CBSE Class 11 English Woven Words: Chapter 4 - Tribal Verse NCERT Solutions

Tribal communities across the globe share several fundamental characteristics. They typically live in cohesive, organically unified groups. A notable trait is their limited interest in accumulating wealth or in using labor for generating interest and capital. Their worldview is holistic, viewing nature, human beings, and the divine as intimately interconnected. They often rely more on intuition than on pure reason to understand truth. Furthermore, tribal communities tend to perceive the space around them as sacred rather than secular, and their sense of time is more personal and cyclical than objective and linear.

The tribal imagination is distinct from the secular imagination primarily due to its dreamlike and hallucinatory quality. It naturally accommodates a fusion between various planes of existence and different levels of time. For instance, in tribal narratives, it is common to find elements like oceans flying as birds or mountains swimming as fish, and animals speaking like humans, while stars might grow like plants. This contrasts sharply with the secular imagination, which is typically constrained by conventional spatial order and temporal sequence, adhering more strictly to perceived reality.

G.N. Devy emphasizes the profound importance and richness of the oral literary tradition in India. He observes that many literary compositions in Indian languages are often disregarded by literary critics simply because they exist primarily in spoken form. While these traditions are invaluable to folklorists, anthropologists, and linguists, they are frequently overlooked by literary scholars. Devy highlights that numerous nomadic Indian communities maintain their cultural cohesion through oral epics and stories. He collected a vast number of songs and stories from tribal languages, recognizing their immense variety and significant impact on tribal life, and advocates for this rich oral literature to receive deserved recognition.

G.N. Devy identifies several distinctive features of tribal arts. One key characteristic is their unique approach to constructing space and imagery, often described as 'hallucinatory'. In both oral and visual forms, tribal artists treat verbal or pictorial space with extreme flexibility. The boundaries between what is considered 'art' and 'non-art' become almost invisible, with tribal paintings often seamlessly merging with the living environment. There is typically no rigid adherence to sequential order in their creations. Additionally, tribal paintings frequently exhibit a curious blend of traditional motifs and contemporary imagery.

G.N. Devy argues that classifying the rich heritage of tribal literature as 'new literature' is inaccurate and somewhat comical, particularly within the Indian literary community. He attributes this misclassification to a simple lack of awareness regarding the existence and depth of these traditions, rather than any fault of the tribal communities themselves. The literature itself is not new; it is ancient and substantial. The attempt to categorize it as 'new' stems from a failure to recognize its long-standing presence and historical significance within the broader Indian literary landscape.