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Thefolklore of India encompasses thefolklore of theRepublic of India and theIndian subcontinent. India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. This generally refers to theHindu traditions of the people of the country, but also includes the native folktales and mythos of various other ethnic and religious groups of India.
Folk religion syncretism in Hinduism explain the rationale behind local religious practices, and contain localmyths that explain the customs or rituals. A lot of Indian folklore has survived as a result of oral transmission.[1]
[2] The folk and tribal arts of India speak volumes about the country's rich heritage.[3] Art forms in India have been exquisite and explicit. Folk art forms include various schools of art like theMughal School,Rajasthani School,Nakashi art School etc. Each school has its distinct style of colour combinations or figures and its features. Other popular folk art forms includeMadhubani paintings &Bhojpuri paintings fromBihar,Kangra painting fromHimachal Pradesh andWarli painting fromMaharashtra.Tanjore paintings fromSouth India incorporate real gold into their paintings. Local fairs, festivals, deities and heroes (warriors) play a vital role in this art form. In history the arts were made by upper caste but now they are famous worldwide.[citation needed]
Some famous folk and tribal arts of India include:
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India possesses a large body of heroicballads andepic poetry preserved in oral tradition, both inSanskrit and the various vernacular languages of India. One such oral epic, telling the story ofPabuji, has been collected by Dr. John Smith fromRajasthan; it is a long poem in theRajasthani language, traditionally told by professional story tellers, known asBhopas, who deliver it in front of atapestry that depicts the characters of the story, and functions as a portable temple, accompanied by aravanhattho fiddle. The title character was a historical figure, aRajput prince, who has been deified in Rajasthan.[4]
Various performing arts such asGarba andDandiya Raas ofGujarat,Sambalpuri dance ofOdisha, theChhau,Alkap andGambhira ofWest Bengal,Bihu dance ofAssam,Ghoomar dance ofRajasthan andHaryanvi,Bhangra andGidda ofPunjab,Dhangar ofGoa,Panthi dance ofChhattisgarh,Tamasha andLavani ofMaharashtra[5],Kummi, andKaragattam ofTamilNadu,Kolattam ofAndhra Pradesh,Yakshagana ofKarnataka,Thirayattam ofKerala[6] andChang Lo ofNagaland derive their elements from myriads of myths, folktales and seasonal changes.[citation needed]
Noteworthy collections of Indian traditional stories include thePanchatantra, a collection of traditional narratives made byVishnu Sarma in the second century BC. TheHitopadesha ofNarayana is a collection ofanthropomorphicfabliaux, animalfables, in Sanskrit, compiled in the ninth century.[citation needed]
Indian folklorists during the last thirty years have substantially contributed to the study of folklore.Devendra Satyarthi, Krishna Dev Upadyhayaya, Prafulla Dutta Goswami, Kunja Bihari Dash, Ashutosh Bhatacharya and many more senior folklorists have contributed for the study of folklore. But it is during the 1970s that some folklorists studied in US universities and trained up themselves with the modern theories and methods of folklore research and set a new trend of folklore study in India. Especially, South Indian universities advocated for folklore as a discipline in the universities and hundreds of scholars trained up on folklore.A.K. Ramanujan is one such person to analyse folklore from the Indian context.[citation needed]
Study of folklore was strengthened by two stremas (sicsic); one is Finnish folkloristLauri Honko and another is Peter J. Claus of American folklore. These two folklorists conducted their field work onEpic of Siri and led the Indian folklorists to the new folklore study. The Central Institute of Indian Languages has played a major role in promoting folklore studies in India to explore another reality of Indian culture.[citation needed]
Recently scholars such as Chitrasen Pasayat, M. D. Muthukumaraswamy, Vivek Rai, Jawaharlal Handoo, Birendranath Dutta, P. C. Pattanaik, B. Reddy, Sadhana Naithani, P. Subachary, Molly Kaushal, Shyam Sundar Mahapatra, Bhabagrahi Mishra and many new folklorists have contributed in their respective field for shaping folklore study as a strong discipline in representing the people's memory and people's voice. Recently the National Folklore Support Center in Chennai has taken the initiative to promote folklore in public domain and bridging the gap of academic domain and community domain.[citation needed]
Indian folk heroes include heroes likeRama (from theRamayana) andKrishna (from theMahabharata). They are well known across the country, and are traditionally deified . Each ethnic community has its own folk heroes.TheSanthals have their culture heroes Beer Kherwal and Bidu Chandan.Gonds have their folk hero Chital Singh Chhatti. ABanjara folk hero is Lakha Banjara or Raja Isalu. Banjara epics often have female protagonists.[7]
Oral epics often have sub-regional folk variations, wherein the events are different from the mainstream story. Folk heroes are some times deified and are worshipped in the village. There is a thin difference of a mythic hero and romantic hero in Indian folklore. InKalahandi, oral epics are available among the ethnic singers, performed in ritual context and social context. Extensive study of different folk and tribal forms ofJatra, likeDhanu jatra and theSulia jatra have been made and the 'hero characters', who have become local deities in many cases, have been examined.[7]
Indian oral epics are found abundantly, with many castes having their own oral ballads. Extensive field work and research has been done on theEpic of Siri, a Tulu-language poem. Many Indian ethnic groups have their own epics, and many such asTulu epics and thePabuji epic have gained wider readership due to English translations being published.[7]
In the rural areas of Kerala, there was a practice known asOdiyan (or "odian") where a group of individuals claimed the ability to induce fear in people to the point of death using a technique called otiviki.[8][9] Odiyan is a legendary figure in Kerala folklore, described as half-man, half-beast creatures that would lurk in alleyways during the night.[10] These Odiyans would apply specific herbs to certain parts of their bodies, chant spells, and transform themselves into various animals like bulls, buffaloes, or foxes, depending on their desire.[11]
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India has a long history of board games. You hear about these from the times of the Mahabharata and the Mughal empire. Some of the popular board games that originated from Indian Traditional games include Chess (Chaturanga), Ludo (Pachisi) andSnakes and Ladders (Moksha-Patamu).[citation needed]
Recently,Odisha, a state in eastern India, introduced a child-friendly programme called Srujan (creativity) in the primary schools. About 18 million children took part in four activities like story telling activities, traditional games, traditional art and craft and music and dance and riddles over a period of three years (2007–2010). The result is that while there are hundreds of varieties of folktales, the varieties of traditional games are limited. About three hundred traditional games both indoor and outdoor were commonly played and it was found that the traditional games contain mathematical knowledge (like counting, measurement, shapes and size, geometrical ideas and finally socialization through action). The traditional games are the best ways of teaching and learning. When these are applied in the primary schools, many teachers revealed that children know many games that the teachers have forgotten.[citation needed]
Indoor board game like "Kasadi" ( a wooden board with 14 pits played with tamarind seed by two or more than two girls in the domestic domain) was most popular and it is still not vanished from the society. Dr Mahendra Kumar Mishra, a folklorist and an educator has collected these games and has documented in video form.Besides other games in the domestic domain is the goat and the tiger andganjifa. These were the forerunners of the card games of today. Ganjifa used to be circular painted stack of card like things which were played using certain rules.[citation needed]
The scientific study of Indian folklore was slow to begin: early collectors felt far freer to creatively reinterpret source material and collected their material with a view to the picturesque rather than the representative.[citation needed]
A. K. Ramanujan's theoretical and aesthetic contributions span several disciplinary areas. Context-sensitivity is a theme that appears not only in Ramanujan's cultural essays, but also appears in his writing about Indian folklore and classic poetry. In "Where Mirrors are Windows," (1989) and in "Three Hundred Ramayanas" (1991), for example, he discusses the "intertextual" nature of Indian literature, written and oral...He says, "What is merely suggested in one poem may become central in a 'repetition' or an 'imitation' of it.[12] His essay "Where Mirrors Are Windows: Toward an Anthology of Reflections" (1989), and his commentaries in The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967) and Folktales from India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages (1991) are good examples of his work in Indian folklore studies.[citation needed]
Rudyard Kipling was interested in folklore, dealing with English folklore in works such asPuck of Pook's Hill andRewards and Fairies; his experiences in India led him to also create similar works with Indian themes. Kipling spent a great deal of his life in India and was familiar with theHindi language. His works such as the twoJungle Books contain a lot of stories that are written after the manner of traditional folktales. Indian themes also appear in hisJust So Stories, and many of the characters bear recognisable names from Indian languages. During the same period,Helen Bannerman penned the now notorious Indian-themed tale ofLittle Black Sambo, which represented itself to be an Indian folktale.[citation needed]
Afterindependence, disciplines and methods fromanthropology began to be used in the creation of more in-depth surveys of Indian folklore.[citation needed]
Folklorists of India can be broadly divided into three phases. Phase I was the British Administrators who collected the local knowledge and folklore to understand the subjects they want to rule. next were the missionaries who wanted to acquire the language of the people to recreate their religious literature for evangelical purpose. The third phase was the post-independent period in the country where many universities, institutes and individuals started studying the folklore. the purpose was to search the national identity through legends, myths, and epics. In the course of time, Academic institutions and universities in the country started opening departments on folklore in their respective regions, more in south India to maintain their cultural identity and also maintain language and culture.[citation needed]
After independence, scholars like Dr Satyendra, Devendra Satyarthi, Krishnadev Upadhayaya, Jhaberchand Meghani, Prafulla Dutta Goswami, Ashutosh Bhattacharya, Kunja Bihari Dash, Chitrasen Pasayat, Somnath Dhar, Ramgarib Choubey, Jagadish Chandra Trigunayan and many more were the pioneer in working on folklore. Of course, the trend was more literary than analytical. It was during the 1980s that the central Institute of Indian Languages and theAmerican Institute of Indian Studies started their systemic study on Folklore any after that many western, as well as eastern scholars, pursued their studies on folklore as a discipline.[citation needed]
The pioneer of the folklorists in contemporary India is Jawaharlal Handoo, Sadhana Naithani, Kishore Bhattacharjee, Kailash Patnaik, VA Vivek Rai, lateKomal Kothari, Raghavan Payanad,M Ramakrishnan, Nandini Sahu.M.N. Venkatesha and many more. An emerging trend of new folklorists has emerged who are committed to understanding folklore from an Indian point of view than to see the whole subjects from the western model. Some of them are better to prefer to understand folklore from the folklore provider and consultants who are the creator and consumers of folklore. The user of folklore knows what folklore is since their use folklore with purpose and meaning. But theoreticians see folklore from their theoretical angle. Ethics point of view, folklorist should learn from the folk as practicable as possible and folk should give the hidden meaning of folklore to the folklorist so that both of their interpretation can help to give a new meaning to the item of folklore and explore the possibility of use of folklore in the new socio-cultural domain.[citation needed]
Dr Mahendra Kumar Mishra from Kalahandi, Odisha has substantially contributed to the tribal folklore of Middle Indian and Odisha. His seminal bookOral Epics of Kalahandi has been translated into Chinese, and Finnish language. He has written Saora folk literature, Paharia Folkliterature, Visioning Folklore, Oral Poetry of Kalahandi. His recent seminal work is three oral Ramakatha in tribal oral tradition. Dr Mishra has written five books on folklore theory and research methodology adopting the folklore of western Odisha and Chhattisgarh. The analytical work of Dr Mishra has been widely studied in the western and eastern world as a part of South Asian folklore.[citation needed]
Now the National Folklore Support Center, Chennai since the last ten years[when?] has created a space for the new scholars who are pursuing the study of folklore with their commitment. One important breakthrough in the field of folklore is that it is no more confined to the study in the four walls of academic domain, rather, it has again found its space within and among the folk to get their true meaning.[citation needed]
Dr.Raghavanvpayyanad is a major role in Indian folklore study he has written so many books about folklore, he is also an international face of Indian folkloristics both in English and Malayalam.[citation needed]
India has a rich and varied tradition of folk music and numerous types of folk songs. Some traditional folk song genres have been recognized asIntangible Cultural Heritage listed byUNESCO. Among these traditions, a well-known musical and religious repertoire is known asBaul, which has become famous in the World Music scene. Among the most respected historical figures of the Baul tradition,Lalon Fakir andBhaba Pagla are often mentioned.[13]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)On Indian folktales:
