kanthapura as a sthala-purana

              

                              

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Paper Name :Indian writing in English

Assignment Topic :”kanthapura as a sthala-purana”

Sem : 1

Name: Solanki Pintu V

Roll No : 35

Enrollment No: PG15101037

Email: solankipintu1991@gmail.com

Submitted to :

       M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

           Department Of English

Indian writing in English,

Kanthapura as sthala-puran

Ø About author : Raja Rao

                      

                  The effect of myth in the novel of Raja Rao’s  kanthapura raja rao is great son of mother india and his greatness has received  national and international recognition. comes of very old and learned south Indian Brahmin family. He was born in 1909 in the village of hassana in mysore. he lived in france from 1908 to1939,return to india on the out break of world war-2 in 1940.it was in france thousand of miles away from India, that was first novel kanthapura  (1938) was written he was awarded the padma bhushn by government of India in 1969.

              Rao’s second novel ,The Serpent and the Rope(1960), considered his masterpiece, is a philosophical and somewhat abstract account of a young intellectual Brahman and his wife seeking spiritual truth in India, France, and England; it plays on the dialogue between Orient and Occident. His other novels are the allegoric The Cat and Shakespeare: A Tale of India(1965);Comrade Kirillov (1976), an examination of communism; and The Chessmaster  and His Moves(1988), which is peopled by characters from various cultures seeking their identities.

Ø Introduction of kanthapura novel :

                                           Raja Rao’s novel Kanthapura (1938) is the first major Indian novel in English. It is a imaginary but realistic account of how a great majority of people in India lived their lives under the British rule and how they responded to the ideas and ideals of Indian nationalism. Kanthapura depicts the story of an Indian village during the British Raj, especially how Gandhi’s struggle for freedom came to a typical village, Kanthapura which is an imaginary village like Hardy’s Wessex. The novel is narrated in form of a sthal purana by an old lady in the village, Achakka.  Author follows the traditional Indian narrative technique here.

                   'Kanthapura' portrays the participation of a small village of South India in the national struggle called for by Mahatma Gandhi. Imbued with nationalism, the villagers sacrifice all their material possessions in a triumph of the spirit, showing how in the Gandhian movement people shed their narrow prejudices and united in the common cause of the non-violent civil resistance to the British Raj.

Ø KANTHAPURA AS STHALA-PURAN:

        Kanthapura a regional novel expands into a sthala-purana and microcosm of India. What is interesting is the world of kanthapura that the novelist creates with all its natural setting the novelist glues the reader right from the beginning.

     “There is no village in India, however mean, that has not a rich sthala- puran, or legendary history, of its own. some God or godlike hero has passed by the village Rama might have rested here under the papal tree, Sita might have dried her clothes, after her bath, o this yellow stone, or the Mahatma himself, on one of his  many pilgrimages through the country, might have slept in this hut, the low one, by the village gate. In this way the past mingles with the present, and gods mingle with men to make the repertory of our grandmother always bright. One such story from the contemporary annals of my village I have tried to tell”. (kanthapura 5)

               The novel rather  than being traditional novel with a neat linear structure and compact plot. KANTHAPURA follows the tradition of Indian sthala- Purana or legendary history. As Raja Rao explains in KANTHAPURA by  the imagery of village and villagers. .Kanthapura  is microcosm of the macrocosm, for what happens in kanthapura was happening all over the country during those stirring days of the Gandhian freedom struggle. as raja rao tells us in the very first sentence of his well known preface to the novel, every village in India has a rich sthala purana or legendary history. It has a legend concerning the local goddess kenchamma who protects the villager from harm and presides over their destiny. The novelist style or narration makes it a Gandhi  purana or a Gandhi epic.

                                   In kanthapura raja rao made an effective use of the mythical technique used with such success by English writers like T.S Eliot and Joyce. The use of mythical technique means that the past is juxtaposed with the present an in his way the past may serve as criticism of the present. or it may be used heighten and glorify the present. in his waste land T.S.Eliot has used the mythical technique to criticize the present and in kanthapura raja rao has used this very technique to glorify the present and impart to the novel the dignity and status of an epic or purana. it is in this way that the Gandhian movement, ”kanthapura is again another and a larger attempt at creating a sthala purana.

           As raja rao tells us in the very first sentence of his well known preface to the novel, every village in India has a rich sthala purana or legendary history. It has a legend concerning the local goddess kenchamma who protects the villager from harm and presides over their destiny. The novelist style or narration  makes it a gandhi purana or a Gandhi epic.

                  Rao depicts the regular involvement of the villagers in Sankara-Jayanthi, Kartik Purnima, Ganesh-Jayanthi, Dasara, and the Satyanarayana Puja with the intention of conveying a sense of the natural unity and cohesion of village society. Old Ramakrishnayya reads out the Sankara-Vijaya day after day and the villagers discuss Vedanta with him every afternoon. Religion, imparted through discourses and pujas (prayers), keeps alive in the natives a sense of the presence of God. Participation in a festival brings about the solidarity among them. The local deity Kenchamma protects the villagers "through famine and disease, death and despair". If the rains fail, you fall at her feet. Equally sacred is the river Himavathy which flows near Kanthapura.

                   The novel “Kanthapura” takes us to the world of history of Hindu. We also experienced the Hindu epics and also come across the Hindu thoughts. The novel has also developed its mythic and symbolic framework. We find some elements whish shows the message of Nationalism that were ancient history, religion, characters from the epics, natural landscape and simple life of the village community of Kanthapura. Hari-Kathas was practiced by the villagers. As it is a traditional form of storytelling. Hari-Kathas are the story of God. Jayramchar  was Hari-Katha man who narrated Hari-Katha based on Gandhi and his ideals. Afterwards he was arrested because of the political propaganda installed in the story.

             Gandhi’s character was portrayed as a hero’s like Ram, Krishna, Shiva in the novel “Kanthapura”. The novel defines Gandhi as a divine rebirth of Shiva. Kanthapura emerges to be a laboratory of the Gandhian thought and theory. The novel is a veritable grammar of the Gandhian myth. In Kanthapura, religion, an integral part of culture has been used for a secular and political purpose such as attaining Independence. Here religion has got a very significant role to play in defining the identity of people and also of the nation.

                  The Indian freedom movement of the 1920s  into a reenactment of the Ravana-Sita and Rama myth and also the myth of Krishna. Raja Rao’s use of myth enables him to contain Western exploitation as a moment in illusory time where everything becomes a kind of MAYA in which ‘Hindu metaphysics has effectively phagocytosed Western invasion, Western history. This is not only an exaggeration belied by the text but also a total misunderstanding of Rao’s use of myth in the novel. He makes conscious use of myths and legends and situates the novel in historical time, not in illusory time and space. It is in this sense Rao uses myths and mythical method because it provides a paradigm Gandhi comes as an AVATAR to destroy ‘ADHARMA or UNRIGHTEOUSNESS’ by killing the serpent of the foreign rule. In the Gandhian fiction “Kanthapura” still enjoys the central position it truly represents Gandhi and also the other side of the reality of the Gandhian myth.

Ø To sum up:

                       Thus, Kanthapura is a great regional novel , as well as an interesting sthala purana. The novelist rises from the particular to the general by the use of myth and legend gives to the freedom struggle of the kanthapurians an all India character. The weaving of ancient myths into the structure of the novel, gives it the quality of timelessness which all great works of art have. By mythic sing the heroic- struggle and self-sacrifice of the people of the south Indian village, he has created a new sthala-purana,a new local leged. The novel illustrates how new legends or sthala-purana, a new local legend. The novel illustrates how new legends or sthala-puranas are made , how the ordinary and the commonplace acquires larger than life dimensions in the imagination of poets and bards,or gossipy narrators like Achakka.

                                      

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