Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy His understanding of

Dr. A. K. COOMARASWAMY

His Understanding of the Folklore

N.S. KRISHNA MURTI

Folklore of all countries and lands, contains expositions of the psyche of those communities. Racial memories in those euphonic literary patterns, are always loaded with primeval metaphysical concepts. They always have spiritual significance. In their descent by mouth to the ear, some verbal variations occur, but the basis always remains intact, Successive progenies preserved them as a rich heritage. Their survival is due to their innate and dormant conceptual profundity of a lasting nature.

From out of this mass of ubiquitous literature, classic and romantic writings emanated. These have developed with a surfeit of ornamentations and figures of speech. Here one is reminded of a Japanese Haiku:

The seed of all song
is the farmer’s busy hum
As he plants his rice (paddy seed)
–RASHO

It is given to the modern readers to discover the husk of the verbal products and rescue the kernel and make an under­standing of the lofty, sublime, metaphysical and spiritual concepts. We are sure to conclude that they were not of human origin or creation, but only descents of divine intuitive perceptions of man.

Dr. A.K.C’S understanding of the folklore is truthful and sublime though bewilderingly recondite. He always reads perennial verities in folklore and never reads anything into them. Folklore texts embody stories of heroic themes. But they are not mere thematic literary narrations, but they are only extra-dimensioned symbolic and metaphysical revelations.

The understanding and observations of Dr. A.K.C about folklore have an axiomatic force. He interprets the findings of several anthropologists and folklorists. To protect his own theses, he cites from Indian scriptures and other ancient writings of several countries, all over the world.

According to F.J. Child the folklore author is always in the oblivion of inglorious obscurity, but his fitting and deserving place is always enshrined in the hearts and memories of the people. The folklore remains the wealth and treasures of the community. It is their rightful possession like the Nature’s gifts of water and air. This folk literature is nourished in several cradles and fostered by a multiplicity of mothers like Shanmukha, the six-faced Lord Kumara. No doubt one discerns a structural fixity, though its descent and transmission is always oral. (English and Scotch Ballads)

Another feature of the folklore is our inability to fix the time of the original composition. The names of the roles and places referred to also remain in oblivion. The folk literatures took their root in the fertile antiquity. But they maintained a continuous growth, shot out branches in turn removed to other lands where they got grafted to other plants, where they began new lives based on the mother-stems. There they brought forth flowers and fruit. The main stem and the trunk are the same. Their essence is digested and the story or the song gets reincarnated, thus giving perpetuity of existence to the core of the spiritual or metaphysical concepts.

The transmission of the story or song is mostly oral words by the illiterates (in the modern sense) by a process of repetition through their own community media. Their levels of culture were high and praiseworthy. They safeguarded these literary treasures as sacred relics of a continuing heritage of the ethnic group. They led simple lives and, preserved these literatures with high sense of duty and devotion. The Greek dramatist of the third century B.C. Euripedes said, “the myth is not my own, I had it from my mother”. Such myths in India were the proper language of metaphysics. This myth has an unbroken tradition. In India from the days of yore, mythology and Vedic lore, we see in an endless variety motifs, which gradually and slowly spread into other Western countries. Here one instance is cited and that is the tale of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. This tale takes the reader to the times of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This is of Celtic origin and later on transmitted into English. The tale is the following.

One day when King Arthur and his Knights were sitting at the Round Table, a Green Knight marched into that hall and threw out a challenge. He challenged any knight there to venture to cut off his head agreeing to a condition that this slayer should offer his head in return after a year and a day. This happened during Christmas. This challenge at first was met with silence. When King Arthur himself was about to meet the challenge of that stranger intruding Green Knight, Sir Gawain, stood up, approached the Green Knight with a drawn sword and cut his head off. This meant that Sir Gawain would, after a year and a day, offer his head in return. Then the Green Knight took his head from the ground and placing it over his neck went away. After the due period Sir Gawain went in search of the Green Knight. He reached his abode. His desire was to keep up his word of honour. There at that place he found a beautiful damsel who showered her amours over him. He resisted. But as the last day drew near, he succumbed to the temptation and kissed her. Next day the Green Knight came and struck Sir Gawain. The head of Sir Gawain remained intact. It stayed. But the skin on the neck was slightly cut. This injury Sir Gawain had to suffer as expiation for yielding to the temptress. This tale is one of the series of the Arthurian cycle of legends.

The symbolism here sought to be explained is self-naughting i.e., effacing out the Ego-’i-ness’ and ‘my-ness’ or ‘mine-ness’. These have to be completely eliminated. It is this petty feeling of ‘I’ that misdirects one’s life by thinking that the body is the ‘I’. This small ‘i’ is the perishable part of the personality. The imperishable ‘I’ has to be realised by severing the head from the body. The body is only a complex compound of the elements and other factors. But the in-dwelling spirit is the Ultimate ‘I’ or the universal Soul. This is the highest secret. Here head is the seat of the Ego, i.e., the small ‘i’.

“The wisdom of the ancients (i.e., the inner contents of the Folklore) stems from a cultural level in which the needs of the soul and body were satisfied together. This is inherited by all humanity and without it, we should still be only reasoning animals”. Thus saying Dr. A.K.C. agrees with J.L. Weston and further opines: “We hold with J. L. Weston that the Grail story is not the product of imagination, literary or popular, but at its root lies the record, more or less distorted, of an ancient ritual having for its ultimate object, the initiation into the secret or the sources of life - physical and spiritual”.

II

Two more illustrations from the Indian mythology are given for further elucidation and emphasis – Striking off the head. (a) Ganesa. Striking off the head, which is swelled up with haughtiness and egoism is that of the tale of Ganesa – the God with the elephant-head. In this story, Parvati, the divine consort of Lord Siva, created with saffron powder, a being and stationed him at the gate of Their Abode, with instructions to prevent anyone from entering the habitation. Lord Siva who was away then, returned home. He was denied admission. Siva could not tolerate the impertinence of this new being, who was filled with egoistic feeling. Siva decapitated this being. Parvati, who came there bemoaned at this end for her creation. Siva at once severed the head of a tusker and fitted it on the neck of the torso of the new being and rejuvenated that being to the utter joy of his divinely spouse. Ganesvara Tapini Upanishad and Upanishad of the Atharva Veda explain this event and further offers an explanation of the word ­Ganapati. It was formerly Gajapati. But originally at its creation it was Jagapati, Lord of the worlds. By a process of metatthesis (according to Yaska) it is a Varna Viparyaya. His divine father, Siva, wanted this new being to be the Supreme God of the worlds.

(b) Pravargya. There is a Vedic Myth pertaining to a ritual, which can be cited appositely as a nucleus of the myths of decapitation.

            Pravargyu is a preliminary ritual, performed as a condition precedent – as an introductory procedure. After this the principal sacrifice commences. This is gone through by re-fixing and re­habilitating the severed head of Vishnu – the President of the sacrifices, yajnya-purusha. The myth that preceded this rite is not only interesting but also instructive. The operational function is to re-assemble the sacrificial God into his full divine personality.
Once the celestials, not being satisfied with the wealth they possessed, desired for yasas – surpassing excellences and fame. They agreed to divide the fruit of the sacrifice. They performed the sacrifice. All the yasas, they desired, was obtained by Vishnu, - one of the celestials. He walked away with the fruit without distributing the same as agreed upon. All the celestials, hordes of thirty three crores went after Vishnu and demanded their respective shares. Vishnu turned round and scared them away by stringing his bow in good tension. The hordes of celestials flew away and thought of a strategy. In the meantime Vishnu got inflated with pride and egoism. He lost all the benefits and excellences. In that state he rested his chin on the upper end of the bow, resting the other end on the ground. The waiting angels stealthily sent the termite to snap the tensioned string of the bow. The top end of the bow that was under the chin of Vishnu got released and blew off the head of Vishnu emitting great and fierce sound – Ghram. The angels then to their dismay realised that their presiding arch-angel, Vishnu, is not there. Yajnya–Purusha. But they needed one for the performance of sacrifices. Their need prompted them to think of the means to re-fit the severed head. This re-habilitation of the head required the cooking of a pudding to be used as a joining paste for the head to stick on the neck of the torso. The pudding is made of melted butter at boiling point. Milk of cows and goats are added. This mixture is used as the joining paste for re-fixing the head. Vishnu is revived and till today this ritual is performed.

One can note that the folk tale is never of popular origin, but is merely one form of the traditional narrative. Themes of the various incidents are the same all world over. They are not invented. Dr. A.K.C. condemns the psuedo-modern sophisticated and educated, who revile at the folklore contents. “Our pride and faith in progress makes us think that wisdom is born with us and so find it difficult to credit the early people with great metaphysical doctrines”.

Thus we can gather from the works of Dr. A. K. Coomara­swamy many illustrations for the theses propounded by him.

REFERENCE

Speculation: Jan. 1944. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.