Abstract
The domain of cultural history of Maharashtra with special reference to the folk traditions and popular religion has greatly been enriched by scholars such as Ramchandra Chintaman Dhere, Dilip Purushottam Chitre and Gunther Sontheimer. Anne Feldhaus belongs to the same galaxy of scholars. She is known for her worthy contribution to the study of thirteenth-century Marathi literature of the Mahanubhavs and also of the religious geography of Maharashtra. The recent work, edited and translated by her with Ramdas Atkar and Rajaram Zagade, presents translations of two lively and well-crafted examples of the ovi, a genre typical of the oral literature of the Dhangars (shepherds) of Maharashtra. The texts recorded, researched and translated were originally performed in Marathi as a pastoralist practice. These two ovis, combining poetry and prose, narrate the fascinating stories of two most important Gods of Dhangars named Biroba and Dhuloba. Pastoralist traditions have an enduring importance in the social, cultural, economic and political life of Maharashtra. The oral literature of the Marathi-speaking Dhangars is not only an important element of the cultural legacy of the region, but it also has a universal appeal. The ovi-performing tradition is fast disappearing, if it still exists at all. The documentation (‘fossilisation’, to use the word of Feldhaus) of two long ovis—‘oral epics’—through this Volume is, therefore, very important academically and culturally.
The ovis in this book, originally sung and narrated by particularly skilled shepherd performers, were recorded by Professor Gunther Sontheimer and his research assistants in the early 1970s. Anne Feldhaus, who inherited the ‘rich treasure of incredibly marvelous stories’, completed the task of Sontheimer (who passed away in 1992) in the form of the current Volume in English and her preceding Marathi book co-edited by Ramdas Atkar and Rajaram Zagade and assisted by Sakharam Lakade (a Dhangar ‘informant’ and friend of Sontheimer) in 2006 on a related theme. Each of the ovis tells an elaborate story of the ‘birth of the God—a miraculous and complicated process in both cases—and of the struggles he went through in order to find and win his bride’.
The book has a short preface, three elaborate parts containing seven chapters, the usual bibliography and an index. It is not a mere translation, but a well-researched and extensively foot-noted scholarly work. The first part is a long introduction by Feldhaus containing five chapters. The first chapter aims at acquainting readers with Dhangar shepherds, their life, culture and the ovi genre. It also provides information about the specific ovis presented in the Volume, the conditions under which they were recorded and also the summary of stories that the ovis tell. The second chapter discusses the literary characteristics of these ovis. It examines the narrative techniques, motifs, and also the features such as Smaran or Sumbaranu (remembrance or recollection at the beginning), signature line, alteration between sung and spoken parts and also between voices within each of the two types of narration, purposeful repetitions, stylised wording, figurative language, sense of place, geographical lists, technique of ‘localisation’ lending a real-life feel, ability to give sensual experience in many ways, dramatic element sharpening the tension in the narrative, use of disguises in the narrative, stories within stories to relax the tension, nicely spaced humour ranging from puns to slapstick comedy, techniques of public performances and so on. A few inconsistencies in content of the ovis and some slips and mistakes in performances have also been brought out in the concluding part. The third chapter focuses on the world of the ovis. This has been done by using ‘space and time’—two parameters crucial for analysis, both in social sciences and in humanities. The cosmology implicit in the stories has been pointed out, along with the physical and political geography of both the ovis. The spatial analysis supported by the appropriate maps is a fascinating feature of this discussion in which Anne Feldhaus specialises. The ‘past’ of these ovis, in her opinion, is ‘an undifferentiated past, a few generations earlier than the 1970s, and thus in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century’. Her concluding remark in the ‘space-time’ discussion is ‘Overall, it seems, these men were much more interested in place than they were in time. In my view, their vagueness about time provides a contrast that only highlights their careful specificity about place’. The fourth and the fifth chapters are important from the sociological point of view. The forth chapter deals mainly with social groupings in the ovis and the life and values of the pastoralists. As shown by the editor, the two ovis provide a generous sample of the variety of social and occupational groups to be found in the Maharashtrian countryside. Besides towns, cities, agricultural villages and the ‘terrifying’ forest, the other kind of place that appears in the two ovis is pastoralists’ Vadas (most often a pastoralist’s settlement, a place that is also a community). The ovis include not only the people who are part of the Vadas but large numbers of animals also. Many episodes in the ovis provide details about the work involved in herding. We also come across the practices, ideals and identity of Dhangars in Maharashtra. The fifth chapter discusses ‘Gender and women in the Ovis’. The editor has shown how the stereotypical attitudes about women’s lives and about gender are reflected in both the ovis. The narratives are marked by extremely anti-feminine attitudes. They give importance to the interlinked themes of virginity, barrenness, motherhood and lactation. As observed by Feldhaus, Barrenness and infertility constitute an even stronger theme in these stories than does virginity, and lactation and nursing receive even more emphasis than do pregnancy and childbirth….The effect of the paradoxical pairing of virginity and lactation is apparently to denigrate or eliminate sexuality and childbirth while at the same time allowing for fecund femininity and motherhood.
Parts II and III consist of the English translations of the two ovis from the ‘Sontheimer Archive’, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg. Part II narrates the story of Biroba as performed by singers in the village Nimbavade and Part III the story of Dhuloba as narrated by Daji Rama Pokale. The task of translating these two long narratives, covering 172 and 282 pages, respectively, of the Volume, was a very challenging one. But the editors have meticulously done their job. The very fact that these two translations contain 259 and 571 footnotes, respectively, is a testimony to the hard work and linguistic skills employed by them. By bringing the oral narratives in written and translated forms, the editors have made them part of the global literature without scarifying their regional and pastoral flavour.
The Volume presents a remarkable work on oral literature of Marathi shepherds. Apart from being a useful translation, it is a brilliant piece of interdisciplinary analysis and appreciation of literature. It also makes a substantial contribution to the history of pastoral culture in Maharashtra within a broad sociological-anthropological framework.