Kala Sarovar ISSN: 0975-4520

(UGC Care Group-I Journal) Vol-24 No. 04 October-December 2021

THE INTERPLAY OF MYTH, NATURE AND SOCIAL HISTORY IN GOPINATH

MOHANTY’S NOVELS PARAJA, THE ANCESTOR AND AMRUTARA SANTANA.
Chaitra Nagammanavar
Assistant professor, Department of English, Bangalore university Bangalore, INDIA

ABSTRACT
India has approximately 500 tribes, each with its own mythology, local mythologies are frequently overlooked while
researching larger trends and patterns. They are spread in Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Assam. They
have unique traditions, myths related to gods and dance and music to pray the god. Majority of the tribes in India have
their own myths. Myth is a traditional story; it usually explains the origin and the history of a people or a group. Myth
involves supernatural elements and events. These myths influence the day-to-day lives of the people. The myths are
mainly formed to encourage or discourage certain behaviors of the people. The constant evolution of myths makes it
identical in Levi-Strauss’s opinion with language. They are frequently seen as being simpler, etiological (explaining
reasons), and perhaps proto-historical, but they rarely possess deep psychological understanding. This could be due
to the researcher’s bias or simply the nature of tribes, where ritual rhythms of existence take precedence over
contemplation. It’s easy to observe how Hindu mythology has influenced tribal mythologies, but the opposite is also
true. Myths have a good share in Mohanty’s novels. Gopinath Mohanty depicts how the myths formed on the trees,
animals and non-living things like hills and rivers regulate the behaviors of the tribes. This paper seeks to analyse the
interplay of myth, nature and social history in Gopinath Mohanty’s novels Paraja, The Ancestor and Amrutara
Santana.

KEYWORDS: myth, social history, nature and tribes

INTRODUCTION
India is a home to the second largest population of tribes. They are addressed with different names: Adivasis,
Scheduled Tribes, aboriginal groups and Girijans. The tribes of India are unevenly distributed throughout India. The
northeastern states – Nagaland and Meghalaya have the highest number of tribal population. In India, there are around
570 distinct tribal groups.
Tribes in India were subjected to abuse of Christian missionaries and the Hindu reformers equally to give up their
traditions and accept the religion they were imposing on these tribes. Although, the tribes have managed to preserve
their ancient rituals, culture and customs. Some of the important tribes in India are: Khonds, Nagas. Santhals and
Bhils. Khonds are spread in the state of Orissa. They are known for their cultural heritage and values and myths
centered on respecting the nature. They follow animistic religion interwoven with Hinduism. The Nagas are the second
largest tribe; they live in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Their political, social and religious lives are interwoven.
The third largest tribe is the Santhal tribes. They are spread in Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Assam.
They have unique traditions, myths related to gods and dance and music to pray the god.
Majority of the tribes in India have their own myths. Myth is a traditional story; it usually explains the origin and the
history of a people or a group. Myth involves supernatural elements and events. These myths influence the day-to-day
lives of the people. The myths are mainly formed to encourage or discourage certain behaviors of the people. The
constant evolution of myths makes it identical in Levi-Strauss’s opinion with language. “Myth is language; to be
known myth has to be told; it is a part of human speech” (Levi-Strauss, The Structural Study of Myth- 209). For
instance, there are many myths related to certain trees and animals in the tribes. The main intention here is to preserve
them from going extinct. So they are treated as gods and restricted from hunting.
Though Indian tribes form 7% of the Indian population, there are very less novels written on tribes. Tribal culture,
heritage and their problems are rarely depicted in the
Indian novels. So this section of the Indian society remains ignored and marginalized. This makes it important to study
the Indian novels written on Indian tribes. Some of the important novels depicting tribes are Kiran Desai’s Inheritance
of Loss, Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, Rasna Barua’s Partings and Kamala Markandeya’s The Coffer
Dams. But one Indian novelist who makes a remarkable contribution to this genre of Indian tribal novels is Gopinath
Mohanty.

179
Kala Sarovar ISSN: 0975-4520
(UGC Care Group-I Journal) Vol-24 No. 04 October-December 2021

Gopinath Mohanty was born on April 20, 1914, in Nagabali, Cuttack. Gopinath Mohanty after his M.A. degree in
English literature, he joined the Orissa Administrative Service (1938-1969). He worked in the tribal areas like Koraput
District as an administrator. This helped him to observe the tribal -‘Kondh’ and ‘Paraja’ closely. Their culture, life-
style and myths inspired him to write novels. Some of his important novels are Amrutara Santana, The Ancestor,
Survivor and Paraja. Gopinath Mohanty has written 24 novels; 12 collections of short stories. He has been awarded
Sahitya Akademi and Jnanapitha Awards.
Myths have a good share in Mohanty’s novels. Gopinath Mohanty depicts how the myths formed on the trees, animals
and non-living things like hills and rivers regulate the behaviors of the tribes. Myths compel the characters in the
novels to believe in the old tradition and adhere to them. Mohanty’s novels also have the element of social history.
His novels portray how the tribal families were affected by the colonial rule and missionaries. His novels conatin
social history of the tribes. He writes about their origins, usually myths followed by what they went through in the
colonial rule.

DADI BUDHA (THE ANCESTOR)

Gopinath Mohanty’s novel Dadi Budha or The Ancestor revolves around the myth of a tree. It was published in the
year 1944, translated into English as The Ancestor by Arun Kumar Mohanty. The action takes place in the village of
Lulla. The story revolves around the Paraja tribe. The tribes are simple and believe in their Dadi Budha — the
“ancestral spirit” (Mohanty, The Ancestor- 6). The date palm tree is the Dadi Budha, it is believed to be the ultimate
“primal ancestor” and a “benign deity’ (Mohanty, The Ancestor- 6) who keeps an eye on the Parajas. The myth
associated with the tree is that: “everything is his creation and play. Being their supreme soul, he is the preserver and
destroyer of all phenomena and “responsible for the prosperity and misery of everyone” (Mohanty, The Ancestor-43).
So everyone in the Lulla village prays Dadi Budha and follows the traditions and customs of the myth associated with
the tree. One single tree regulates the life of a whole tribe. According to Barry Lopez in his Reclaiming Place: Seeking
an Authentic Ground for Being, argues that this proximity of tribes is due to:
“As a rule, indigenous people pay much closer attention to nuance in the physical world. They see more. And from a
handful of evidence, thoroughly observed, they can deduce more. Second, their history in a place, a combination of
tribal and personal history, is typically deep. This history creates a temporal dimension in what is otherwise only a
spatial landscape. Third, indigenous people tend to occupy the same moral landscape as the land they sense. Their
bonds with the earth are as much moral as biological”. (Lopez 24-25).
When everything was going well there is an entry of an intruder in the village. One of the tribe Thenga Jani elopes
with a Christian girl Santosh Kumari. Thenga Jani, the son of Ramchandra Muduli, the headman of Lulla village. This
violates the tribal code and disturbs the peace of the village. The worshiping of a tree by tribes is also made fun of by
the missionaries. This is where the violation of a myth disrupts the tribal society.
Mohanty tries to portray the social history of his period. In the novel The Ancestor, he mentions how the missionaries
convert tribes:
“In the scorching heat the missionaries in black coats moved from one village to another preaching the message of
Christianity. They sweated profusely and their feet were blistered. Whenever they came across someone they would
preach to him the message of their religion. Have faith in God, the Almighty who sent his favorite son to wipe out the
evil from the earth: have faith in Him alone”. (Mohanty, Ancestor -32).

AMRUTARA SANTANA (THE DYNASTY OF THE IMMORTALS)

The novel Amrutara Santana (The Dynasty of the Immortals) delineates the life of the Kandha tribes. It deals with
family of Sarabu Saonta, the headman of the Khandas. Mohanty mentions a myth that is prevalent among the Kandhas
about the invasion of different races on them and their origin:
“This is the ancestral land of Sarabu Saonta. The Aryans arrived-that was the other day; before them, the Dravidis had
arrived; and before that, a flood of people of many kinds- yellow-skinned, those with pointed faces, flat-nosed, and
those with pale blue eyes- the Gadabas, Parengas, Saoras, Mundaris, people speaking kungkang-chungchang dialects-
but from the beginning time, Dhartani’s own children, the friends of the hills, the Kandhas had been here. This is their
homeland, land for farming, for hunting”. (Mohanty, Amrutara Santana -9)
There was no written document about Kondhs until Mohanty wrote this novel. In this novel he mentions an interesting
myth which disowns not just the Aryans but also Dravidians as the original inhabitants of Indian-subcontinent and

180
Kala Sarovar ISSN: 0975-4520
(UGC Care Group-I Journal) Vol-24 No. 04 October-December 2021

declares themselves as the original inhabitants who were the children of Dhartani (Goddess of Soil). This shows their
close association with the nature and series of invasion happened on the Kandha tribe.
In another instance, when Bejunis was killed by the tiger they were not allowed to kill the tiger according to the tribal
code. They had to follow many rules to kill it:
“If the tiger were to be killed, that would be done by the Kandha’s Odia musket. However, for that too, the Disari
needed to configure an appropriate conjunction”. (Mohanty, Amrutara Santana -549)
“Hey tiger! Ho tiger spirit, ho great god tiger, tiger king, remain confined to the forest…” (Mohanty, Amrutara
Santana -556).
Instead of killing a tiger, they prayed the tiger not to kill anyone of them. But everything altered when the new
generation took over. The son of Sarabu Saonta, Diudu becomes the headman of the Kandhas. He comes under the
influence of the colonial rule and becomes more fascinated about the weapons. He disowns his tribal culture and
customs. He doesn’t remain loyal to his wife Puyu as she has lost her youth, freshness and charm after giving birth to
his son, Hakina. He gets attracted to Pioti, a young and beautiful girl of another village called Bandikar. One night,
leaving behind his faithful and devoted wife, he goes to that village and marries Pioti. The story ends with Piyu leaving
her husband's house for her paternal village. Moreover, he visits Sonadei, a woman turned into a whore after being
disgusted with an impotent husband. So the influence of the alien culture on the tribes makes them give up their
tradition and values in turn leading to social degeneration.

PARAJA
Paraja is one of the well-known novels of Gopinath Mohanty. It deals with the moving story of Sukru Jani and his
family. They are the Paraja tribes. Here, Mohanty not only depicts the myths and bonding of the Parajas with the
nature but also how it was transformed by the implementation of new land policies by the British which gave more
powers to forest officers and landlords. The novel ends with the killing of the landlord. We can trace the undercurrent
of the naxalism and its causes. In his review of Mohanty’s novel Amrutara Santana (The Dynasty of the Immortals)
, Chandrahas Choudhury writes, “for Mohanty’s characters, the link to the past is not a matter of historical record but
rather, an imaginative one rooted in a feeling for nature and the cosmos” (Choudhury n.p.).
Levi-Strauss in his Structuralism and Ecology writes that the primitive (tribal) cultures doesn’t believe in the
difference between the ‘intelligible’ and the ‘sensible’. He writes: “Structuralism teaches us better to love and respect
nature and the living beings who people it, by understanding that vegetables and animals, however humble they may
be, did not supply man with sustenance only but were, from the very beginning, the source of his most intense aesthetic
feelings and, in the intellectual and moral order, of his first and even then profound speculations” (Levi-Strauss -171).
The colonial rule in India created a narrative of savage, thug and uncivilized tribes. The beliefs of the tribes had deep
meanings but they were made fun of. As Levis- Strauss says there was always an amalgamation of intelligible and
sensible in their practices.
The novel mentions certain myths of the Parajas associated with life in the jungle. There was prohibition on the killing
of certain animals. Tiger was called as ‘Bagh-debta’. The tribes had no grudge on the tigers even though it had killed
their closed ones. They believed it was natural.
“But the killing of the bears was taboo. Tigers were another matter”. (Mohanty, Paraja -163)
For Parajas and Kondhs Dhartani (Goddess of Soil) is their mother. She created both the tribes is the myth. So they
swear keeping Dhartani as witness.
“The Kondhs, as was their custom, swore an oath and said: “The Earth goddess is our witness, and the sacred
Kodingamali Mountain is our witness. May our hands wither away and all our cattle and children die if speak a
falsehood: the land is ours”. (Mohanty, Paraja -198)
But the land policies implemented by the British gave more powers to the landlords on the tribes. The landlords after
giving them the loans started exploiting the tribes by manipulating the interests. The innocent tribes were cheated by
these manipulations. Once again, the peaceful coexistence between the tribes and nature is disturbed by the external
elements. The protagonist of the novel, Sukru Jani and his sons become slaves (gotis) in the Sahukar’s (landlord)
house. But when the tortures of the landlord become intolerable they murder him. This novel shows how the innocent
tribes living in the forest become violent due to the colonial policies and ill treatment of the landlords.

181
Kala Sarovar ISSN: 0975-4520
(UGC Care Group-I Journal) Vol-24 No. 04 October-December 2021

CONCLUSION
Gopinath Mohanty’s novels were written after his close interactions with the tribes, this makes them very realistic and
they delve deep into the tribal life. Gopinath Mohanty depicts the beautiful life of tribes: nature, simplicity, traditions,
music and dance and on the other hand he also pictures the pain of the tribe due to new policies introduced during
colonial rule which made them dispossessed and forced them to get converted to Christianity. One can observe the
story line which follows in all the three novels- the tribes lead peaceful life following traditions and myths of their
tribe, there is a sudden appearance of an intruder (missionaries, converted people or colonial officers) who force them
to disown their tradition and this leads to the chaos in the family and the whole tribe. Hence, there is interplay of myth
of tribes which direct people to follow rules and respect nature but the intervention of the colonizers alters the system
of tribes.

REFERENES
[1] Mohanty, Gopinath. Paraja. Trans. Bikram K. Das. Delhi: O.U.P., 1997.
[2] Mohanty, Gopinath. The Ancestor. Trans. Arun Kumar Mohanty. Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 2013. Print.
[3] Mohanty, Gopinath. Amrutara Santana. Trans. Bidhubhushan Das, Prabhat Das and Oopali Operajita. Delhi,
Sahitya Akademi, 2015. Print.
[4] Levi-Strauss, Claude. “Structuralism and Ecology”. Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory. New
York: Basic Books, 1963. Print.
[5] -, “The Structural Study of Myth”. In Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Print.
[6] Devy, G.N. Introduction. Indigeneity: Culture and Representation. Eds. G.N Devy, Geoffrey V. Davis, K.K
Chakravarty. New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2009. Print.
[7] Guha, Ramachandra. “Adivasis, Naxalites, and Indian Democracy”. Economic and Political Weekly. Web. 11
August 2007. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/unacknowledged-victims/265069
[8] Lopez, Barry. “Reclaiming Place: Seeking an Authentic Ground for Being”. Main Currents in Western
Environmental Thought. Ed. P.R Hay. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002. Print.

182