Significance of Myth in Kathapura

    Maharaja Krishna kumar sinhji M.A English Department

Name :     Lewade krupali k.

Class :    M.A.sem-1st

Roll no:     14

Subject :   paper no.4

            Indian writing in English.

Topic of assignment:Significance of myth in Raja Rao 's“ Kanthapura “

Guided by : Heenaba zala
Submitted to:

Henaba zala

Mahararaja Krishna

kumarsinhji M.A

                English department

                             

Significance Of Myth In Kanthapura

           Introduction :

                   
         Myth has always had a very significant position in human psychology. mythology in Indian context is perhaps the most utilized and most admired for every generation and genre. The word 'myth'has often suffers from a wrong connotation. so here i am giving definition of myth.

Definition of myth :

   ''Myth is a traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the  customs,institutions,religious rites, etc. Of a people : myths usually involve the exploits of gods and heroes.”

“Myth is “a traditional or legendary story, usually concerned with deities or Diem-gods and the creation of the world and its inhabitants.”

                   
        Myth has been instrumental in propagating India's culture,heritage,philosophical system,religious thinking,political understanding and social values.one of the major reason the question that why myth and legends becomes medium of Indian literature to convey their thought and ideas.for example sri aurobindo,Girish karnard,t.p.kailasam,raja rao.here we are concern with myth in raja Rao’s ‘kanthapura’.

'our history or identity is preserved in myth.myth are very near to human existence.’

      Significance of myth in raja Rao’s kanthapura

       
 ‘’A primitive habit of mind myth are the life blood of life.’’

       Raja Rao’s novel gives us social ,religious ,mythical scenario of 1930s. it is Indian in its them,myth,images ,narration and style. Raja Rao is a representative of the gandhian age and reveals in his novels and short stories an awareness of the force let loose by the gandhian revolution and pull of the past tradition. Raja Rao’s kanthapura  deals with the them of Gandhi on contemporary freedom movement .Raja Rao’s novel  is absolutely  influenced by mahatma Gandhi. Religion is medium to inform the people, so Raja Rao use myth as a medium to express is thought.Every  village has its own myth. So in this novel raja rao we find the

        
           ‘ Myth of village kanthapura ‘

        The dramatic tale narrated by the old woman, Rangamma evokes the spirit of India ‘s traditional folk epic, purans. the technique adopted by Rao is flash back technique. The story is narrated by an old grand mother to a new comer to the village. kanthapura is the village  of south india :kenchamma godesss .people are poor ,simple, superstitious, religious.

 there are number of mythical device in kanthapura. it is excellent example of combination of puranic and folktale elements.right in the centre of the village is a temple dedicated to kenchama, great goddess , benign one. all the villagers are beliving inGoodess kenchamma. There is a folk song which evokes in us images and attitude as to what kenchamma means to the people of kanthapura :
Kenchamma , kenchamma ,

Goddess benign and bounteous ,

            Mother of earth, blood life,

Harvest queen, rain  crowned,

            Goddess benign and bounteous.

Kinchamma is the center of the village and makes everything meaningful.A marriage, funeral, sickness, death, poughing, harvesting, arrests, releas aal those things are watched by kenchamma. There may be smallpox or influenza around, but you make ‘vow to the Godess, the next morning you wake up and you find the fever has left you’. ‘didn’t she kill the demon who killed their children and molested their wives? And so she will continue to protect them come wind, come rain come any distress. While there is no identification of the novelist with it. There is even a ting of irony in his novelist with it. There is even a ting  of irony in his description which surprisingly makes for authenticity.

We can say that this novel itself Ramayana. Raja Rao compares Bharatmata with sits and also compares lord Krishna with mahatma Gandhi.the villagers when they meet, they don't say

     How are you? But they say that

    ‘Ram Ram’ or Sitaram. It shows typical Indianans or shows local colour of our India. in this contemporary time in some of the villages are still following this tradition.in kanthapura raja rao adopts the puranic art of story telling and also shows the considerable skill of of handaling the modern experiments made by the European novelists, says critic kaushal Sharma.prof M.k.naik rightly points out,

        The  story is told with the breathless garrulity of the purans. where the style rests principally on the spoken world. There is little attempt at formal organization and a long continuous outpouring is the only structural principle at work.it is highly that the novel is not divided into parts or chapters but is a continuous narrative punctuated only by breaks which must, of necessity, occur in any narrative of considerable length and proportions. The purans  abound in digression, in episodes and passage connected by only a tenuous abound in digression, in episodes  and passages connected by only a tenuous thread with the main stream of narrative. Raja Rao’s narrative technique in kanthapura achieves this  precise purpose. It places the novel in its long line of puranic tradition. the ancient purans collectively called ‘the  fifth veda ‘ are a repository and a popular encyclopedia of ancient  and  medieval Hinduism. Some of the purans deal with holy places connected with them and hence the name ‘sthala-purana’. The style is often simple , flowing and digressive. There is a lot of similarity with this in kanthapura. Everything around has that feel of timelessness. The village, the hallowed presence of goddess kenchamma, the legend associated with her , all adds this effect. It creates this sense of timeless history that is highlighted by the choice of the narrator  achakka.

               The choice of achakka is significant .Raja Rao uses traditional as well as colloquial form of ‘ story told by grand mother’ which in actual reality accounts for the major source of the folklore knowledge for most Indians. Based on the puranic style its narrative technique is based on tradition methods. Written from the point of view of ‘ I ‘ as the witness narrator,it lends a sense of realistic credibility to the otherwise mythical narration.the central of the novel kanthapura has been characterized as ‘Gandhipurana’ too, as an epic in Gandhi’s India.

Shrinivas calls it ….”a veritable grammar of gandhian myth- the myth that is but the poetic translation of the reality . it will always have a central place in Gandhi literature”.

            The idea of incarnation is similar to purans and Gandhi is the new avtar which is sung by the Harikatha –man. Raja rao is the first Indo-anglian novelist who has effectively exploited the recital of a Harikatha in which Gandhi is represented as the Avtar of shiva. So, naturally,therefor the people of kanthapura regard him as a Mahatma himself.mother India is goddess of wisdom .Here patriotic as well as religion play vital role. Gandhi's birth serves the political theme of the novel. It described that how valkmiki Rushi informs the Brahma that is beloved daughter “Bharata’’ is enslaved by foreigners and how siva himself is incarnated as Gandhi in Gujrat.The central myth of kanthapura is of Rama-Sita-Ravan, which is used to illustrate the fight between mahatma Gandhi and british. Siva is the three eyed God, so is swaraj parvati wooed and won shiva through penance, so does ganhdi, en devour to attain independence through ordeals. Independence is like ram, strives to regain her. Gandhi’s visit to England for the round table conference is like the visit of ram to lanka after ravana’s defeat. If Gandhi is rama, Jawaharlal Nehru is bharata. Further, the mahatma is like lord Krishna , a precious child, with a band of followers, Krishna began fighting at the age of four and fought against the ciemon and the serpent kali. Gandhi tries to slay the serpent of the foreign rule. even moorthy sees lord Krishna safe and on papal leaf and prahlad safe through fire.moorthy is ram.the myth of lord Krishna is woven into the texture of kanthapura. The narrator  tells us that as soon as Gandhi was born ‘the four wide walls began to shine like the kingdom of the sun, the hardly was he in the cradle than he began to lisp the language of wisdom’’.the Harikatha man raises Gandhi to the level of a god by identifying his activities with one particular feat of Krishna;

          ‘’You remember how Krishna when he was but a babe of four,had begun to fight against demons and had killed the serpent kali.so too our Mohandas began to fight against the enemies of the country.’’

                    Men followed him, as they did Krishna, the fight player, as so he goes from village to village to slay the serpent of foreign rule.the British rulers who had “come to bind us as to whip us, to make our women die milk less and our men die ignorant.’’ When Moorthy was a child, he had once quietly slipped into a deep meditation under the serpent papal-tree on bank of the river himavathy in the presence of his mother. In his meditation, he remembered the child prahlad who had said that Hari was every where. ‘’hum me ram, tum me ram, kharag khambhe me ram’’. Later on when he took to fasting in the sanctm of the village temple, he saw the vision of his mother and spoke to her thus: “mother,now you can throw me down the mountain and she asked, why my son? And…” I have seen hari..

The myth of ram-ravana battle signifies the fight between the force of good and those of evill. The ten-mouthed called Ravan and let loose the reign of terror and suppression in his kingdom as well as the adjoining country. He had become a throne in the eyes of gods saints and rishis. During his fearful reign arson, loot and rape had become the order of the day. It was beyond the capacity of the common men to overcome to such a dreadful monster. So, lord Vishnu himself appeared as Rama on earth to free people from the terror of Ravana. simiarly, under the merciless Britishers Bharat mata was held in shackles and her lovely sons and daughters were denied freedom. Economically, innocent Indians were poor and backward through culturally they were far superior to their cruel masters. When Gandhiji appeared on the political platform of our country. He was looked upon as Maryada purushottam ram. Freedom was like sita sullied and dishonoured’’, for the sake of which Gandhiji had to wage a relentless fight against the British masters. Both Rama and Gandhi used the same sort of weapons to fight against the enemies and these weapons were – truth, ahinsa,self-control and non-cooperation. The whole nation as a man on the clarion call of the mahatma staged the mighty British like goat before a lion. The slogan like mahatma Gandhi ki jai’, vendec mantra and inquab zindabad’  rent in the air and there was no stopping of the nationalist forces when once they erupted.

             For the grand mother in kanthaoura swaraj is sita. Mahatma Gandhi is maryada purshottam ram, and Jawaharlal Nehru is his brother bharata :

           “ He will bring us swaraj; the mahatma, and we shall be all happy, and Rama will come back from exile and sita will be with him, for Ravana will be slain and sita freed, and he will come back with sita on his fight in a chariot of the air and brother Bharata will go to meet them with the worshiped sandal of the master on his head and they enter Ayodhya, there will be rain of flowers.’”

                The rejoining Ayodhya denotes the whole of Indian gone into raptures over the attainment of hard-won freedom.

                Mythologizing of political leaders is freely done by the grand mother, narrator. Gandhi is the invisible god while Moorthy is the visible avtar (incarnation).the reign of the red man is asuric and it is resisted by the devas, the Satyagrahis Gandhi mahatma is ram, the foreigner of the brown inspecter of police, who flourishes a lathi on the satyagrahis is a soldier in the headed ravana’s army of occupation, satyagrahi in prison is the divine Krishna himself in kansa ‘s prison.

           The outstanding personality of the village so far as this narration is concerned is moorthy the staunch follower of Gandhiji. He is the spiritual guide, friend and philosopher of the people of kanthapura. He goes through life as a noble cow, quite generous, serene, deferent and brahmanic, a very prince.

                     At the ether extreme there stands bade khan, the police-man who is the ‘’symbol of the oppressive soulless bureaucracy, made visibly repulsive’’. But the villagers are not afraid of the police man, because

                  ‘’what a police man before a Gandhi’s man ? tell me, does boar stand before a lion or a jackal before an elephant.’’

                      Ranga Gawda is the symbol of commonsense and stelrdity, a sort of sardar patel to moorthy, the village mahatma. The river himavathy is herself a (spiritual) presence and the goddess kenchamma of the hill, the protectorates of the people and guardian of kanthapura is also presence.

                   Bhatta is the symbol of false orthodoxy and low cunning. In ‘’The serpent and the rope, the ganges is a symbol purity.in kanthapura raja rao wants to suggest the water of ocean is not enough to “wash this since away.” Bhatta is by all means a great sinner and an incurable usurer.

                   Kanthapura’s puranic texture is reflected in its abundant application of the Hindu myth and legends, its recurrent use of certain virtue and vices to create an atmosphere of tension and conflict, and its occasional display of harmony and understanding between the human and natural worlds.

                      Raja Rao skillfully exploits the traditional mythological device in driving home a point, as well as the south Indian freedom in making the action of the novel authentic  artistically  convincing . it is a beautiful combination it describes the whole gamut of the gandhian revolution in microscopic way.

                  Kanthapura  is Raja Rao’s Ramayana  and The serpent and the rope is his Mahabharata. In short as earlier we see that the idea of god or goddess is very much surrounded by us and especially with Indian people.

Conclusion :-

        Literature owes much to mythology. Indian literature for centuries had been drawing on myths. Especially Indian literature always woven around myth and religious. Raja Rao also did same thing with his novel  “kanthapura”. Thank you………………………………….!!!