IGNOU MEG-16 BLOCK 4 FOLKTALES OF INDIA: MOTIFS, MODES AND MORE Notes

 MEG-16 BLOCK 4 FOLKTALES OF INDIA: MOTIFS, MODES AND MORE

Folk in modern Indian literature can be seen in two categories — first, as a conceptualization of people, and second, in its nature and use of folk narratives in literature. Both these processes are interrelated.

UNIT 13 FOLKTALES FROM INDIA BY A. K. A.K. Ramanujan RAMANUJAN

ABOUT A. K. RAMANUJAN 

Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1959 -1993) was a trans-disciplinary scholar, poet, translator, linguist, philologist, playwright and folklorist. He received his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Mysore in 1949 and 1950 respectively.In 1956, he met Edwin Kirkland of the University of Florida, who encouraged him to send his translations of Kannada tales for publication in the United States. A few years later, he went to Indiana University to study Folklore and Linguistics. He received his doctorate in 1963 and joined as a faculty at the University of Chicago. He also taught for 30 years in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilization. In three decades, he inspired a generation of scholars.

1. Mother Marries the Son

2. Brother’s day

3. Bopoluchi

4. Akbar birbal

5. A Malcontent Cured

6. The Four Jogis Santali

7. The World and the Other

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UNIT 14 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG BY A.K. Ramanujan VERRIER ELWIN

Verrier Elwin, the well known anthropologist, writer, and activist, came to India as a British missionary, with a view to bring in change in the “primitive” world. It did not take much time for his perspective to undergo a transformation when he came in contact with the Adivasi community.

Verrier Elwin had collected stories during his journeys in the hills and forests in India over a period of thirty years and had published almost two thousand of them in his five collections: Folktales of Mahakoshal, Myths of Middle India, Tribal Myths of Orissa, Myths of the North-East Frontiers of India and the Baiga.

1. “THE BEGINNING OF THINGS” - In part one, Verrier Elwin had documented some of the tales which focus on the origin motif. Each tale is imaginatively related to the origin of an element that had gone into making this stupendous Universe from Baiga tribes in Madhya Pradesh.

1. - The Making of the World (Baiga from MP)

2. - The Origin of the Sun and the Moon(Minyongs who live by the river Siang in the north east frontier)

3. -  The Origin of Lightning and Thunder (1 from orissa 2nd from north east)

4. -The Origin of Rainbow (north east)

5. - The Origin of Snow(NE)

6. -The Origin of the Rivers(NE & Orissa)

7. - The Origin of the Earthquake(Baigas)

2. THE FIRST MEN - the second one focuses on the “first men”, how men lost their tails, how they began to talk and many more related ideas which dwelt in the world of fantasy.

1.  How Men lost their Tails(Orissa)

2. The Little Men (Murias of Bastar)

3. The First Eyes

4. How Human Beings Began to Talk

5. Big Ears

6. The Women with Beards

7. When Life was Dull

3. DISCOVERIES In this section, there are tales about discoveries and inventions: of house, fire, hammer and tongs, clothes, tobacco, dance.

1. How to Build a House(Saoras in Orissa )

2. Hammer and Tongs

3. Making of Clothes(Mishmis of north-eastern India )

4. How Fire was Discovered (Central India, in Kawardha)

5. Tobacco Discovery

6. Dance (The Gonds)

4. Talking animals(Orissa)

1. The Frog and the Monkey

2.  The Two Friends

3. The Flying Elephants

4. The Snake Husband

5. ADVENTURES IN A MAGIC WORLD

1. The Hospitable Birds

6. THE END OF THINGS

1. How Death Came to the World

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UNIT 15 MYTHS OF MIDDLE INDIA BY by Verrier Elwin VERRIER ELWIN

Who are the ‘Folk’ in Literature?

 “folk” means “people in general”. it means “people of a particular type or from a particular place” non-literate: they cannot read and write, and their learning is dependent on what they see and hear, remember, imitate and create.

What is ‘Folk’ in Literature?

the myths of middle India as recorded by Verrier Elwin in his monograph Myths of Middle India. He was a British national who came to India at the time of the Indian freedom struggle and after a lot of soul searching, declared himself a “philanthropologist”, and lived on in India to work with the tribal people, first in central and then in eastern and north-east India.

Verrier Holman Elwin was born at Dover in Kent, England, on 29 August 1902, the first of three children of Edmund Henry Elwin and Minnie Elwin. + 1 brother and 1 sister. Edmund Henry Elwin studied at Merton College, Oxford, and was subsequently ordained in 1894. He was initially appointed curate of the Oxford parish of St. Peter-le-Bailey

Elwin reached the CSS ashram in 1927. He returned briefly to England in 1928. When he came back to India in 1929, India was in turmoil, and by early 1930, with Gandhi announcing his Salt Satyagraha, the CSS(british govt) had to take a position regarding which side it was on, and Elwin, who was then the acting acharya, sided with Gandhi and his concerns.

Initially, Elwin was much influenced by Gandhi’s teachings and personality. However, in course of time, unable to reconcile the tribal scenario and his personal life with Gandhian precepts, Elwin staked out an independent path of his own.

A tribal friend, Panda Baba, introduced him to the Baiga tribe in 1934. Moved by their plight in the face of the advancement of modern civilization, Elwin wrote to the administrative authorities, But the more he tried to get people involved with this issue, the more he realized that both the “colonial state and the national intelligentsia… seemed to think of the ‘forest people as mere cipher in the population of India’’

It is around this time that Elwin published Songs of the Forest, documenting the “vivid folk- of the Mandla tribals” (Guha 98) and Leaves from the Jungle, which is a “defense of tribal life. The success of the two works, particularly the latter, set Verrier Elwin well and truly on his path and he became a philanthropist.

Work- s, Phulmat of the Hills (1937) and A Cloud That’s Dragonish (1938), The Baiga(1936), Folk-tales of Mahakoshal, Folk-Songs of the Maikal Hills, Folk-Songs of Chhattisgarh

In 1940, Elwin, then thirty-seven years of age, got married to Kosi, a thirteen-year old Raj Gond tribal girl, and had two children, Kumar (also referred to as Jawahar) and Vijay. They were divorced in 1949. Elwin, left his job, felt “deeply vulnerable in the India of 1948 and 1949. He left for England the same year, but was put out by the situation there as well. He returned in 1949, and thereafter started living-in with Kachari, the daughter of a Pradhan Gond tribal chieftain from Patnagarh, whom he later named Lila. They were formally married in 1953 and had three children, Ashok, Wasant and Nakul.

He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1961.Elwin passed away in 1964 in New Delhi.

Tribes -communities lived in forests for thousands of years, having occasional or sometimes no contact with societies extant then.

Middle India - the southern part of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra and Goa,

and parts of Orissa, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as well.

Myth: Myths are narratives that deal with the origin of the world or of a people, their gods, demi-gods and heroes, how the present order was established, and so on.

The Structure and Content of the Text

It contains 537 myths in story form dealing with twenty three large topics, which are classed into four broad divisions: 

• 1) Man and the Universe (the creation of the world and mankind; sun, moon and stars; air and water; fire) 

• 2) The Natural World (metals and minerals; grass, flowers and trees; arthropods; reptiles; fish; birds; mammals) 

• 3) Human Life (the human body; the invention of implements; food; tobacco; mahua spirit; disease; psycho-pathology: the vagina dentata legend; the coming of death)

•  4) Human Institutions (some aspects of religion; witchcraft and magic; custom and taboo; festival, dance and song)

1) Man and the Universe 

This is an Agaria myth from Kareli, Madhya Pradesh which deals with the creation of the world and mankind.

2) The Natural World 

This is a Dhulia myth from Karondi, Madhya Pradesh that deals with trees.

This is a Bhaina myth from Kenda Zamindari

Maria myth from Lakhopal, Bastar State

3) Human Life 

This is a Kahar myth from Khuria, Bilaspur district, Madhya Pradesh that deals with the human body.

Chokh Agaria myth from Thanakar, Bilaspur district, Madhya Pradesh

4) Human Institutions

This is a Muria myth from Palari, Bastar state that deals with the coming of death.

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UNIT 16 MANOJ DAS’S TALES TOLD BY Verrier Elwin MYSTICS AND THE LADY WHO DIED ONE AND A HALF TIMES AND OTHER FANTASIES

Manoj Das is an award winning and internationally recognized writer, columnist, editor, philosopher, educationist. He writes in Odia and English. As a bilingual writer, he has nine novels, nineteen short story collections, six travelogues, two collections of poetry, and several other writings on history and culture to his credit.

Work- , Tales Told by Mystics (2001) and The Lady who Died one and a Half Times and other Fantasies (2003)

• Tales told by Mystics Tales Told by Mystics authenticates Manoj Das a seeker of truth, justice and enlightenment.

The Lady Who Died One and a Half Times and Other Fantasies - consists of twelve short stories. The first five are rooted in the Odia folk-story, reconstructing some of the stories from the Panchatantra, the Jatakas and the Kathasaritasagar.

1. The lady who died one and a half times

2. “The Last Demoness”(Jataka Katha)

3. The Lion Who Sprang to Life after a Century (Panchatantra)

4. “Jewels from the Sky”

5. “The Last Night” (Panchatantra)

6. “The Tiger and the Traveller” (PTR)

7. “A Turtle from the Blue”

8. “The Stupid Servant” 

9. “Story of a Strange Last Journey”

10. “The princess and The Story Teller”

11. “He Who Rode the Tiger”

12. “Sharma and The Wonderful Lump”

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UNIT 17 THE LEGENDS OF PENSAM BY MAMANG DAI

Mamang Dai is a poet, novelist and freelance reporter. Dai is principally known as a creative writer and a historian who writes about Arunachal Pradesh.

Work -Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land, a documentation of the culture and tradition of a state about which not much is known, and Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal Pradesh. Her creative writing includes two novels, The Legends of Pensam (2006) and Stupid Cupid (2009), two volumes of poetry titled The River Poems (2004) and El bálsamo del tiempo (The Balm of Time, bilingual edition, 2008), and two illustrated books of folktales for children titled Sky Queen (2005) and Once Upon a Moon Time (2005). 

Arunachal Pradesh … is one of the largest states in the country, and also one of the greenest. It is the homeland of twenty-six tribes with over one hundred and ten subclans, each with a different language or dialect.

The Legends of Pensam is a series of interconnected stories divided into four sections titled 

1. “a diary of the world”,  4 parts

2. “song of the rhapsodist”, 4 prts

3. “daughters of the village” 5 parts

4. “a matter of time”. 5 parts

Issues:

1. 
   

2. The title of the book, the titles of the four sections and of the stories within them are in lower case

3. Instead of a single protagonist around whom the story of a novel usually revolves, the focus here is on an entire community, the Adis

4. there are a series of stories that are disparate, yet interconnected

The four parts of the work trace the history of the evolution and growth of the region. The first part deals with the generation that existed before the colonizers came in. The second part outlines the coming of the colonizers and the changes that were occasioned due to this. The third part outlines the lives and experiences of the generation that grows up after the advent of the migluns, as their world opens up and they have access to education and professional opportunities. The last part outlines the effect of modernity on contemporary society.