Folklore in Modern India / The Epic: Oral and Written

Abstract

Korom reviews Folklore in Modern India edited by Jawaharlal Handoo and The Epic: Oral and Written edited by Lauri Honko, Jawaharlal Handoo, and John Miles Foley.

HANDOO, JAWAHARLAL, editor. Folklore in Modern India. ISFNR XIth Congress Papers, volume 3. Mysore, India: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1998. viii + 232 pages. Cloth, n.p.; ISBN 81-7342-053-X.

HONKO, LAURI, JAWAHARLAL HANDOO, AND JOHN MILES FOLEY, editors. The Epic: Oral and Written. ISFNR Xlth Congress Papers, volume 5. Mysore, India: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1998. 234 pages. Cloth, n.p.; ISBN 81-7342-055-6.

In an earlier review of the 9th Congress of the International Society for Folk-Narrative Research proceedings (KOROM 1999), I faulted the editor for not arranging the contributions into thematic groupings that would have made the volumes more useful for scholarly research. Fortunately, the editors of the Mysore Congress have heeded this call to produce a more easily accessible collection of essays. The two volumes under review here constitute two-sixths of those proceedings, the other four being Folklore in a Changing World; Folklore: New Perspectives; Folklore and Discourse; and Folklore and Gender. It is a pity that the latter four volumes were not available for review, but the two volumes discussed here demonstrate a significant improvement over previous ISFNR proceedings, and Jawaharlal Handoo, the general editor of the series, deserves credit for overseeing their publication.

Folklore in Modem India consists of eighteen contributions divided into four sections (Indian Folklore: Ancient Roots; Traditional Narrative: Changing Functions; Epic Themes and Folk Performance; Urban Folklore), with an introduction on folk metaphor and modern Indian society by the editor. In section one, Carsten Bregenhoj updates Indian and IndoEuropean theories in folk narrative research, Jennifer Haswell discusses sentiment in Pali narrative literature, S. Carlos analyzes indigenous concepts of modern Tamil ballads, and Nita Mathur attempts to construct an indigenous thesaurus of folk concepts. A fifth essay by Mahri Bagheri on a folkloric motif in the Persian Shahnameh seems oddly out of place in a volume on Indian folklore, even though the author does draw parallels with some Vedic materials.

In the second section, Birendranath Datta examines the changing functions of traditional narratives in northeastern India, C. M. Bandhu explores the dynamics of continuity and change in Nepali ballads, F. M. Bhatti provides a general and descriptive account of Panjabi narratives, Venetia Newell describes the social functions of Panjabi oral historians and genealogists both in South Asia as well as in the diaspora, Puiikonda Subbachary analyzes caste myths as counter-narrative traditions, and Soumen Sen looks at the social reality of folk narratives in matrilineal Khasi culture.

The third section includes a co-authored article by Ann Grodzins Gold and Lindsey Harlan on epic themes in Rajasthani women's rituals, Susan Wadley on the Dhola epic as a form of "native anthropology," Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger on a regional Mahabharata performance in Chhattisgarh, Richa Negi on the Pandava drama performed in the Garhwal Hills, and Nazir Jairazbhoy on metanarratives in the tales of Amar Singh Rathor. Lastly, the final, and shortest, section includes two essays, one by Leela Prasad on bilingual joking, and the other by Sadhana Naithani on the contemporary uses of folk genres by popular entertainers.

All of the essays in this volume attest to the continued vitality of Indian folkloristic study, yet some of the contributions are merely skeletal in nature, providing only a cursory outline for what one hopes would be more complete presentations in the future. Still others cover familiar ground explored more extensively elsewhere by more seasoned authors such as Gold, Harlan, Wadley, and Flueckiger. The anthology does, however, retain the flavor of the original presentations and provides useful descriptive and analytical data of value to the South Asian folklorist.

The volume on epics is comprised of thirteen essays divided into four sections (Oral Composition of Epics, Epic Traditions in India, Epic and History, Integrating Oral and Written), with an introduction on oral and semi-literary epics by Lauri Honko. In section one, Lauri and Anneli Honko develop the concept of multiforms in epic composition, John Miles Foley examines the "rhetorical" persistence of traditional forms in oral epics, and Minna Skafte Jensen returns to Albert Lord's concept of transition in relation to the Homeric epics.

The second section focuses more specifically on Indic materials, with Heda Jason comparing Indian and Euro-Afro-Asian epic traditions, John Brockington reviewing the evidence for formulaic expression in the Sanskrit Ramayana, Mary Brockington exploring the "two brothers" (AaTh 303) in the Ramayana, and Wadley again contributing on oral and written versions of the Hindi Dhola.

Section three is the briefest in this collection, with a contribution by Doris Edel on the Irish Tain Bo Cuailnge and Isaac Olawale Albert on a royal Yoruba historian. Finally, in section four, Lauri Harvilahn presents the poetic "I" as an allegory of life, Kirsten Thisted reports on oral and semi-literary Greenlandic traditions, Jiangbian Jiacuo provides a brief sketch on the Gesar cycle in contemporary Tibet, and Jia Zhi looks at the central role of the minstrel in understanding oral epic.

With the exception of the last two papers by the Chinese scholars mentioned above, the second volume under review here is, in general, more complete in terms of editing and scholarly apparatus than the first volume. Both volumes, while highly informative descriptively and theoretically, could have been strengthened by eliminating the brief "report" papers included therein, for they take away from the strength of the other, more complete essays included in the collections. But perhaps the decision to leave them in was determined in the spirit of proceedings' volumes in general; namely, to include all of the papers presented at the conference. This is a minor quibble, but more vexing is the lack of an index for either volume. Including indexes would have made the volumes even more user friendly than they already are. It is my hope that future ISFNR volumes retain the thematic-volume approach, but that they refine the editing even more to include indexes in each of the separate volumes.

References

REFERENCES CITED

KOROM, Frank J.

1999 Review of Folk Narrative and Cultural Identity (Arts Populares, 16-17, Budapest Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem, 1996), edited by Vilmos Voigt. Journal of American Folklore 112/443:100-102.