rest included students, housewives, bank employees, and office workers. Housewives generally did not participate in tale transmission over mobile phones or email. I interviewed software engineers to confirm that despite their long working hours and pressure of work, they did enjoy transmitting these tales. The third stage, which did not diachronically follow the first two, was requesting friends and acquaintances to send me email and SMS narratives. I did this to collect the material in context, to study the nature of the community that sends these messages (email narratives were mostly forwarded ones), and analyze the structure, style and linguistic aspects of the narratives. India is a great nation of storytellers and folktales and this paper explores how the new media has provided space for the uninterrupted folk process to continue.
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Communicating Words and More: A study of oral traditions of Radh Bengal (including the districts of Purulia, West Mednipur and Bankura) - By Lopamudra Maitra
No. 10 (2010)The paper looks into the oral traditions in the form of anecdotes, riddles, poems and stories from the Radh region of the state of West Bengal, comprising of the districts of West Mednipur, Bankura and Purulia. Geographically, the expanse is composed of red laterite soil and is an extension of the Chhotanagpur plateau region. The work portrays an analysis of historical representation of data through the collection of a vast amount of folklore from the region. These not only help to ascertain a reflection of a rich tradition transmitted through generations, but also help portray the cognitive representation of socio-cultural and religious developments through history which served as important contexts for their origination. The very nature of their survival even in recent times of global communication stands as a testimony conveyed, communicated and transferred through time.
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One Who Stays for Good: Perantallu in Northern Coastal Andhra - By M.V. Krishnayya
No. 10 (2010)This paper presents a case study undertaken in Northern Coastal region of Andhra Pradesh, of the ritual worship of Goddess ‘Perantallu’. Through three case studies and interviews, it constructs an analytical profile of the goddess and the religious tradition associated with it. In doing so it highlights the religious, social imagination of the people.
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Lost in a Forest of Symbols: Can Some Animal, Bird, Tree or Djinn Help us Understand Myth and Folklore? - By Alok Bhalla
No. 10 (2010)This paper is an attempt to investigate the structure of a folktale and to give to each of the three structural sites that almost always constitute its narrative their distinctive emotional, moral and social qualities. Further, its three structural spaces are chronologically arranged. I should like to term the first spatial and temporal order, which exists “somewhere in the country beyond the river...” and “once upon a time,” as the site of sorrow or the structure of curse. Here time is frozen and human beings are paralyzed. The second structural element, which is at the heart of every folktale, can be called the artifice of enchantment. Its boundaries are fluid, forest-covered or unmapped. And time is either a succession of instances or an eternity depending on who is recording or who is suffering. I should like to call the third structural element of the folktale as the site of renewal of energies or the structure of communitas. It emerges from the realm of enchantment and restores human community. People begin to participate in historical and secular time again but live as if their moments of recovered joy are at one with eternity.
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Acoustic Entanglements: Negotiating Folk Music in Naiyāntī mēlam Performance
No. 9 (2009)Using fieldwork and ethnographic research, it is my intention in this article to privilege the voices of contemporary Tamil folk musicians and show how their performances of folk music often contradict and diverge from the hegemonic tropes of popular music discourse. Focusing on one of the more well-known and ubiquitous folk music genres in Tamil Nadu, the naiyāntī mēlam, I hope to upset the prevailing fiction of folk music as a tradition-bound phenomenon, occupying its own discrete musical space. Listening to the voices of naiyāntī mēlam folk musicians and paying careful attention to their musics will reveal that these folk artists are actively engaged in complex performance practices that cut across cultural categories and resist facile definition.1 In order to please their audiences, these musicians are adept in playing not only prescribed ritual “folk” music but film music and Carnatic music as well. Borrowing and refashioning a mixture of sounds from radio, film, cassette, and CD, the naiyāntī mēlam exhibits a wide range of genres and styles that go well beyond the confines of “folk.” In this article I will argue that both film and Carnatic music are not separate from, but rather central to, the performance of many naiyāntī mēlam groups. In appropriating elements from these various genres, and carefully and cleverly reframing them in performance, folk musicians express multiple musical affinities that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional music rooted in local circumstance
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Influence of the Evil Figure, Tisso Jonding on the Socio-religio-cultural Life of Karbis - By Robindra Teron
No. 9 (2009)Tisso Jonding is one of the most feared evil figures among Karbis. Karbi traditional drummers called Dohuidi consider Tisso as their kuru (teacher) and always offer hor (rice beer) and seek their blessings before they take part in any ritual. In the past, Tisso even came down the hills and helped Karbis during their socio-religio-cultural occasions such as Chojun, Chomkan and other important occasions. However, all Tisso return to their habitat (i.e., forests) at dawn and this specific period is popularly referred as Tisso Rongdam (rong: village; dam: to return). The tradition of guarding dead bodies among Karbis is inherited from Tisso, who in the past were reported to feed on the corpse. Origin of Tisso subclan of Karbis is inherently associated with Tisso. Hanso ke-et (Zingiber casumunar Roxb.; Zingiberaceae) is taboo to Tisso and touching the plant is reported to make them unholy forever, lose divinity and become excommunicated from the grand Tisso family.
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Translating the Oral: Translatability and Cultural Dynamics - By Kailash C. Baral
No. 9 (2009)The present paper seeks to examine the theoretical problematics of translatability that arises in translating the oral into a target language (here English). Even if we overcome the problem of translatability there are other critical areas which need to be examined such as cultural specificity and the context of the folk. As a folk text is perpetually displaced and translation as such is provisional, the problem of standardization and interpretation remain areas of critical concern. As good translation endures and bad translation withers away what role do institutions such as a University department of Translation Studies or Folklore and an organization like the Sahitya Akademi play in producing meaningful, readable translation of the oral, working towards a post-colonial archive of the folk that is crucial in terms of cultural identity and cultural specificity in the contemporary context.
(Note: I have used oral and folk interchangeably in this paper.)
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Global Events and Local Narratives: 9/11 and the Picture Storytellers of Bengal - By Roma Chatterji
No. 9 (2009)This paper will examine the relativity of contexts produced through diverse mechanisms for interaction by using the example of the picture storytellers of Bengal (Chitrakaras) and their narrative scroll paintings depicting the 9/11 strikes at the World Trade Centre in New York. The Chitrakaras display the scroll along with a narrative constructed from newspaper and television reports and from other popular art forms such as the jatra. The narrative reveals a structure resembling the mythical narrative form mangala kavya that anchors the 9/11 event in a context that is locally intelligible and acceptable. Unlike other forms of mass media this traditional method of storytelling has the receptors actively participating in re-interpreting the event by re-locating it in mythical time. But myths cannot be self-consciously produced, they can only be re-produced or re-enacted. When retold as a myth, the 9/11 story does lose some of the unique features that make it a historic event. What it does acquire is a more universalistic dimension by focusing on human dilemmas and emotions. Thus the universal appeal of the Laden pata, even to those who are not familiar with the narrative tradition within which it is located, can be said to emanate from its ability to re-locate the global event in a local moral context
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Photo essay on Serpent God Worship Ritual in Kerala - Suresh Kumar
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)Serpent god worship is common in parts of India, like Kerala, Bengal and Karnataka. In Kerala, one way of worshiping serpent gods is by laying symmetrically designed floor drawings, that are called ‘Kalams’, with bright and colourful powders made from natural objects. Beautiful pictures of serpent gods are drawn using these powders on ground smeared with cow-dung in the first phase of the ritual. Following this, a senior priest consecrates the floor drawings and two types of physical performances follow. The three performances are orchestrated by wild rhythmic music, using folk instruments. In the next stage, a verbal recitation is followed by the main performance of the ritual, the dancing of the female oracles.
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Collective Memory and Reconstruction of Ho History - By Asoka Kumar Sen
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)Reconstruction of the history of the Ho, or of Adivasis in general, of erstwhile Singhbhum in Jharkhand has drawn heavily on colonial records and neglected oral sources, a neglect attributable to a ‘race-divisive historiography’ so far. The net result was the putative understanding that the Ho represented a pre-historic society. To situate the Ho in history, this essay invokes folklore and recorded collective memory, primarily to understand oral society’s strategy of codifying its past and to recapture the defining moment in indigenous collective life when they surrendered their itinerant life to found and people villages and socially formulate the norms of a collective life.
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American Public Folklore –History, Issues, Challenges - By Robert Baron
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)This overview of American public and applied folklore explores the development of ideas about public and applied folklore, along with government support for folk arts and folklife, over the past century and a half in the United States. The development of American public and applied folklore through several key periods in United States history and the shaping of an American national identity are narrated. The periods of mass interest in folk music, the formation of academic departments in the discipline and the impact of debates on Intellectual Property Rights on folklore are among the issues discussed.
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Children’s oral literature and modern mass media in India with special reference to gradual transformation in West Bengal - By Lopamudra Maitra
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)Literature for children in India draws heavily on mythological themes. This literature has been translated into various forms with the advancement of mass media in India. As digital technology takes over, stories in particular collections of children’s stories from Bengal, like the 100-years-old Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandmother’s Bag of Tales) are not exempt from change. Through the changes in time and modes of expression and the changes through transcribing and digitisation, however, one distinct quality makes these stories resemble their ancestors from the days of oral tradition - they continue the same process of learning and training of the younger generation.
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The Rajasthani Epic of Pābūjī - A Preliminary Ethnopoetic Analysis - By Heda Jason
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)A preliminary attempt is made to set the Epic of Pābūjī into classificatory schemes used in ethnopoetic research: (1) the system of genres; (2) the epic biographic tradition; and (3) epic and folktale content types. This preliminary attempt to set the Rajasthani vernacular epic into the classificatory framework of oral literature considers three classificatory frameworks: the genre of the work; the epic biographies of first- and second-generation protagonists; and the correspondence of the content of scenes and episodes to established epic and folktale content types.
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Make That Sesame on Rice, Please! Appetites of the Dead in Hinduism - By David M. Knipe
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)This paper documents the rituals of feeding the ‘the preta or jiva...that spirited entity that hovers, lingers, flits about after escaping from a useless body’ through the course of a Hindu funeral. The minutiae of the codes of stratification that accord special ‘unseeable’ status to the Brahmins who conduct the ritual and the menu of the food offerings – ranging from cereals to sweets to beverages – are listed. This list describes how food serves as a medium of vitality for the preta in transition between one life and the next and opens questions about the ‘life’ of the departed among the living.
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The Girl in the Rock: A Telangana Tale and Vasistha’s Retelling - By Katikaneni Vimala and Davis Shulman
Vol. 5 No. 8 (2008)The rock in the Telengana tale narrated in this article is friendly, allows transitions, shelters, nurtures and can accommodate two people quite comfortably within it. The literal power of the spoken word and the cultural anxieties around the maternal act of feeding a child are also touched upon in the analysis of the tale. The rock in another Indian tale, told by Vasistha in Sanskrit, then is taken up for scrutiny – again, it is an elastic, expansive space that possibly contains worlds within. The composite and porous rock brings to view a similar ‘self’, the authors note, underlining the role of imagination as a recalcitrant force that has the potential to create moments of wonder in both tales.
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Book Review of 'Authenticity and Cultural Identity: Performing Arts in Southeast Asia' - By Miki Sisco
Vol. 4 No. 7 (2007)(To be added)
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Book Review of 'Rajasthan: An Oral History: Conversations with Komal Kothari' - By Monika Dorna
Vol. 4 No. 7 (2007)(To be added)
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Book Review of 'Between Tongues: Translation and/of/in Performance in Asia' - By Ajum Hasan
Vol. 4 No. 7 (2007)(To be added)
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100 years of Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandmother’s Bag of Tales): From Oral Literature to Digital Media - Shaping Thoughts for the Young and Old - By Lopamudra Maitra
Vol. 4 No. 7 (2007)Storytelling has occupied an important place through time in cultures across the globe. The collection in Thakurmar Jhuli is classified into four distinct categories– Tales of adventures (Dudher Sagar), Tales of demons (Roop Tarashi), Animals and Humorous tales (Chang Bang), and Poems explaining the ritual of putting the children to sleep at the end of the stories (Aam Sandesh). This paper attempts to look into the aspects of transmission of these stories through the various media, the messages conveyed thereby and, the importance of the survival of oral tradition through changing media over a period of time. Thakurmar Jhuli is a compilation that is not limited to children alone, but over the years, has found tremendous response amongst the adults as well. This further tries to examine how these narratives serve as instruments of reinventing culture. Illustrations from the original printed publication is appended to this essay.
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The Drama of Folklore: Stories as Teachers - By Daniel A. Kelin
Vol. 4 No. 7 (2007)For modern children and youth, folklore can be dense, and full of references to traditions and practices that are no longer recognizable. However, when students engage in a process that brings them closer to the material, and into a deeper analysis of the folktale and its various meanings, then the stories themselves take on a greater relevance. Not only do the students come to comprehend the possible meanings better, but they also appreciate the subtleties of expression and language and enjoy them. As the twenty first century has solidified the importance of visual multimedia, young people require ways other than merely reading or listening to cultural literatures, in order to be welcomed into and intrigued by these folkloric worlds. This article posits that process-oriented drama offers an effective method to engage participants in exploring folklore, keeping the process surprising, mysterious and stimulating, and encouraging the students to be collaborators in their own learning. Included are descriptions of the author’s own work with children and folklore, and examples of research studies that show the effectiveness of integrating drama into classroom studies.
