Folklore Study in Odisha

FOLKLORE STUDY IN ODISHA : AN OVER VIEW

Dr Mahendra K Mishra Folklore Foundation Orissa

All men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have the function of intellectuals in society. [...] There is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded: homo faber cannot be separated from Homo sapiens. (Antonio Gramsci)

ORISSAN FOLKLORE STUDY HAS THREE PHASES

British Administrators Missionaries Nationalists Post independent

John Beams the first Collector of Balesore District was literally the first collector of Orissa folklore also. He wrote,

“Human nonsense, like human sense, is very much the same everywhere, and it is only because in ruling men one must take their nonsense into consideration quite as earnestly as their sense, that these scraps of folk-lore are worth recording at all.”(John Beams: in Lokaratna Vol I, 2008 PP.1-6)

He also branded these mantras and beliefs as rubbish.

Consider “I do not attempt to make sense of all

this rubbish. It is sufficient to observe that there are human beings who believe in its efficacy.” (Ibid)

From 1872- to 1946 many scholars who served in the government had written at least 30 books on Oriya proverb, tales, songs, agricultural proverbs , chants, mantras, etc. and had propagated folklore as a topic of human study.

During these days folklore was guided by anthropologists’ exploration of savages. Local elites considered our own local nonliterate as savage guided by Britishers’ view point.

DEVENDRA SATYARTHI

Devendra Satyarthi, a Gandhian, travelled across the country and in 1931 he came to Orissa and collected folklore from the people. Gandhi said, Folklore is literature of the people.

Pundit Gopabandhu said, elites may be the head of the society , but the body of the society is the common people. We have to revitalize the tradition and accept the modernity in a way to build up a national culture.

ORIYA FOLKLORISTS

The Satyavadi group of writers ( 1910 – 1925 ) glorified the land of Orissa with the legends and myths of Orissa with the folk-derived literature.

Sri Gopal Chandra Praharaj, who was an advocate of Cuttack High Court dedicated his life for collection of folktales and legends and Oriya language.

Chakradhara Mahapatra –assisted Devendra Satyarthi and wrote books on folklore

MISSIONARIES AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS /PHILANTHROPISTS

Verrier Elwin, Cecil Henry Bompas ,W G Archer, collected ethnographic data in Orissa.

Elwin’s work on Tribal Myths of Orissa is a memorable collection.

Verrier Elwin was very much in touch with Stith Thompson and was contributing to the Motif Index.

FOLKLORE STUDY IN POST INDEPENDENT ORISSA

Phase I is from 1947 to 1980

phase II is 1980 to 2000 and later.

GANDHIAN AS FOLKLORISTS

Padmashri Laxmi Narayan Sahu President of Indian Folklore Society Calcutta( defaunct )

Prof Chittaranjan Dash, These scholars are more close to the

community than anybody else

1947 TO 1980

Pundit Neelakantha Dash During his rest from politics in 1945- 1956, he

worked on Orissan culture and literature in which he had discussed on oral tradition and its written expression.

His analytical model was Parampara( tradition, past)paristhiti( current situation, present) and Purodrusti ( future vision) in the study of literature

and his definition of literature was no less than the definition of folklore or culture.

LOKARATNA KUNJABIHARI DASH

Founder of Oriya folklore . In 1957 ,Dr Kunja Bihari Dash from Viswa

Bharati did his first PhD on Folklore of Orissa. His theses were Odia Loka geeta O kahani. Pundit Neelakantha Dash was the examiner of his theses.

His followers in Viswa Bharati studied Oriya folklore and established it as a discipline

VISWA BHARATI SCHOOLS OF ORIYA FOLKORISTS

Dr Bhabagrahi Mishra ,a student of Dr R M Dorson in Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr Bhabagrahi Mishra was confined to the theory of anthropological approach of folklore study along with psychoanalytical method, comparative method and so on. He was one who introduced a systematic folklore scholarship in Orissa, but due to his discontinuation from academic domain he could not get a platform to pursue the study institutionally.

MODERN FOLKLORISTS

Currently most of the Oriya teachers in college and universities write on folklore.

Each folklorist work independently and don’t have a forum to discuss on current theories and trends

Most of the work is the out come of some project or UGC scheme Critical research on Folklore is still not taken in Orissa since it has

no independent status many scholars have very obscure ideas on folklore study . Out of

20 theses about 10 theses were on find folk elements in Oriya literature- which is a misnomer.

The archic definition of folklore is still operation al in academic domain

Folklore is synamic in the ppublic domain but static in academic domain

MULTIDISCIPLINE

AnthropologyLK Mahapatra and KB dash - Folklore of Orissa Dr Jagannath Dash- Tribal myths English Literature Dr Biyotkesh Tripathy Dr Ganeswar Mishra Oriya Literature Sri Dr Krishna Charan Behera, Dr Janaki Ballabha Mohanty

BLURRED IDEAS

Study of Oriya folklore was considered as a knowledge of nonliterate by the Oriya literary figures of the universities/colleges

Their understanding on folklore as a discipline is not clear and it is not connected to the people

Thus modern Oriya literature is also not connected to the people

Lack of scholarship, lack of good library, and lack of institutions to promote folklore study

Except considering folklore as a special paper, that to having no much reference books in modern folklore theory and methods, the curriculum and the prescribed books for students reveal that how poorly we manage folklore study. Therefore with having a lot of folklore resources in Orissa, there is a serious lack of folklore study

MY OBSERVATION

My own observation is that either it is folklore or linguistics; it will never survive without the help of its application in human development domain. Community knowledge has the strength of regenerating their own culture in new cultural setting. Institutions ( Govt. NGO, Universities, colleges and schools ) should use folklore as the instrument of knowledge resource.

ROLE OF FOLKLORE IN CURRENT SOCIETY

Folklore is enriched with human intelligence

It has to be understood why in Indian society it is relevant

Folklore as a body of knowledge is important to reduce the gap of literate and non-litearates

Folklore has the organic potency of fight injustice

Folklore is instrumental to construct culturally appropriate curriculum for school children to University scholars ( NCF 2005)

Community as the resource persons can contribute to the academic domain in reconstructing the knowledge of a given territory

Indigenous knowledge can be regenerated for economic productive activities ( KNC)

MULTIVERSITY VRS UNIVERSITY

When creator and user of folklore belong to multiversity, folklore researchers are from university

University are still secluded from the community

There is a need to connect the multiversity with the university

Folklore as the marker of understanding the time and space to understand the human history and to shape the history for humanity

It is a knowledge to explore the human history of exploitation through collective expression

Knowledge of public sphere perpetuated and transformed cutting across time and space.

VISWA BHARATI SCHOOL

Dr Prasanna Kumar Mishra :East Indian Myths and Legends. Dr Shyam Sundar Mahapatra :Oriya ballads. Dr Niladri Harichandan :Folk Drama of Orissa. Besides Dr Debi Prasanna Pattanayak , Dr Brundaban Chandra Acharya, Dr Narendranath Mishra, Dr Khageswar Mahapatra , Dr Gaganendra Nath Das Dr Kailash Patnaiik, DrSabita Pradhan and DrManoranjan Pradhan Dr Giribala Mohanty

MODERN FOLKLORISTS OF ORISSA

Dr. Kumuda Ranjan Panigrahi, Dr NC Panda, Dr Prakash Patnaik, Dr Kailash Patnaik, Dr Dr KC Pradhan ,Dr Gauranga Charan Das, Dr Dolagovinda Bisi, Dr Anjali Padhi , Dr Chitrasen Pasayat Dr Santosh Rath have done commendable work on Oriya folklore. But they are not fully dedicated to any genre of folklore analysis. New generation folklorists like Sudhir Sahu, Prabash Sahu, Sharmila Chhotray, Sanjaya Bag, Gopinath Bag, Sushil bag, Binapani Debta and many scholars are engaged in folklore study in Odisha. Some of them are trying to visualize folklore as instrumental to social protest and analyze it as anti hegemonic discourse.

FINALLY

what could be the role of folklore scholars for human development ? Do they really work with the community ?

Do they learn from the community ? Do they share with the community ? Do their engagement of mind help the

knowledge ? A lot of questions on the way of

scholarship

Thank you