Chapter 4: Tribal Verse

Some of the common characteristics shared by tribal communities all over the world are identified by the essayist. They live in organically unified and cohesive groups. They show less interest in gathering wealth or using labour to accumulate capital and interest. They accept a view where human beings, God and nature are linked and trust in the ability of humans to interpret and spell truth. Tribals live by intuition rather than reason, the space around them is considered sacred rather than secular, and their time sense is considered as personal rather than objective.

According to the author, the tribal imagination is hallucinatory and dreamlike. The fusion between levels of time and different planes of existence is admitted in a natural way. The tribal imagination is distinguished from the secular imagination through these characteristics. In tribal stories, mountains swim as fish in the water, oceans fly as birds in the sky, stars grow like plants and animals speak like humans. Furthermore, in tribal imagination, seas, stars, trees, mountains, animals and men can be sad, angry or happy.

G.N. Devy brings out the importance of the oral literary tradition by explaining the richness possessed by the tribal works, which are transferred from one generation to another orally. He clarifies the point that though literary compositions are transmitted orally, they are ornamentally and thematically rich. The songs and stories which are transferred to the tribals by the oral tradition are unique. The exclusive worldview of the tribals is presented by these compositions. He points out that the variety of these works and wealth is enormous. Devy highlights the different characteristics of tribal arts to demonstrate the importance of the oral literary tradition. He states that one of the main characteristics of tribal arts is their distinct way of constructing imagery and space that might be explained as hallucinatory. Another dimension of oral tradition is playfulness. Devy conveys that oral literary tradition should be properly recognised based on its richness and variety.

According to G.N. Devy, the essayist, many distinctive features are displayed by the tribal arts. One among them is their distinct manner of constructing imagery and space, which might be explained as ‘hallucinatory’. In both visual and oral forms of representation, tribal artists interpret pictorial or verbal space as distinguished by an extremely flexible frame. The boundary between non-art and art becomes invisible. In tribal art, an episode from Mahabharata or Ramayana makes a surprising and sudden appearance; tribal paintings have a mixture of modern and traditional imagery.

A strict convention is followed by the tribal arts. Every tribal creation or performance has another such creation or performance which belongs to a previous occasion. The tribal artist’s creativity lies in sticking to the past while at the same time subverting it.

The soul of tribal arts is playfulness. A pretentious or serious tone is rarely assumed by the tribal arts. The tribal arts are relaxed and never tense.

The songs and tribal oral stories employ bilingualism in a complex way.

According to G.N. Devy, as tribal literature has existed for numerous years, it should not be termed as ‘New Literature’. The stories and songs of tribals are orally transmitted, and since they were not written down, most people are not aware of them. The views of the western literary critics who referred to tribal literature as ‘New literature’ is contradicted by the essayist. He conveys that nothing is new here, the attempt to visualise imaginative expression in the tribal language as literature, not as folklore and to listen to the tribal speech as a language, not as a dialect, would be new.