Familiarity and Hope - Reading Santal and Nishnaabeg creation stories (original) (raw)
Related papers
Binti: Re-Thinking Santal Identity through the Creation Myth
Lokaratna, 2019
Santals are one of the highly significant and well-studied tribes of India which belongs to ProtoAustoroid community. (Guha, 1944). Creation myths of Santals revolve around the creation of the world from the perspective of cosmology. Since the creation myths of santals are of human civilization, it is important to look at the genesis of oral narratives on creation to trace the historiography of the Santal tribe and their culture. At this juncture, most of the tribal communities have been listed as endangered (Census 2011); scholars of humanities and social sciences in the contemporary scenario have started focusing on studying and preserving the tribal languages and cultures in India. There have been several translations of the santal literature, scholarships such as W.H.Archer’sThe Blue Groove, SitakantMahapatra’sThe Awakened Wind: The Oral Poetry of the Indian Tribes. The scholarship has been focusing to locate and validate the tribal literature as a genre. Santals are rich in oral narratives such as songs, poems, and stories on cultivation, nature, marriage, and festivals but there is a lack of knowledge about the dawn of human civilisation among the tribal scholarship. Since tribal community have come in contact with several amalgamations of the colonial penetration, Hindu institution of idol worship, Christian missionaries, and the dawn of technological advancement, it is important to be aware of one’s root in order to conquer the identity conflict among the tribals. There are several variations on the Santal creation myth, particularly in the process of telling, retelling and sharing across generations and shifting socio-cultural environment. The study seeks to move backward to the inception of the world as believed by the Santal tribe, focusing on Binti, literally translated as ‘prayer’ or ‘plea’, a song of cosmology, generally recited by a group of three or more singers at marriage ceremonies. This study primarily examines the creation myth called ‘Binti’, documented and translated into English by Sitakant Mahapatra in his work ‘The Awakened Wind: The Oral Poetry of the Indian Tribes’ focusing on re-stabilizing tribal identity and analyses the Santal folklore tradition, oral narratives as performative arts and creation myths in translation from the aspect of ethnic culture and its significance among Santals. The paper also focuses on the historiography of the Santal world view and Santal culture. Keywords: Santal tribe, Binti, Creation Myth, Tribal Culture, Identity.
Moving Identities: The Jadopatia, the Santals and the Myth of Creation
The myth of creation is a central locus for Santal identity. In their aspiration for the Jharkhand state, and greater autonomy within the Indian nation, the Santals have found a wellspring of rich material for their identity creation in the legacy of the Scandinavian Santal mission. Written ethnographic accounts by the Norwegian missionaries Skrefsrud and Bodding have beyond doubt had a certain influence on the popular myth of creation among the Santals. The scroll painting Jadopatias have understood the great importance that the Santals places upon the creation myth. Thus the scroll painters have made an effort to connect themselves to the authorities of this tradition in various ways to collect knowledge about the creation myth, oral or written. Having acquired this knowledge, imbibing their scrolls with this theme and including themselves in the myth of creation the Jadopatias have gained respect among the Santals. In this article, I explore some contexts and sites where the Santal myth of creation plays an important role. My main aim here is to explore some implications of the various adaptations of the oral and written forms of the Santal myth of creation in the wake of modernity, and then connect these insights to some aspects of the work the Jadopatias perform among the Santals REINTERPRETING ADIVASI (INDIGENOUS PEOPLES) MOVEMENTS IN SOUTH ASIA *** AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD IN RECOGNITION OF THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE SANTAL REBELLION CENTRE FOR WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX 21st – 23rd MARCH 2005
A study of Santals as children of nature in the light of Santal folktales
Research Journal in Advanced Humanities
South Asian nations are home to the Santal tribe. Even though they are dispersed over several nations, most of the Santal are found in India and Bangladesh. The Santal people describe themselves largely as natural beings. This assertion has found support from some scholars who have analysed the Santal rituals and festivals. However, very few studies have tried to define the identity of the Santals from a literary perspective. Therefore, by examining their folktales, this article aims to demonstrate the idea that the Santal are children of nature. The study was guided by The National Folklore Theory, Cultural Functional Theory, and Theory of Reality. The qualitative research was based on a textual analysis of 27 Santal folktales. The rationale of this paper is that Santal folktales serve as a repository of knowledge about their customs, cultures and identities. From the study findings, it is clear that the Santals live in and through nature. They have such intimate relations with nat...
CONSTRUCTION OF THE SELF IN THE FOLKLORES OF THE SANTHALS
International Journal St Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Vol.2, no 1, 2016
Since the beginning of the universe, man has engaged himself in struggles with nature and his surroundings. His constant struggle with his environment in different parts of the world has shaped his lifestyles, manners, literatures, and institutions over the ages. With the growth of industrial civilization and urbanization, the tribal groups all over the world have undergone transformations to cope with changes and to retain their cultural identity and self in the world. Their folklores in the form of myths, legends, stories, songs, etc. which are mainly preserved in oral tradition and are less recorded, give a startling portrait of how they have constructed their "self" amidst many hostile circumstances. These folklores interest not only the anthropologists but also the literary researchers. Folklores, being the knowledge of a group of people, not only distinguish one tribal group from another but also establish their identity and self as different from the non-tribal groups. The present paper attempts to examine selected folklores of the Santhal tribal community in and around the districts of Mayurbhanj and Sundergarh of Orissa. It is anchored with the general view that construction of identity through folklores is a vital part of the life skills of almost all tribal communities as they run the risk of gradual extinction in the face of growing urbanization and industrialization. It, therefore, makes clear that the life and culture of the Santhal tribe represent different types and stages of primitive culture, and it exemplifies how self is constructed through culture as represented in their folklores.
ARCHETYPAL STUDY OF SANTAL FOLKTALES
tribhuvan university,nepal, 2017
I have studied the santal folktale using the concept of jung,frye,and campbell.i explore the archetypal motifs in selected santal folktale of santal pargana,india and jhapa district of nepal.i also collected some folktale and creation myth of santal popular in jhapa, ,nepal.
Santal Bongas - Their Abode in a Santal Settlement: Man-Nature-Spirit Relationship
Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 2015
The Santai is numerically largest homogeneous tribal community in India. The Santai has a rich oral history of formation of universe and the settlement. The Santai settlement is a portrait of the human existence within the nature bounded by its spirit world. The paper attempts to highlight the Man-Nature-Spirit relationship in the context of village Madarpur in birbhum District of West Bengal based on a study took place within 2012 to recent period.
A Visual Journey into Santal Village Life
The authors have primarily selected Rasunchopa village, situated at a distance of 27 kms from the steel city of Jamshedpur, in the Potka Block of East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. This village is famous as a heritage of rich Santal culture. To capture the nuances of their rural life, the authors make a double journey as if, travels into the village from Jamshedpur to conduct the field work for collection of materials through photography and interview, followed by a journey through time to capture the dialectics of Santal life. This presentation is divided into two interlinked facets of Santal life, that of a familial home and the community home, that is the village. The visual journey is complemented by suitable narratives for a closer understanding of Santal rusticity.
Journal of adivasi and Indigenous Studies X,1: 2020
I argue that, rather than representing the hegemonic worldview in colonial times, the Scandinavian Santal Mission in its early phase was based on counter-hegemonic and egalitarian ideas. Its main ideologist, Lars Olaf Skrefsrud, came from Norway, which was engaged in its own struggle for independence. I try to show that the countryside he came from was hardly more 'advanced' than the Santal country, thus negating the 'evoltionary gap' often thought to exist between missionaries and their converts - with one important exception: the Norwegian peasantry was already literate. I argue that the Mission's early success was partly due to an egalitarian ideology which resembled that of the santals themselves, and that the failure of the Mission to continue its success in the 1890s was due to a new, authoritarian strain. The Santals, eatrly on, felt they could use the mission for their own purposes: later, their goals and that of the Mission diverged.