Tribal Verse – Class 11 English Chapter 24 Notes & NCERT PDF

About the Author

G.N. Devy (born 1950), formerly professor of English at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, is the Founder Director of the Tribal Academy at Tejgarh, Gujarat and Director of Sahitya Akademi's Project on Literature in Tribal Languages and Oral Traditions. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for After Amnesia and the SAARC Writers' Foundation Award for his work on the 'denotified tribes'. The chapter contains an extract from his 'Introduction' to Painted Words and three tribal songs.

The Chapter's Introduction

India's literary roots lie in the oral literatures of the tribes/adivasis — songs and chants expressing the close contact between nature and tribal life, transmitted orally across generations. Many are already lost because they were never written down. Urbanisation, print culture and commerce have marginalised these communities, their languages and literatures. Most tribal societies — Munda, Kondh, Adi, Bondo — are bilingual. Santhal and Munda groups also played prominent roles in socio-political movements (e.g. Birsa Munda, 1874–1901, fought colonialism and exploitation of labourers). Translation into English loses some flavour, but without preservation and translation these works would be lost completely.

Summary of Devy's Essay ('Introduction' to Painted Words)

Tribal world-view

Tribal communities live in groups that are cohesive and organically unified, show little interest in accumulating wealth, and see nature, human beings and God as intimately linked. They live more by intuition than reason; space is sacred rather than secular; time is personal rather than objective.

Tribal imagination — "hallucinatory"

Tribal imagination is "dreamlike and hallucinatory", fusing planes of existence: "oceans fly in the sky as birds, mountains swim in the water as fish, animals speak as humans and stars grow like plants." Emotion is linked to narrative motif — stars, seas and mountains can be angry, sad or happy.

Memory over imagination; time over space

Tribal artists work more from racial and sensory memory than cultivated imagination. The tribal mind has a sharper sense of time than space: realising that "domination over territorial space was not their lot", they turned to "gaining domination over time" — e.g. rituals of conversing with dead ancestors through terracotta or carved-wood objects. Memory built complex systems of classifying natural objects.

Literature is more than writing

Many Indian languages remain only spoken, so their compositions aren't considered "literature" — a "feast for the folklorist… but, to a literary critic… nothing". Nomadic communities survive through their oral epics. Devy says: "I, for one, can no longer think of literature as something written… unless we modify the established notion of literature as something written, we will silently witness the decline of various Indian oral traditions."

Features of tribal arts

The Three Songs

1. A Munda Song: Song of Birth and Death (from Mundari)

"My mother, the sun rose / A son was born. / My mother, the moon rose / A daughter was born. / A son was born / The cowshed was depleted; / A daughter was born / The cowshed filled up."

Cattle go out to pasture in the morning (sunrise → son, cowshed empties) and return at sundown (moonrise → daughter, cowshed fills). The daughter is the more precious asset, probably because Munda women play a dominant role in economic, social and ritual life. Munda facts from the note: live in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa; also called Horohon or Mura (headman); Encyclopaedia Mundarica (16 volumes) by Rev. John Baptist Hoffman; Tamar insurrection 1819–20; millennial movement under Birsa Munda.

2. A Kondh Song (death song)

"This we offer to you. / We can, / Because we are still alive… We give a small baby fowl. / Take this and go away / Whichever way you came… Don't inflict pain on us / After your departure."

Sung at a death, it begs the spirit to stop troubling the living. Kondhs believe souls love their homes so much they are reluctant to leave the hearth; spirits, though generally kind, can become harmful. The living can make offerings only because they are still alive. 'Kondh' probably comes from the Dravidian konda (hill); no dowry system, but a bride price.

3. Adi Song for the Recovery of Lost Health (in Miri Agom)

"Oh my beloved one / If you lost your health due to ill luck / I come forward here to save you / With this Emul… I tie this Ridin creeper / To fasten your soul to your body. / Follow the footprint of this cock."

A mantra chanted by the maternal uncle to lure the spirit of good health back into the sick body. Emul = healing amulet; Ridin = medicinal creeper; a cock is offered. The Adi use Adi Agom for conversation and Miri Agom, a rhythmic ritual language, for chanting; they live mainly in East and West Siang districts of Arunachal Pradesh and believe every object has a spirit.

Themes

Literary Devices & Style

Word Power

Exam Focus

Q. What distinguishes the tribal imagination from the secular imagination?

Outline: secular — creator replaces God, self-conscious; tribal — dreamlike, hallucinatory, fuses planes of existence and time, links emotion with motif, based on memory; sacred space, personal time.

Q. How does the Munda song show a different attitude to the girl child?

Outline: daughter linked with the moon and a cowshed that fills — prosperity; son linked with depletion; women dominant in Munda economic and ritual life.

Q. How does the Kondh song reflect the urge to dominate time?

Outline: the living converse with the dead through ritual song and offerings — relationship with ancestors continues across time.

Common Mistakes