MEG- 16 Block-2 Identity and Hybridity : Kshetra and Desha Notes for Blocks 5-7
MEG-16 Block-2
Folklore is an expression of our existence, with folk paintings, narratives, language, culture and literature. Until about 4000 BC, all literature was basically folk literature due to their orality. Writing developed in the years between 4000 and 3000 BC, in both Egypt and the Mesopotamian civilizations at Sumer. Thereafter, the written literature spread rapidly from Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean lands to the rest of the world.
concepts of ‘Kshetra’, a cultural construct, and ‘Desha’, a political construct.
UNIT 5 FOLK LANGUAGE AS A Repository of Culture REPOSITORY OF CULTURE
On the one hand, the folk has been hailed as national treasure in keeping with the temper of nationalism; on the other hand, they have been wrongly identified with the illiterate and the uneducated in a so called literate and educated society.
Communication and Oral Literature
Any act of linguistic communication entails the presence of an emitter and a receiver.The chain of communication remains incomplete without this preliminary connection. The relation could be passive or active.
The “oral formulaic theory”. This was a theory developed by Milman Parry and Albert Lord. they did not require memorizing word-for-word or writing them down.t through it one could pin down a certain set of unique and identifiable characteristics to the oral and by extension, the folk.here is then an absence of a single correct version of oral literature.
Folk Productions
Folklore, to the anthropologist, is a part of culture but not the whole of culture. It includes myths, legends, tales, proverbs, riddles, the texts of ballads and other songs, and other forms of lesser importance, but not folk art, folk dance, folk music, folk costume, folk medicine, folk custom, or folk belief.
All folklore is orally transmitted, but not all that is orally transmitted is folklore.Folklore
(a) is orally transmitted (mostly),
(b) can be found anywhere,
(c) is found among so called ‘primitive’ or ‘civilized’ cultures (it is better to do away with this widely accepted very problematic binary)
(d) is found in ‘urban’ or ‘rural’ societies.
Folk Speech
Folk speech comprises words or phrases used by members of a group sharing an understanding of each other’s meanings. According to Dundes, folk speech could include chants, charms, oaths, teases, toasts, tongue-twisters, retorts, folk similes, folk metaphors, nicknames, autograph-book verse, epitaphs, latrinalia (writings on public bathroom walls), limericks.
It is transferred from one generation to another. Occasionally, the same word or phrase may be used to communicate different meanings to different folk groups but at a given time and place it is intricately connected to the setting of that particular group.
Social Dimensions of Folklore
Folklore performs a socializing function. It creates a sense of group identity.
The manifestations of this folk culture (of humour) were divided by Bakhtin into three forms:
1) Ritual spectacles (carnival pageants, comic shows of the marketplace)
2) Comic verbal compositions (parodies both oral and written, in Latin and in the vernacular)
3) Various genres of billingsgate (curses, oaths, popular blazons).
UNIT 6 FOLKLORE AS AN EXPRESSION OF EXISTENCE
What is folklore?
folklore is “the body of customs, beliefs, stories, and sayings associated with people, thing, or place.”
Sources of Folklore
Puranas, Rigveda, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Upanishadas are the store houses of Indian civilization. Narayan Pandit’s Hitopadesha, Brihatkatha by Gunadhya, Kathasaritasagara of Somdeva, Vetal Paanchvi Mashti of Shivada, and Sukhsaptati and Jataka Tales are the finest examples of folk Indian literature.
Folklore Scholarship
Explorations by Christian missionaries, scholars with nationalistic intentions, and academic researchers were the three distinct stream of efforts made in folklore studies. Due to the ignorance and exoticness of Indian folklore the missionaries missed the precise comprehension of Indian ethos and culture yet it offers the first hand collection of stories and knowledge of Indian life with highest exactitude.
CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIAN FOLKLORE:
1-Pan Indian Folklore and Multiplicity
All Indian folklore stories project the popular belief and superstitious practices of the people.
Collectiveness as an overriding theme in Folklore
Collectiveness as a group or community is so overriding a factor in folk literature that its writers have rarely claimed the authorship of the piece of writing as it was believed to be the property of a group and it was far away from the modern day intellectual property rights.
Unique judicial system and folklore
The pan Indian folktales are the repository of one of the finest, unique and impartial judicial system and they also uncover the way India honed the judicial talent of the kings in general and parents and panchayat members in particular
Folklore and coexistence
positive glorification of human relation with nature, multiple ways to lead peaceful life in accordance with nature and potent ways of minimizing evil in life and living life in accordance with all lives existing on earth. In short the slogan: coexistence is at the center of folklore.
Unique Language system
The idea here in folklore is not to impress upon the elite highly qualified readers but to reach out to the masses in the language of masses. Hence the simplified day to day used language of the peasants with high value of life skills, morals, mythological, religious stories narrated in the common language is the noticeable feature of folk literature.
SAINT MOVEMENTS AND FOLKLORE IN MAHARASHTRA ‘
The integral members of the Saints Movement, Saint Chokhamela, Saint Namdev and Saint Tukaram have always relied on innumerable songs like Abhang, Bharud, Gavalan to effectively reach to the common masses in the language understandable to them. These visionary saints of Maharashtra consciously avoided the standard dialects of Marathi and Sanskrit which was beyond the reach of peasants and attempted rustic language the language of masses thereby carving the special space for rich folk tradition in Maharashtra, predominantly focusing on social awakening, ethics and morality in life and persuading people towards sanctified way of life.
UNIT 7 FOLK PAINTINGS: VISUAL NARRATIVES
Folk paintings’ and visual narratives, the common element that binds the folk across time and space is the desire, the passion to make images.
folk painting in Madhya Pradesh itself: Gond painting and Bhil painting.
Prehistoric Rock painting
Prehistoric rock painting of the world covers a span of 35,000 years, and traces the art of the people from the Stone Age to that of prehistoric time. Prehistoric cave paintings are found in Africa, Australia, Europe, North and South America, South East Asia and East Asia.
The two excellent prehistoric painting sites in India are the Bhimbetka caves and Jogimara caves in Madhya Pradesh.
Bhimbetka - ‘natural art gallery’
Discovered - 1957. The rock paintings have several layers. Each layer is from a different era, from the upper Paleolithic to Mesolithic to prehistoric to the medieval age. Many a times, new paintings were painted on top of an older painting. The fact that the same ‘canvas’ was used by different people at different times has been authenticated by the superimposition of paintings. There are variations in the thematic and stylistic aspects in the art which also tell us about the chronology of the painting. Mostly red and white sometimes green and yellow.
hunting, chasing of animals by humans, animal fights, dancing, elephant and horse riders, humans collecting honey, decoration of bodies, disguises, masks and different type of animals such as bison, tiger, rhinoceros, wild boar, elephants, monkeys, antelopes and peacocks. It also portrays social life.
human figures that are stick-like. Geometric patterns fill many of them. Interestingly, the hunters are in red and dances have been portrayed in green.the sizes of the animals decreased with the invention of weapons.
Paints were made by grinding various colored stones. Red and white seem to be their favorite colours. The colour red was obtained from ‘geru’, that is from ‘hematite’, white from limestone, and green from a green coloured rock called ‘chalcedony’. They would also prepare colours by combining manganese, hematite, red stone, and wooden charcoal. And some sticky matter like animal fat or gum or resin from trees may have been used while mixing rock powder with water.
Gond Painting: The Living Tradition
communities like the Gonds and the Bhils who live in the same state of Madhya Pradesh and whose images reflect the connection with the images on the rocks.
The Gonds are the largest Adivasi community in India and they are of Dravidian origin. They lived in the deep forests of Vindhya, Satpura and Mandala by the Narmada region of the Amarkantak region for eons. They are known for their rich cultural legacy which finds expression in their narratives, dance forms, music and art. The word ‘Adivasi’ implies that they are the original inhabitants of the land and the history of Adivasis dates back to the pre-Aryan era. It was during the colonial period that the Adivasis were given the designation of ‘Tribal’ and then in post-independence India, they were classified as scheduled tribes. The problem arises when the ‘tribe’ is not considered a ‘type of society’, and is relegated to a ‘stage of evolution’. This implies that the cultural practices of the community are in danger of extinction
It was in 1984 that J. Swaminathan, the artist who was the director of Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal then, was passionately in search of Adivasi artists in Madhya Pradesh. He was building Rupankar where he wanted to display the works of urban artists and Adivasi artists on the same platform. He had sent his students to different villages in Dindori district where they located many young men and women with great creative talents. One of them was Jangarh Singh Shyam who was an exceptionally brilliant artist, the image on the walls of his house bearing testimony to his creative genius. He was equally enthusiastic about coming to Bhopal to try out the new medium of painting. And once he came to Bhopal and created a space not for only himself but also for many Gond artists,
Gond painting is found on the outer and inner walls and floors of their houses. Today’s genre of Gond painting has its roots in Nohadora, Digna, and Bhittichitra. Nohadora is painted on the outer walls of the Gond house and it is during the Chedta festival that they bind the house with it. They first dip their three fingers into cow dung and then put dots on the walls, in the shape of a tiger’s front paw imprint. Chedta festival is associated with harvesting and children collecting food grains from each household sit in the open and cook it and eat it together in great joy. It is believed that tigers generally enter the village during this time at night. Therefore the practice was to paint nohadora around the house so that tigers would not come near. It is believed that nohadora protected them from tigers. Digna is painted on the inner walls and floors during weddings and other festive occasions. It is a geometric pattern, a chowk that is painted on the wall or floor, after plastering them with cow dung. The digna pattern has evolved from nohadora and gradually more complex motifs emerged. J. Swaminathan writes in Perceiving Fingers: The commonly found motif in Gond wall painting of the triangle used in inverted juxtaposition in panels as border around the wall symbolizes the male and female principles of creation and the abstract geometric design in yellow, red, and black or indigo lends an auspicious air to the frugality of the Gond hut. Bhittichitra is the image of an animal, plant, or tree that is painted on the walls of the Gond house. During any festive occasion like marriage, Diwali or Dussehra, the walls of Gond houses are plastered with yellow or white clay and cow dung mixture. The Gond women then paint the inner and outer walls of their houses with digna and bhitti chitra. Vegetable and mineral dyes are used for colors – flowers, leaves, clay stones, rice, and turmeric. Brushes are handmade, made from a neem or twig and a rag.
Bhil painting: Traditional
The Bhil community is an ancient people, older than the Dravidians. They were referred to as ‘Nishada’ which did not indicate a particular tribe, rather to all the non Aryan tribes who were not under Aryan control.It is believed that the word Bhil has come from a Dravidian word ‘villa’ which means ‘bow’ and that was the characteristic weapon of the Bhils.
During festive occasions, the Bhil women create images on the walls of their houses and they call them Bhittichitra. They would plaster the walls with cow dung and then would make images with natural colours. They also use cow dung to make wall reliefs around their huts, which enhance the aesthetic appeal.
The Bhils in Madhya Pradesh paint the ‘Pithora’ which is a ritual wall painting. This ritual painting is done to invoke Pithoro, the deity of fertility and prosperity.
________________________________________________________________________
Comments
Post a Comment