Epics in Imprints-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

1
FEBRUARY-AUGUST 2003
THE TRIBAL VIEW OF THE RAMAYANA: AN EXERCISE IN THE
ANTHROPOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
The Ramayana constitutes a structural
part of the Indian ‘great’ tradition, the
other parts being the Mahabharata,
Puranas, smritis and brahmanas. Robert
Redfield has used the concepts of ‘little’ and
‘great’ traditions in his studies of Mexican
communities. Influenced by this model,
Milton Singer and McKim Marriott have
conducted some studies on social changes
in India utilizing this conceptual framework.
The basic ideas in this approach are
civilization and the social organization of
tradition. The social organization of these
civilizations operate on two levels, first that
of the folk or unlettered peasants including
the tribals, and second, that of the elite, or
the ‘reflective few’. The cultural processes
in the former comprise the ‘little’ tradition
and those in the latter constitute the ‘great’
tradition. There is, however, a constant
interaction between these two levels of
tradition.
It would be erroneous to believe that
Indian civilization consists only of the Hindu
view of life. It also includes folk traditions
and folk ways of the people who do not have
a written history. The unity of Indian
civilization is maintained by its cultural
structure which perpetuates a unity of world
view through cultural performances and
their products. These cultural performances
are institutionalized in festivals, fairs and
rituals. In fact, Indian civilization can hardly
be described either through the dichotomy
of the Sanskritic and western traditions or
that of the ‘little’ and ‘great’ traditions.
S.C.Bube, among other social scientists, had
expounded in his piece, ‘The Study of
Complex Cultures, in the book Towards a
Sociology of Culture in India, edited by
T.K.N.Unnithan, Indra Deva and Yogendra
B.N.VYAS
Singh (1965) that Indian tradition is far too
complex, besides consisting of a hierarchy
of traditions, each of which needs to be
analysed in order to unravel all the
ramifications of change.
The tribals who have been living with
caste Hindus have also acquired many of the
traits of Hindu religious and folk tradition.
There has been a constant interaction
between the ‘little’ tradition of the tribal
society and the ‘great’ tradition of caste
Hindu society. The tribal society is a whole
society and each social structure in it is
segmentary. Each tribal ethnic group has a
separate identity. We can argue that the
multiple ethnic tribal groups residing in
different cultural and ecological contexts
have interacted similarly with the ‘great’
tradition of caste Hindus. This explanation
is based on the premise of the anthropology
of knowledge. Though a large number of
tribal groups are found at different levels of
development, that have a common
existential basis, that is, they are found in
hills and forests. Their illiteracy, general
backwardness and above all their existence
in the midst of nature—forest, hill and
game—have provided them an ethnomethodology
which interacts with the Hindu
‘great’ traditions in similar ways. It is this
tribal existential basis which interprets the
Hindu traditions in a specific way. And this
is what is called the anthropology of
knowledge. In other words, the knowledge
of the tribals about the Hindi ‘great’ tradition,
namely, in the present context, the
Ramayana, is derived from the existential
basis of the elements of tribal social
structure. The classical story of the
Ramayana as told by the Sanskrit poet,
Valmiki, or the Hindu poet, Tulsidas is given