Introduction

The roots of India’s literary traditions can be traced to the rich oral literatures of the
tribes/adivasis. Usually in the form of songs or chanting, these verses are expressions of close
contact between the world of nature and that of tribal existence. These verses have been orally
transmitted over generations and have survived for ages. However, a large number of these are
already lost due to the very fact of their orality. The forces of urbanisation, print culture and
commerce have resulted in not just the marginalisation of these communities but also of the
language and literary cultures.

Though some attempts have been made for the collection and conservation of tribal languages
and literatures, without more concerted efforts at an accelerated pace we are in danger of losing
an invaluable part of our history and the rich literary heritage.

Immense diversity exist among tribal groups. Inevitably influenced by this specific historical,
cultural and geographical locations, tribal societies continue to retain and reproduce their
distinctive traditions, which usually find expression through their different languages. Although
they possess very specific languages, most tribal societies are bilingual.
The tribals have a close connection with nature as it is evident from their belief in the
interdependence between human beings and nature. Nature for them is living and responsive to
human existence and human actions, demanding respect essential for any kind of coexistence.

Translation involves some loss of the original flavour and spirit.

‘Introduction’ to Painted words

GN DEVY

How is tribal imagination radically different from that of modern Indian society?
Most tribal communities in India are culturally similar to tribal communities elsewhere in the
world. They live in groups that are cohesive and organically unified. They show very little
interest in accumulating wealth or in using labour as a device to gather interest and capital.
They accept a worldview in which nature, man and God are intimately linked, and they believe
in the human ability to spell and interpret truth. They live more by intuition than reason, they
consider the space around them more sacred than secular, and their sense of time is personal
rather than objective. The world of the tribal imagination, therefore, is radically different from that
of modern Indian society.

The tribal imagination,is to a large extent dreamlike and hallucinatory.' It admits fusion between
various planes of existence and levels of time in a natural way. In tribal stories, oceans fly in the
sky as birds, mountains swim in the water as fish, animals speak as humans and stars grow like
plants. Spatial order and temporal sequence do not restrict the narrative. This is not to say
that tribal creations have no conventions or rules, but simply that they admit the principle of
association between emotion and the narrative motif.Thus stars, seas, mountains, trees, men
and animals, can be angry, sad or happy.

Space and time:

It might be said that tribal artists work more on the basis of their racial memory (a supposedly
inherited subconscious memory of events in human history or prehistory) and sensory
memory than on the basis of cultivated imagination.
In order to understand this distinction, we must understand the difference between imagination
and memory. In The animate world, consciousness meets two immediate material realities:
space & time. We put meaning into space by perceiving it in terms of images. The power of
imagination helps us understand the space that envelops us. In the case of time, we make
connections with the help of memory; one remembers being the same person as one was
yesterday.

Tribal community has a more acute sense of time than that of space. Along the course of
history, tribal communities seem to have realised that domination over territorial space was not
their lot. Thus, they seem to have turned obsessively to gaining domination over time. This urge
is substantiated in their ritual of conversing with their dead ancestors ( they worship terracotta
objects representing their ancestors and enter a trance-like state to talk to their ancestors). An
amazingly sharp memory has helped tribals classify materials and natural objects into a highly
complex system of knowledge. The importance of memory in tribal systems of knowledge
has not been sufficiently recognised.

A vast number of Indian languages have yet remained only spoken, with the result that literary
compositions in these languages are not considered literature. They are a feast for the folklorist,
anthropologist and linguist, but to the literary critic generally mean nothing. These oral epics
often bind several Indian nomadic communities. The wealth and variety of these works are so
enormous that one discovers their neglect with the sense of pure shame.

Unless we modify the established notion of literature as something written, we will silently
observes witness the decline of various Indian oral traditions.

Characteristics of tribal arts:

1. they have a distinct manner of constructing space and imagery, which may be described
as hallucinatory. In both oral and visual forms of representation, tribal artists seem to
interpret verbal or pictorial space demarcated by an extremely flexible ‘frame’. The
boundaries between art and non art become almost invisible.
2. Within the narrative itself, or within the narrative itself, or within the painted imagery,
there is no deliberate attempt to follow a sequence. The episodes resold and the
images created take on the apparently chaotic shapes of dreams.
3. The ordering principles are very strict. The most important principle is convention.
Every tribal performance and creation has at its back another such performance or
creation belonging to a previous occasion. The creativity of the tribal artist lies in
 adhering to the past whole at the same time slightly subverting it. The
subversions are more playful than ironic.
4. Playfulness is the soul of tribal arts. Though oral and pictorial tribal art creations are
intimately related to rituals, they never assume a serious or pretentious tone. The artist
rarely plays the role of the creator. Even heroes are not spared the occasional shock
of artist’s humour.
5. One reason for this unique mixture of the scared and the ordinary may be that tribal
works of art are not created specifically for sale. Artists do expect certain amount of
patronage from the community, like artists in any other context; but since those who
perform the rituals are very often the artists themselves, there is no element of
competition in the patron-artist relationship. The tribal arts are therefore relaxed,
never tended.
6. Are tribal arts static or dynamic? A general misconception is that the orally
transmitted arts are entirely tradition-bound, with little scope for individual
experimentation beyond the small freedom to distort the previously created text. This
misconception arises from the habit of seeing art only with the reference to the text
but the tribal arts involve not just text but performance and audience reception as
well. Experimentations in tribal arts can be understood only when approached as
performing arts.

Non tribals usually fail to notice that all of India’s tribal communities are basically bilingual. All
bilingual communities have an innate capacity to assimilate outside influences, and in this case
a highly evolved mechanism for responding to the non tribal world.

7. Tribal oral stories and songs employ bilingualism in such a complex manner that a
linguist who is not alert to this complexity is in danger of dismissing the tribal language
altogether as dialects of India’s major tongues.
8. When the works of contemporary Indian writers— who inherit a multilingual tradition
several thousand years old—were classified as ‘new literature’, western academics had
no idea how comical this looked to the literary community in India. Hence it is necessary
to assert that literature of the Adivasis is not a new ‘movement’ or a fresh ‘trend’ in
the field of literature; most people have simply been unaware of its existence, and that
is not the fault of the tribals themselves. And to hear tribal speech not as a dialect but as
a language. This may seem unconventional, but recall that scripts themselves are
relatively new, and that the printing of literary text goes no further back than a few
centuries—in comparison with creative experiments with human ability to produce
speech in such way that it transcends time.

Crux of the essay:

GN DEVY discusses the need to create a space for the study of tribal literature within the
framework of colonised written texts. What he argues for is the need for a new method to
identify and read literature in which orality is not dismissed as casual utterances in different
dialects
A Munda Song
Written in Mundari

Note on the Munda Tribe

The Munda tribals live in parts of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh
and Orissa. They are also known as Horohon or Mura, meaning headman of a village. They are
one of the most studied tribal communities of India.
The Munda are probably the first of the adivasis to resist colonialism and they revolted
repeatedly over agrarian issues. The Tamar insurrection of 1819–20 protested against the
break-up of their agrarian system. In their quest to establish Munda Raj and reform their society
to enable it to cope with the challenges of time, they organised the famous millennial movement
under Birsa Munda (1874– 1901) where their leaders used ‘both Hindu and Christian idioms to
create a Munda ideology and worldview’. However, the uprising was quelled by the British.

Note on the Munda Song

Many ceremonies and rituals of the Munda are associated with birth, death and marriage.
Living in close harmony with nature, their lives are synchronised with the changing rhythms of
nature, the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun and so on, and not by clock time. The
selected Munda song is sung to rhythmic folk tunes at the birth of a son or daughter and
invariably communicates their close association with nature. Cattle set off to the pastures in the
morning and return to their sheds at sundown. The birth of a daughter is associated with a
cowshed full of cows and that of the son with its depletion. Clearly the daughter is considered
to be a more precious asset than the son. This is probably because, in Munda society, the
women have a dominant role to play in the various economic, social and ritual activities.

A Kondh song
Translated from original Kondh

A note on the Kondh tribe

The term ‘Kondh’ is most probably derived from the Dravidian word, konda, meaning hill.
Divided into several segments and distributed over the districts of Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh,
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa, these hill people speak the Kondh language though
most of them are bilingual and so conversant with the major language of the state to which they
belong.
The Kondh religion is a mixture of the traditional faith of the adivasis and Hinduism. They do not
have any dowry system but they do fix a bride price that the groom pays to the bride either in
cash or in kind.

Note on the Kondh Song

The Kondhs observe a number of rituals in connection with birth, puberty, marriage and death,
with specific folk dances and songs for each occasion. They believe in the existence of gods
and spirits, both benevolent and malevolent.
The song here is sung at the death of a person beseeching the spirit of the dead to stop
troubling the living. It is based on the Kondh belief that people love their homes so much that
their souls are reluctant to leave the hearth even after death. These spirits, though
generally kind, can become harmful at times since they are now unable to participate in earthly
life. It is, therefore, customary to make generous offerings to the spirit. The song begins by
saying that the dead spirit will be able to receive offerings only if the others in the family
continue to live and prosper. They reveal their willingness to do anything to make the spirit
happy but, in return, the spirit must also promise not to trouble them with its visits.

Adi song for the recovery of health

Translated from Original Miri Agom

A Note on the Adi Tribe

Adi is a generic term denoting hill people and it includes a number of groups. It may be applied
to all the hill tribes around the Brahmaputra valley. The Adi are, however, concentrated in
districts of Arunachal Pradesh. They believe that every object in the universe, be it human
beings, animals, trees or birds, have a spirit that needs to be nourished and propitiated.
Dependent on nature for many of their needs, they believe that equilibrium in nature must
always be maintained. Even though hunting is considered not just a means of procuring food
but also an expression of courage and skill, they still believe that human beings must hunt for
survival and not for greed.
The Adi have two major languages that they use for two different purposes. The language
for routine conversation is called Adi Agom. The second major language still in use is Miri
Agom, a highly rhythmic language used for chanting during their rituals. The headman of the
village is generally the best hunter as well as an expert in Miri Agom. Both languages are living
languages and rituals and ceremonies provide the occasion for the teaching of Miri Agom to the
younger generation.

A note on the Adi song

The song selected here is actually a mantra that is chanted in Miri Agom to lure the spirit of
good health back to the body of a sick person. The Adi believe that a person falls ill when the
spirit of good health abandons the body due to some shock it may suffer. The above lines are
chanted in a ritual performed by the maternal uncle of the sick person.
Notes
Beloved one: the loved nephew or niece who is ill.
I come forward here to save you: the maternal uncle of the sick person comes forward to
perform the ritual for the return of the spirit of good health.
Emul: amulet, here a healing ornament.
Listen to the sound of this ornament: this line and the ones that follow are addressed to the spirit
of good health to request it to return to the ill body.
Your sweet home: the ill body which is the real home of the spirit of good health.
Ridin: a creeper that is supposed to have special medicinal qualities.
Fasten your soul to your body: the Ridin creeper will tie the spirit of good health to the body to
ensure its continued presence.
Follow the footprints of this cock: usually an offering like a cock or a hen is made to propitiate
the spirit of good health and persuade it to return to the ill body.
Your home: the ill body