Tribal Verse

TRIBAL VERSE — COMPREHENSIVE CHAPTER NOTES

INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

**Tribal Verse** by G.N. Devy is a critical essay and collection of tribal songs that explores the rich oral literary heritage of India's adivasi (tribal) communities. The chapter argues for recognizing tribal oral literature as legitimate literature within academic and canonical frameworks, challenging the notion that literature must be written to be valuable.

Key Background Information

**Root of Indian Literary Traditions**: India's literary traditions originate from the rich oral literatures of tribes and adivasis, expressed primarily through songs and chanting.

**Nature of Tribal Literature**: These verses express the close contact between the natural world and tribal existence, orally transmitted across generations for centuries.

**Crisis of Preservation**: Due to urbanization, print culture, and commercial forces, tribal languages and literatures face severe **marginalisation**. Many tribal songs and stories have already been lost due to their oral nature.

**Need for Intervention**: Devy argues that without accelerated efforts at collection and conservation, an invaluable part of India's literary and historical heritage will disappear permanently.

The Scope of This Chapter

The chapter comprises:

1. An extract from Devy's essay discussing tribal literature within canonized frameworks

2. Three tribal songs (Munda, Kondh, and Adi) representing different occasions and tribal worldviews

3. Contextual notes on each tribe and their respective songs

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G.N. DEVY'S ARGUMENT: REDEFINING LITERATURE

The Problem with Canonical Definitions

Devy identifies a fundamental issue: **canonized written texts** are recognized as literature, while oral compositions in tribal languages are dismissed as mere folklore or casual utterances in dialects. This marginalization prevents scholars from recognizing the profound literary and cultural value of tribal oral traditions.

**Key Arguments**:

Literary criticism typically ignores oral compositions, considering them subjects only for folklorists, anthropologists, and linguists

Nomadic and tribal communities preserve themselves through oral epics, yet these works remain unrecognized as literature

The vast number of Indian languages that remain only spoken are not considered to produce "literature"

Devy's Personal Collection Experience

Devy notes that throughout his life, he has been collecting songs and stories from India's tribal languages and is "continually overwhelmed by their number and their profound influence on the tribal communities." He emphasizes that some songs and stories he heard from **itinerant street singers** in childhood no longer exist anywhere, demonstrating the urgency of preservation.

Redefining Literature Beyond Writing

**Core Thesis**: "Literature is a lot more than writing."

Devy argues that unless the established notion of literature as something written is modified, oral traditions will silently decline.

Written compositions deserve their status as literature, but this should not exclude oral works.

This reminder is "necessary for our times" when oral traditions are disappearing at accelerated rates.

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CHARACTERISTICS OF TRIBAL IMAGINATION AND WORLDVIEW

The Tribal Vision of Life

Tribal communities possess distinct characteristics that set them apart from modern Indian society:

**Cohesive Social Structure**: Tribal communities live in groups that are **cohesive and organically unified**, with little interest in accumulating wealth or using labor for capital gain.

**Integrated Worldview**: They accept a world-view in which **nature, human beings, and God are intimately linked**. They believe in human ability to spell and interpret truth.

**Intuitive Over Rational**: Tribals live more by intuition than reason, consider space around them as sacred rather than secular, and have a personal rather than objective sense of time.

The Hallucinatory Tribal Imagination

Unlike modern secular creativity where the creator replaces God, tribal imagination remains **dreamlike and hallucinatory**:

Tribal imagination **admits fusion between various planes of existence and levels of time naturally**

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 narrative**

Stars, seas, mountains, trees, men, and animals can be angry, sad, or happy—emotions are attributed to natural elements

This is not chaos but operates on **the principle of association between emotion and narrative motif**

Tribal Memory vs. Imagination: The Key Distinction

**Imagination**: The image-making faculty is genetic; it helps humans perceive and understand space that envelops them.

**Memory**: In the context of time, humans make connections through memory, remembering they are the same person as yesterday.

**Tribal Focus on Time**: Tribal minds possess a more acute sense of time than space. Historically, tribal communities realized that domination over territorial space was not their destiny; instead, they became obsessively focused on **gaining domination over time**.

**Ritual Practice**: This is substantiated through rituals of conversing with dead ancestors—year after year, tribals worship terracotta or carved-wood objects representing ancestors, aspiring to enter trance to converse with the dead.

**Tribal Knowledge Systems**: Over centuries, sharp memory has helped tribals classify material and natural objects into highly complex systems of knowledge. The aesthetic proportions of tribal houses, crafted objects, and rituals demonstrate this, yet this importance of memory in tribal knowledge systems remains insufficiently recognized.

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CHARACTERISTICS OF TRIBAL ARTS

Distinct Construction of Space and Imagery

Tribal arts employ a characteristic **hallucinatory manner** of constructing space and imagery:

**Flexible Frame Concept**: Tribal artists interpret verbal or pictorial space as demarcated by an extremely flexible "frame"

**Blurred Boundaries**: The boundaries between art and non-art become almost invisible

**Narrative Structure**: A tribal epic can begin from a trivial everyday event; episodes take on "apparently chaotic shapes of dreams"

**Visual Merging**: Tribal paintings merge with living space as if they were one and the same

**Mixed Imagery**: In a tribal Ramayan, episodes from Mahabharat appear suddenly; tribal paintings contain curious mixtures of traditional and modern imagery

**Synesthetic Quality**: "The syntax of language and the grammar of painting are the same, as if literature were painted words and painting were a song of images"

Ordering Principles: Convention and Creativity

Though tribal arts appear chaotic, **strict ordering principles exist**:

**Convention as Foundation**: Every tribal performance has, at its back, another performance from a previous occasion

**Creativity Through Subversion**: Tribal artists' creativity lies in adhering to the past while slightly subverting it

**Playful Subversion**: These subversions are more playful than ironic; **playfulness is the soul of tribal arts**

Sacred and Secular Balance

Tribal arts are intimately related to rituals; the sacred cannot be left out

Yet tribal arts rarely assume a serious or pretentious tone

The artist rarely plays the role of Creator

Even heroes in tribal epics are not spared the artist's humor

This unique mixture of sacred and ordinary may stem from tribal artworks not being created for sale, reducing competition and creating a **relaxed, never tense** atmosphere

Dynamism vs. Static Nature

**Misconception**: Orally transmitted arts are entirely tradition-bound with little scope for experimentation.

**Reality**: This misconception arises from seeing art only with reference to text, but tribal arts involve **text, performance, and audience reception**. Experimentation in tribal arts can only be understood when approached as **performing arts**.

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BILINGUALISM IN TRIBAL COMMUNITIES

Universal Bilingual Capacity

**Critical Point**: All of India's tribal communities are basically bilingual. This fact is usually unnoticed by non-tribals.

**Significance**: All bilingual communities possess an **innate capacity to assimilate outside influences** and possess a **highly evolved mechanism for responding to the non-tribal world**.

Linguistic Complexity

Tribal oral stories and songs employ bilingualism in such complex manner that a linguist unaware of this complexity risks dismissing tribal languages as merely dialects of major Indian tongues

This complexity allows tribals to navigate between their own languages and dominant state/national languages while maintaining distinct linguistic identities

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THE THREE TRIBAL SONGS: CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE

SONG 1: A MUNDA SONG — SONG OF BIRTH AND DEATH

**Text**:

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.

**Tribe Background**:

**Geographic Location**: Parts of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa

**Etymology**: Known as Horohon or Mura (headman of village)

**Historical Significance**: First adivasis to resist colonialism; repeatedly revolted over agrarian issues

**Tamar Insurrection (1819-20)**: Protested against break-up of agrarian system

**Birsa Munda Movement (1874-1901)**: Famous millennial movement using Hindu and Christian idioms to create Munda ideology; uprising quelled by British

**Song Analysis**:

**Occasion**: Sung at birth of son or daughter to rhythmic folk tunes

**Connection to Nature**: Communicates close association with nature; lives synchronized with changing rhythms of nature, not clock time

**Imagery**: Cattle set off to pastures in morning, return at sundown—natural cycles govern human activities

**Gender Values**: Daughter's birth associated with cowshed full of cows; son's birth with depletion—clearly daughters considered more precious asset

**Socio-Economic Significance**: Reflects women's dominant role in Munda society's economic, social, and ritual activities

**Literary Devices**:

**Metaphor**: Sun and moon represent sons and daughters

**Symbolic Imagery**: Cowshed represents wealth and prosperity; full shed (daughter) = wealth; depleted shed (son) = economic cost

**Parallel Structure**: Repetition of phrases creates rhythmic, chant-like quality

**Personification**: Sun and moon "rise" with agency

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SONG 2: A KONDH SONG

**Text**:

This we offer to you. We can, Because we are still alive; If not, How could we offer at all, And what? We give a small baby fowl. Take this and go away Whichever way you came. Go back, return. Don't inflict pain on us After your departure.

**Tribe Background**:

**Etymology**: Derived from Dravidian word *konda*, meaning hill

**Geographic Distribution**: Districts of Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Orissa

**Language**: Speak Kondh language; most bilingual with major state language

**Religion**: Mixture of traditional adivasi faith and Hinduism

**Social Practices**: No dowry system; bride price fixed that groom pays in cash or kind

**Song Analysis**:

**Occasion**: Sung at death, beseeching spirit of dead to stop troubling living

**Belief System**: Based on Kondh belief that people love homes so much their souls are reluctant to leave after death

**Spirit Nature**: Spirits generally kind but can become harmful as they cannot participate in earthly life

**Ritual Purpose**: Generous offerings made to spirit; song begins by asserting dead can only receive offerings if living prosper

**Reciprocal Obligation**: Living willing to do anything for spirit's happiness, but in return spirit must promise not to trouble them

**Literary Devices**:

**Logical Progression**: The "if not" clause (lines 4-6) establishes logical necessity for offerings

**Imperative Tone**: Direct commands—"Take this and go away," "Don't inflict pain"

**Conditional Structure**: Entire song built on conditional logic between living and dead

**Personification**: Spirit treated as agent capable of understanding and responding

**Spatial Imagery**: References to "whichever way you came" and "going back" establish journey metaphor for death

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SONG 3: ADI SONG FOR RECOVERY OF LOST HEALTH

**Text**:

Oh my beloved one / If you lost your health due to ill luck / I come forward here to save you / With this Emul / To call back your lost health. / Listen to the sound of this sweet ornament / And follow me to your sweet home. / I tie this Ridin creeper / To fasten your soul to your body. / Follow the footprint of this cock / Come, come with me to your home.

**Tribe Background**:

**Geographic Location**: Concentrated in East and West Siang districts of Arunachal Pradesh

**Etymology**: *Adi* is generic term denoting hill people; includes multiple groups around Brahmaputra valley

**Spiritual Belief**: Every object in universe (humans, animals, trees, birds) has spirit needing nourishment and propitiation

**Environmental Philosophy**: Dependent on nature; believe equilibrium in nature must be maintained

**Hunting Belief**: Considered expression of courage and skill but must be for survival, not greed

**Linguistic System**:

**Adi Agom**: Language for routine conversation

**Miri Agom**: Highly rhythmic language used for ritualistic chanting; different from conversational language

**Village Leadership**: Headman generally best hunter and expert in Miri Agom

**Intergenerational Teaching**: Both languages living; rituals and ceremonies provide occasion for teaching Miri Agom to younger generation

**Song Analysis**:

**Type**: Actually a mantra chanted in Miri Agom

**Purpose**: To lure spirit of good health back to body of sick person

**Belief**: Person falls ill when spirit of good health abandons body due to shock

**Performer**: Chanted by maternal uncle of sick person

**Glossary**:

*Beloved one*: The loved nephew or niece who is ill

*Emul*: Ritualistic object with spiritual power

*Ridin creeper*: Plant believed to have binding, connecting power

*Cock*: Symbol of vigor and vitality; its footprint metaphorically guides spirit back

**Literary Devices**:

**Invocation and Appeal**: Opening "Oh my beloved one" creates intimate, caring tone

**Cause-and-Effect Logic**: "If you lost your health due to ill luck / I come forward here to save you"

**Imperative Action**: "Listen," "Follow," "Come" create sense of urgency and direction

**Symbolic Objects**: Emul, Ridin creeper, and cock are laden with cultural and spiritual significance

**Repetition and Rhythm**: "Come, come with me to your home" emphasizes insistence and rhythm

**Journey Metaphor**: Entire song structures recovery as return journey from illness to health, from separation to reunion

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TRIBAL BILINGUALISM AND LINGUISTIC COMPLEXITY

Sophisticated Language Use

Tribal oral stories and songs employ bilingualism in such **complex manner** that linguists unaware of this complexity risk:

Dismissing tribal languages as mere dialects

Missing intricate code-switching and linguistic sophistication

Failing to recognize evolved mechanisms for navigating multi-linguistic environments

Colonial Baggage and Translation

**Critical Awareness**: English, the language into which these works are translated, carries **massive colonial baggage**.

Contemporary Indian writers inheriting multilingual traditions thousands of years old were classified as producing "new literature" by Western academics

This classification appeared comical to Indian literary community

**Important Assertion**: Adivasi literature is NOT a new "movement" or fresh "trend"—people have simply been unaware of its existence

**Shift in Perspective**: What is new is viewing tribal imaginative expression as "literature" (not "folklore") and tribal speech as "language" (not "dialect")

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ORALITY IN LITERATURE: THE FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE

Scripts and Printing as Recent Phenomena

**Historical Context**:

Scripts themselves are relatively new innovations

Printing of literary text dates only a few centuries back

**In contrast**: Creative experiments with human speech production transcending time extend back millennia

**Every written piece of literature contains substantial layers of orality**

Orality Across Literary Forms

**Poetry and Drama**: Orality elements are particularly significant

**Prose Fiction**: Even in prose, orality elements must be significant if work is to be effective

**Tribal Literature**: This principle is foundational—oral transmission is not a limitation but a sophisticated literary practice

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THEMES AND LITERARY SIGNIFICANCE

Theme 1: Interdependence with Nature

All three songs demonstrate the **tribal vision of interconnection** between humans and nature:

Nature is living and responsive to human existence

Demands respect essential for coexistence

Lives synchronized with natural rhythms (sun, moon, seasons)

Cattle cycles, health recovery, and spiritual balance all tied to natural forces

Theme 2: Life, Death, and Transition

**Munda Song**: Celebrates birth as natural cycle linked to sun/moon

**Kondh Song**: Addresses death as transition requiring negotiation between living and dead

**Adi Song**: Recovery as spiritual journey returning separated soul to body

Together: Present life as continuous transition requiring ritual acknowledgment

Theme 3: Gender and Social Values

**Munda Song**: Female birth valued more highly—reflects women's economic and social importance

Challenges patriarchal assumptions in dominant Indian literature

Demonstrates distinct gender economics in tribal societies

Theme 4: Ritual and Sacred Practice

Songs are not abstract literary expressions but functional ritualistic utterances

Tied to specific occasions (birth, death, illness recovery)

Sacred and mundane intimately connected

Rituals serve to maintain social, spiritual, and natural balance

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EXAM-IMPORTANT POINTS FOR CBSE BOARD

**Note-Making Format**:

Define **marginalisation**: Process of pushing communities and their cultures to societal periphery, denying them recognition and resources

Define **canonized written texts**: Texts recognized and accepted within established literary traditions and academic frameworks

Define **itinerant street singers**: Traveling performers who move from place to place, singing songs and stories

Define **hallucinatory imagination**: Dreamlike quality where normal rules of space, time, and logic don't apply; fusion of different planes of existence

**Key Vocabulary**:

**Repository**: Collection or store

**Cohesive and organically unified**: Held together naturally; functioning as integrated whole

**Orality**: Tradition of transmitting knowledge and art through speech rather than writing

**Bilingual**: Speaking two languages

**Character/Community Analysis**:

**Devy's Position**: Scholar advocating for recognition of tribal literature; emphasizes urgency of preservation; argues oral traditions are literature too

**Tribal Communities**: Sophisticated societies with distinct worldviews, complex knowledge systems, rich artistic traditions, and nuanced understanding of nature and spirituality

**Possible CBSE Questions**:

1. "Explain why G.N. Devy argues that oral tribal literature should be recognized as 'literature.'"

2. "How do the three tribal songs reflect the tribal vision of life?"

3. "Analyze the role of nature in tribal literature based on textual evidence."

4. "Compare and contrast the occasions and purposes of the Munda, Kondh, and Adi songs."

5. "Discuss the concept of 'hallucinatory imagination' in tribal arts with examples."

6. "How does bilingualism function in tribal communities according to Devy?"