Epics in Imprints-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

Colonial Paradigm
FEBRUARY - AUGUST 2003
EPIC METAPHOR IN THE MODERN CONTEXT
OF INDIAN SOCIETY
Anthropological and ethnological
sciences including folklore were, as
were other sciences, shaped by
Western scholars and their theoretical
conceptions upon which these sciences
were built. These conceptions subsumed
that technologically less developed (or preliterate)
societies of the ancient world—
Asia and Africa for instance—were less
civilized and hence “primitive”. Therefore,
according to this notion, based on widely
practiced Evolutionary Theory of Tylor
which in turn was raised on the
philosophies of Mill and Descartes, all
human societies have finally to become
“civilized” and look and behave like the
technologically advanced so-called civilized
societies of Europe. Furthermore, these socalled
primitive societies, before they lost
much of their “Primitiveness”, were,
therefore, to be studied from the
standpoint of these and other conceptions
which originated in the technologically
advanced West. The manner in which this
task was carried out did not differ from
the one in which a superior person studied
his inferior subjects—a practice not
unknown in many social sciences.
Moreover, it was also felt that by doing so,
it would be useful for understanding the
past, present and, perhaps, the future of
mankind and will thus accelerate the
process of transformation of these
primitive societies and usher them into the
world of the civilized.
JAWAHARLAL HANDOO
It is needless to emphasize that the
European thinkers, who professed such
knowledge, theorized on the basis of
Descartes’ cosmological view and the “new
vision” it thus created. This new vision,
bizarre as it might seem to a natïve
observer, was, as we know from the record
of history, hugely successful in forming
men’s view of the universe and the world
they lived in, and “in enabling Western
civilization to achieve an unparalleled
domination of the Earth and nature.
Consider, in this regard, the following
remarks of Thomas.
Descartes’s explicit aim had
been to make men ‘lords and
possessors of nature’….he
(Descartes) portrayed other
species as an inert and lacking
any spiritual dimension. In so
doing he created an absolute
break between man and the
rest of nature, thus clearing
the way very satisfactorily for
the uninhibited exercise of
human rule”.
The Cartesian vision was subsequently
developed through analogical reasoning
and applied by Newton to physical
universe and by others to social and
cultural spheres of human activity.
Naturally this kind of reasoning, it seems,
placed the non-European, pre-industrial,
tribal societies in the realm of “other
species” which lacked “spiritual
dimension” and inspired the development
of what is known as “the first scientific