33

Chapter One

Myth, History and Indian Drama

In this chapter an attempt shall be made to explore the various

significance of myth, history and their inter-relationship so as to

provide a framework within which Karnad’s plays can be studied.

Also the chapter shall make a brief survey of those Indian English

plays that use myth and history as dominant modes of

representation.

The word “myth” is derived from the Greek word ‘mythos’ which

means an ancient traditional story of gods or heroes. In common

parlance, a myth is a tale about gods, supernatural beings, heroes etc.

It is traditional which means that it was transmitted orally for many

ages. It is notoriously difficult to arrive at any single definition of

myth. For example, myths can be stories about ancient events that

define and sustain notions of community. However, a “myth” can

also be a fabrication or act of false speech that is, nevertheless,

ideologically persuasive. In Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology and

Scholarship (1999) Bruce Lincoln provides a thorough genealogical

study of both these aspects of myth. As Lincoln demonstrates, the

33
 34

idea that myth is an ideologically weighted narrative about figures or

events from a remote past which shape contemporary ideologies

comes down to us from about the seventh century BC, through

Homer and Hesiod (3). Myths are, by nature, both untrue and true.

What separates a myth from any other kind of narrative is a peculiar

affective quality that carries its ideological matter in disguise. This

“affect” elevates myth above ordinary speech and aligns it with the

rhetoric and matter of sacred narrative.

Myth has become one of the most prominent terms in contemporary

analysis of literature. It was Northrop Frye, one of the most

influential myth critics (others including Robert Graves, Richard

Chase, Philip Wheel Wright) who provided a fresh impetus to the

study of myths in relation to literature. He identified these formulas

as the “conventional myth and metaphors” which he calls

“archetypes”. C.G. Jung was of the view that materials of the myth lie

in the collective unconscious of the race. Writers have always been

attracted towards the elements of remoteness, mystery and the

heroism of myths. But the application of the term ‘myth’ is very wide

as there is a large variety of application in contemporary criticism.

We also need to understand the difference between myth, legends

34
 35

and folktales. If the protagonist is a man rather than a supernatural

being the story is usually not called myth but legend. If the story

concerns supernatural being, but is not part of systematic mythology

it is usually classified as a folktale. As mentioned earlier a myth is

characterized by supernatural elements.

Myths are usually regarded as fairy tales or beautifully

narrated flights of imagination invented by primitive people for their

amusement or consolation in the face of baffling natural phenomena.

But they also points to, as Carl Jung has suggested, the collective

unconscious of mankind (Segal 107). Indeed, myths continue to

exercise a profound influence on our lives even as they are shaped by

the way we live.

According to the anthropologist Bronislow Malinowski

primitive people used myth to reconcile themselves to the aspects of

the world that cannot be controlled, such as natural calamities,

ageing and death (137). For Mircea Eliade, however, myth is not only

an explanation but also the ritual recreation of story that it tells. The

real purpose of myth is thus experiential: encountering divinity (82).

Sigmund Freud considers the purpose of myth to be conciliatory and

as Robert A. Segal remarks :

35
 36

Myths thus constitutes a compromise between the side

of oneself that wants the desires satisfied outright and

the side that does not even want to know they exist. For

Freud, myth functions through its meaning. Myth events

Oedipal desires by presenting a story in which,

symbolically they are enacted (94).

According to Claude Levi-Strauss, the founder of structural

anthropology, myth could be seen as the primitive people’s attempt

at balancing the binary opposites and making them less contradictory

by providing a mediating middle term or an analogous, but more

easily resolved, contradiction. Thus, myth according to Levi Strauss

is a common horizon of understanding shared by a community of

people. It is the ordering of the chaotic experience of existence, the

rationalization of all that is incomprehensible to human mind and a

way of coping with the larger questions of life and even defining the

identity of a race (10).

As such myths can be said to exercise a profound influence on

our traditions and day to day activities by way of religion,

philosophy, arts and literature. In India myths have always wielded

extraordinary power over the lives of the people. Since ours is the

36
 37

oldest surviving civiliztion in the world Indian ethos is richly fed

from countless sources and Indian mythology and folklore are among

those sources. Myths are preserved in the four Vedas, the

Upanishads, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Puranas and their

aesthetic and social appeal have survived through centuries and

remain powerful even in contemporary times.

HISTORY refers to the oral and written records of lives and events –

individual and collective, specific and general – whose actuality is

documented and empirically verifiable.

When we collectively talk about Literature and History we can say

that both are closely connected with each other because both of them

are connected with the lives of people and their culture. For example

the writer of literature takes any real story from any period of history

and produces a work of historical fiction.

Literature continues to reflect history that is social, political,

religious, spiritual and cultural values and beliefs of a time. History

provides multiple subject matter and themes to creative writers. The

writer uses the creative license utilizing imagination for providing

fresh interpretation to the events of the past. Literature and History

may sound antithetical, but there is enough of history in literature. Its

37
 38

main aim is to explore the fact and unlike professional historians, the

artists keep themselves in tune with the passing of emotions and

conflicts of the contemporary generation in which they live.

Myth and History appear to be complete opposites. To be sure

they are both narratives that is to say arrangements of events into

unified stories- which can then be recounted. But myth is a narrative

of origins taking place in a primordial time; a time other than that of

everyday reality. History is a narrative of recent events extending

progressively to include events that are further in the past but that

are nonetheless situated in the human time.

Let us first consider the fact that our very model of myth has

come down to us from the stories of the Gods in antiquity.

Furthermore a transition from myth to history can be seen in the

Greek myth themselves as they extend to include the history of

heroes and the history of ancestors. These are more properly termed

legendary narratives unfolding in a time lying between the time of

origin and recent events. History encroaches on this legendary time

extending its grasp to include more distant past.

The relation of myth to history can be situated on three

different levels. In a limited, narrow sense myth and history are two

38
 39

different kinds of narratives. Myth is a narrative concerning the

origin of everything that can worry, frighten or surprise us. History

on the other hand is a precise discipline that concerns itself with the

recounting of empirically verifying events. Taken in this strict sense,

history can enter into a variety of relation with myth. History does

not necessarily take the place of myth but may exist alongside it

within the same culture together with other types of narratives.

Then the relation between myth and historiography must be

approached from a perspective of classification of the various kinds

of narratives that are produced by a particular society at particular

moment. History is not only literary product, it is also what man does

or suffer. Many languages preserve these two meanings of the word

for history (or story) as the narrative of the events of the past, and

History as the whole of these events themselves as human beings

make them or are affected by them. Beyond the question of the

writing of history is the question of how a given culture interprets its

historical mode of existence. A number of problems arise in this

connection (as change affect value and meaning). The writing of

history as an essentially literary activity is after all one of the ways a

society accounts for its own past. It inevitably leads to the more

39
 40

general question of the sense that society ascribes to its own historical

development. This interrelationship between history as a literary

activity and history as lived experience gives a new meaning to the

question of the relation between history and myth. Myth to the extent

that it is defined by its foundational role, can function to ascribe a

positive or a negative value to history in general, to the extent that

the latter is understood as a mode of human existence.

To guide us in this problem it will be helpful to take as our

reference the relations between myth and history in ancient Greece. If

we adhere to the definition of history as historiography then history’s

relation to myth is determined in its essential features by the birth of

a type of knowledge and a type of discourse (Prose narrative) that

make a series of decisive break with mythical mode of thought and

with privileged mode of literary expression, versified poetry. The

earliest witness that we have to history’s break with myth was

provided by Herodotus in the middle of the fifth century BCE, whose

work stands as a literary landmark. Its title ‘Historie’ in the Ionian

dialect has ever since determined not only the name of the discipline

that he inaugurated but also the principal meaning of this term,

namely investigation. These histories are in fact investigations into

40
 41

the causes of the wars fought between the Greeks and Persians.

Unlike myths of origin and heroic tales situated in distant times, the

histories of Herodotus are concerned with recent events..

One commonly held view is that myth represents a past phase

of History. This idea has been supported as a way of explaining why

we no longer accept certain myths. But it is a fallacy. They are still

with us, albeit often in a different form. To quote Baudrillard,

“history has transmuted into myth in the modern era(....). History is

our lost referential that is to say our myth” (24). Oodgeroo expresses

a similar view in her poem “The Past”.

Let no one say the past is deed

The Past is all about us and within.

Haunted by tribal memories, I know

This little now, this accidental present

Is not the all of me, whose long making

Is so much of the Past (1990 : 86).

Mythological concepts are often confused and ambiguous and

“it is precisely because they are historical that history can very easily

suppress them” (Barthes 2000 : 120).

41
 42

It is human history which converts reality into speech

and it alone rules the life and death of mythical language

(....). Ancient or not, mythology can only have an

historical, for myth is a type of speech chosen by history

: it cannot possibly evolve from the ‘nature’ of things

(Barthes 2000 : 110).

That history has become myth in our ahistoric contemporary

world is no doubt, in part a result of increasing individualism and

growth of global capitalism. In a globalized world, does the history of

a nation have significance? Is it something we hold on to as proof of

our existence as a nation and part of centuries of time? Derek Walcott

in “Writers in the New World” says we should “reject the idea of

history as time (....) for its original concept as myth (....) history is

fiction, subject to a fitful muse, memory” (1974 : 64).

In New Zealand Literature, the linking of myth and history

with contemporary issues such as land and the role of Maori within

New Zealand society, illustrates Barthes’ statement that myth is “a

system of communication” though not necessarily limited to

indigenous mythology (109-159). Such texts not only underline

Maori myth, but also illustrate how myth evolves into history, an

42
 43

understanding of which is essential for finding ones’ own place in the

contemporary world. In Potiki (1987) Grace uses the myth of the

carver and its importance in understanding Maori history to confirm

Maori identity. Likewise the myth of the whale and the importance of

traditional myths and ways of life is central in Witi Ihimaera’s The

Whale Rider (1987).

Representations intertwining history and myth are frequent,

from Hogarth’s portraits of black servants so skillfully satirized by

David Dabydeen in A Harlot’s Progress (2000) to Conrad’s portrayal of

Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. History and myth are thus intertwined in

various ways, yet at the same time they are independent concepts.

The problematization of the links, however, is a fruitful contribution

to Postcolonial and transcultural studies. In contemporary times

when the search for cultural identities has become a prominent

preoccupation retelling of myths and reinterpreting history have

become all too important.

Myth and History are indispensible sources upon which

literature thrives. The creative artists make use of them to relate the

contemporary reality and validate their judgements. Several modern

Indian writers have turned to myth and history in their works. They

43
 44

have mined its vast resources to bring forth a variety of

interpretations of contemporary situations giving a new direction to

use of myth and history. Indeed, the use myth in literature has been

an interpretative strategy to make texts embody both the past and the

present.

The use of myth and history in postcolonial context also is of

immense significance in contemporary debates. The idea that myths

are both true and false provides postcolonial authors with an ideal

foundation on which to construct narratives that interrogate the

ideological impact of particular historical moments. By drawing on

an ancient myth, an author can invoke a prefabricated frame of

meaning which the reader will recognize. Similar is the case with the

representation of history.

Concerning the use of history and myth in the postcolonial context

Helen Tiffin is of the opinion that because the history of the former

colonies was constructed or fabricated by the colonizers mainly for

justifying their presence and repressive policies, the postcolonial

writers challenge their “master narratives” of history by fracturing

them in two different ways, depending on the nature of the cultural

systems to which they belong. In countries like Africa, Australia and

44
 45

India, which have well developed metaphysical systems, the wrirers

use their indigenous resources to challenge European perspectives

and this leads to their conscious deployment of myth. In countries

where no such systems are available, the challenge operates through

the counter culture of imagination in which the writers resort to the

interrogation and dismantling of the master narrative of colonization

through “polyphony, interrogation of history and textuality, and

proposing varieties of re-readings.” (Tiffin 175).

Use of myth and mythology has been a recurrent feature in Indian

literatures. One of the reasons of employing myths in contemporary

writing is the pan-Indian character of the myths. As Sisir Kumar Das

points out,

If there is any common core of Indian literature, if there are

materials that are shared by the Indians all over the country

it is the mythology of India… They have created structure of

perceptions on which are constructed new images and

allegories, fables and parables, types and archetypes. These

deep structures have become part of the psyche of the whole

literary community…(125)

45
 46

As far as instances of the use of myth and history in contemporary

postcolonial literature is concerned Shashi Tharoor, for example, has

used mythology from the Mahabharata in The Great Indian Novel to

forge new insights by blending the mythical and the contemporary to

form a sort of modern mythology. He moves easily from Bhishma to

Gandhi and then to the present world, comparing, contrasting and

mixing various periods and ages and devising a new understanding

of the Indian past and present.

One of the earliest twentieth century plays to have employed

mythology is Ranendranath Gupta’s Harishchandra Charita (1911).

Also Kalipada Tarkacharya’s Nala Damayanti is also a significant play

that draws its theme from the Mahabharata. In the early part of the

twentieth century many plays were performed that were based on

particular characters of the Indian myths. For instance Janaki Parinaya

(1915), an Odia play by Gopinath Nanda, Dhanurbhanga Natak (1917)

by Narayana Bamgaonkar in Marathi, Sita (1929) by the Bengali

playwright Yogesh Chaudhuri and Sita Banabas (1936) a Manipuri

play and a host of others were written and performed on the life and

predicament of Sita. Similar plays based on the life of mythological

characters like Draupadi, Savitri, Ahalya, Rama, Abhimanyu, Karna,

46
 47

Krishna, Bhishma etc were also popular during the pre-

Independence period. Also Jyotiprasad Agarwal’s Sonit-Kuwari (1925)

based on the theme of Usha-Anirudha was also a very popular

production. K.M. Munshi’s Purandar Parajay (1922) and Lopamudara

are important plays that makes use of mythology extensively. B.M.

Srikantayya’s Gadayuddha Natak (1925) and Asvatthaman (1929)

marked the beginning of a new trend in the treatment of mythology

in Indian drama. Makhanlal Chaturvedi’s Krishnarjuna Yuddha in

Hindi is also an important mythological play in the pre-

Independence period. The use of myths was not restricted to the

Hindu myths alone. Tagore, for instance, uses Buddhist myths in

plays like Sacrifice, Malini, Natir Puja and Chandalika to glorify

Buddha’s humane ideas of egalitarianism, universal brotherhood,

non-violence, peace and secularism. Tagore also used Hindu myths

in plays like Sanyasi, Chitra, Gandhari’s Prayer and Karna and Kunti.

Another significant playwright who wrote in English was Sri

Aurobindo. Aurobindo wrote five complete and six incomplete verse

plays between 1891 and 1961. Perseus, the Delieverer (1943,) The Viziers

of Bassora (1957, Vasavadutta (1957) Rodogune (1958) and Eric (1966)

are some of his significant plays. Highly influenced by Elizabethan

47
 48

theatre he uses myths as instruments of non-violence to project

universal brotherhood, spiritual evolution and cosmic love.

Tyagraj Paramsiva Kailasam is an outstanding dramatist who wrote

his plays in English. He wrote his plays based on epic characters like

Eklavya, Arjun, Drona, Krishna, Draupadi etc. In plays like

Fulfillment, The Purpose, The Curse of Kama and Keechaka he uses

ancient myths to throw light on contemporary social evils like

casteism. His plays are marked by a critique of upper caste ideology

and an unparalleled sympathy for the downtrodden. In the field of

Indian English Drama Kailasam achieves a unique place totally

different from Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. This is on

account of his awareness of theatre and stage.

In the post-independence era Dharamvir Bharti’s Andha Yug (1954)

deserves special mention. It is a verse play about the aftermath of the

Kurukshetra war. In this play, Bharati uses the myth to give voice to

the sense of horror and despair felt in India in the wake of the

partition of the country and the communal bloodbaths that

accompanied it. Adya Rangacharya’s Listen Janmejaya (1960) in

Kannada is an allegory of nation building based on the Mahabharata.

48
 49

Also in recent years K.N. Panikkar and Ratan Thiyam have recast the

Mahabharata plays of classical Sanskrit playwright Bhasa. Uma

Parameswaran’s Sita’s Promise: A Dance Drama is a contemporary

reworking of the Ramayana.

Similarly Indian playwrights have also made extensive use of

history in their plays. Early works like Asvini Kumar Ghosh’s

Kalapahad and Konark in Odia are significant contributions. Also

idealizing historical drama by Girish Chandra Ghosh, D.L.Roy, K.P.

Khadilkar and Jaishankar Prasad were popular among the audience

of the pre-independence period. But the use of historical material in

Indian drama experiences an upsurge in the Post-independence era.

Notable among many such plays are Mohan Rakesh’s Ashadh Ka Ek

Din (1958) based on the life of the canonical Sanskrit poet and

playwright, Kalidasa where he is portrayed as a young artist “caught

between the provincial sources of his poetic inspiration and the

ambiguous attractions of metropolitan patronage”. (Dharwadkar 166)

Again Rakesh’s second historical play Lahron ka Rajhans (1963) centers

on Buddha’s younger brother, Nand who loses interest in a life of

married ease and luxury almost against his own will and sets out to

seek the eight-fold path of enlightenment.

49
 50

Another popular and critically acclaimed historical play in the Post-

independence era is Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghasiram Kotwal (1973), a play

set during the corrupt reign of the late eighteenth century Peshva

rulers of Pune. Also G.P. Deshpande’s Chanakya Vishnugupta (1988) is

a play based on the character of the celebrated chief councilor at the

court of Chandragupta Maurya.

Badal Sircar’s Baki Itihas (1965) is a significant contribution to the

genre of history plays in India because in it Sircar “instead of re-

presenting characters and events from the past in the usual manner

of a history play…creates a present-day fiction to comment

reflexively on the process of history-writing, the distance between a

constructed history and actuality, and the relationship of private to

public histories.” .(Dharwadkar 224)

The most prolific Indian English playwright of the sixties and

seventies is Asif Currimbhoy. His plays deal with varied themes like

history, myth and current politics to socio- economic problems; from

the east-west encounter to psychological conflicts, from religion and

philosophy to art. Valley of the Assassins: A Scenario is a historical play

traces the origins of the Persian Ismailis in the 12th century A.D. Most

of his plays deal with recent political events. He presents the story of

50
 51

partition and its aftermath in The Restaurant (1960), the Sino- Indian

conflict in The Captives (1963), the liberation of the Portuguese in Goa

(1964), the coming of freedom in the Malaysian archipelago in

Monsoon (1965) the Indian freedom struggle and the assassination of

Gandhiji in An Experiment with Truth (1969), the Naxalite movement

in Inquilab (1970), the war in Bangladesh in The Refugee (1971) and

Sonar Bangla (1972), Tibet’s invasion by China in Om Mane Padme

Hum (1972) and the rise and fall in the history of Indo-China in

Angkor (1973). Most of his plays have strong documentary elements

about them and there is no attempt to project the problems in

dramatics terms.

Gurucharn Das’s play Larin’s Sahib (1970) is a historical play

which deals with the crisis that overtook Punjab seven years after the

death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh when East India Company routed the

Sikhs. His other historical play is Mira (1970) and also he wrote a

mythical play Karna which was published in 1974.

Girish Karnad’s versatility lies in his effective use of both history and

myth in his plays in order to throw light on contemporary issues and

problems. While plays like Yayati, The Fire and the Rain, Bali the

Sacrifice and Hayavadana makes use of myths from varied sources,

51
 52

plays like Tughlaq, Tale Danda and The Dreams of Tipu Sultan enter the

arena of complex Indian history so as to interpret our current

predicament in a more critical manner. The remaining chapters are

an exercise in exploring Karnad’s use of myth and history in all their

complexities in his plays.

------------------------------

52