Bamboo Flowering in the North-East - Wiki - National Folklore ...

Internal metaphors like“humans are trees” organiseknowledge - including folkclassifications- but they alsoproduce other figures thatdelimit semantic fields: thusvegetal metaphors concernrites of passage, and animalmetaphors stress thedifficulty of getting mature.Analysing Santal twistedspeech, we have noted thecentrality and recurrence ofsome of these tropes - thebone and the flesh standingfor the permanent andephemeral - as if minorgenres were contributing toA Santali drummershape analogical knowledge.The same analogy of bones and grains produces andorganises metaphors at different levels of discourse.Internal metaphors show how different parts of the treebecome equivalent to different parts of the human body.External metaphors show how the transformation of fleshand bone is a common central paradigm for animals andhumans. The recurrence of these metaphors means theyare embodied in ritual, as we have seen from the sequenceof funerals, where the mourner makes flower out of bone,a symbol of regeneration of the lineage.Courtesy: www.kamat.orgKnowledge of metaphors varies greatly between persons:for common people, riddles and jokes are easier toremember than stories about ancestors or narrativesconcerning the bongas, which may relate to individualexperiences and are not evoked publicly. Common peoplememorise the “little talk” they have to remember on ritualoccasions like name-giving and marriage but thisknowledge is limited if we compare it to the ojha’s oratoryart. The ojha tries to enhance any ritual he performs bydisplaying two kinds of knowledge. The first kind ofknowledge is characterised by stories concerning theancestors and is shared with senior men. His secondknowledge includes change in tradition (Carrin 1986) sinceojhas are more or less Hinduised and share a broader fluxof knowledge which takes its roots, in Bengal, in popularas well as sect Hinduism, evoking Balinese moral andritual system of thoughts. (Barth 2002).seduce are drawn to use sweet words, to resist the sarcasmof good orators. It is important to be able to decodemetaphors to guess at the hidden intentions ofprotagonists of discourse, as men, bongas, witches or evenojhas usually lie. But how can one avoid lying in achanging world where the basic criteria of truth arechanging? And how are metaphors able to inform Santalsof the process of knowledge production and change intradition? Most Santals understand these figures whileojhas monopolise some sectors of knowledge such asritual discourse and knowledge of the pharmacopia.The conceptual structure of the ojha’s knowledge isdifferent, since he is used to confronting the knowledgeof his colleagues who may belong to differenttraditions. The systematic nature of the ojha’sknowledge reflects his ability to unite a heterogeneousset of skills and beliefs into a coherent discourse. Themetaphors that the ojha uses help him to conflate thediversity of his inspiration into a model that he cantransmit to his disciples. In opposing the knowledgeof the common man to that of the ojha, I have tried toshow how several branches of knowledge coexist,stressing that the metaphorical base of both sustain atacit communication between Santals. But the ojha’smetaphors seem superfluous to ordinary people, sincethey do not link into everyday knowledge and ritualdiscourse, which for them shape both the worlds theyperceive and the image of the world that they cast intorituals.But metaphors also stress the importance of tacitcommunication in a society where secrecy andwitchcraft are central. Among Santals, to tell the truthrequires divination as if it was difficult for ordinarypeople to guess what their addressee really wants tohear. Metaphors must fit the audience. How to speaktruth and be a good orator when the audience hasbecome heterogeneous, some sharing the values of theirHindu neighbours while others are steeped in tribalrevivalist ideas? Those who cannot impose their speechlack prestige, while those who want to convince orCourtesy: www.kamat.orgA Santali girl with her pet10 INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 3 JANUARY - MARCH 2003