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The Bidayuh People of Sarawak Borneo: Ritual and Ceremonies

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Awang Azman Awang Pawi1 & Chali Ungang2

1Associate Professor of Academy of Malay Studies, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email Id: awangazman@um.edu.my, awangazman@gmail.com. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4939-2706

2 Research Scholar of Academy of Malay Studies, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email Id: charlieungang@yahoo.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.26

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 Abstract

This study aims to analyse the role of rituals and ceremonies of the Bidayuh tribes in Sarawak Borneo as a way of life of the Bidayuh people. Therefore, the cultural history of the Bidayuh people as well as the function and influence to the entire community which becomes the pride and identity is analysed. The data were taken from the Bajo asal (traditional songs), girite Bidayuh damba (stories and legendary), and the exploration and preview of the authenticity of the role in the manifestation of the Bidayuh culture and tradition in the numerous villagers through dynamic modernization.  The content analysis was used to identify the rituals and ceremonies of the ethnic group. With this regard, emic perspective approach was applied to the study of the description of Bidayuh ritual, focussing on the internal elements and their functions in the Bidayuh society area in Bau, Padawan, and Serian division of Sarawak. Among the findings of this community is how important it is to preserve their beliefs to make sure the management of paddy fields are always cared for and preserve abundant harvests, apart from the ‘guardians’ to safe keep the peace of the village. The function and preservation through the ritual and ceremonies as their weltanschauung, influences the peasant society in that area. The study is highlighted to ensure people that the existence of the ritual and ceremonies is still implemented in the modern era as a part of the ancient heritage in Borneo Island- Sarawak.

.Keywords: ritual and ceremonial process, customs and traditions, Bidayuh culture, Sarawak Borneo

Consciously eco-conscious: An eco-conscious re-reading of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Moon Mountain as young adult literature

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Narendiran S1 and Dr. Bhuvaneswari R2

1Research Scholar, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vandalur – Kelambakkam Road, Chennai-600127, Tamilnadu, India. Email: narendiran10@gmail.com. ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9280-9178

2Assistant Professor (Sr.), School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vandalur – Kelambakkam Road, Chennai-600127, Tamilnadu, India. Email: bhuvanadoss@yahoo.co.in. ORCID iD: https:// orcid.org/0000-0003-4660-7118

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.25

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Abstract

A better physical environment is quintessential for a comfortable life; this conscious of environment has been one of the post-world-war effects. The predominance of colonialism is accompanied by exploitation of forest and environment.  Since then, land is nothing more than a resource that conferred wealth and materials for the colonizers. The depletion of forest for agriculture and urban development is a historical phenomenon. It is then aggravated by industrial revolution and colonization. The legacies of colonialism have influenced the mindset of the colonized. Recently, the scarcity of the resources and climate change are the rising concerns of the world. This is mainly because of the humans’ insensitivity towards nature and literature plays an effective role in spreading the need for being eco-conscious. This article highlights the role of young adult narratives in spreading social awareness and interprets the classic Indian young adult novel Moon Mountain by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, which has symbolic references offering ecological insights. The journey of the protagonist through the African continent is critiqued to highlight the enfeeble consciousness about the natural ecology of an individual who seizes material development. This study partly brings out how the colonial legacies continues to influence the contemporary environmental challenges, and discusses the literary relationships between nature and youth influence readers’ attitudes towards the contemporary anxieties such as climate change and related environmental crises.

 Keywords: Eco-consciousness, Habitat, Young, Adult, Environment, Nature

Defining Hindustani Raga Musicians and Their Relative Intra-Statuses: An Analytical Study

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Pragya Pyasi1 and Sanjoy Bandopadhyay2

1Assistant Professor, Department of Music, University of Hyderabad. Email: pragya@uohyd.ac.in

2Professor, Department of Music, Sikkim University. Email: sitardivine@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.24

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Two very widely used terms, ‘musicians’ and the ‘musicians’ statuses’, are commonly applied labels across the music fraternity, where Hindustani Raga Music [HRM] is no exception. In HRM, there are no objectively laid definitions of these two expressions. In different music cultures, musicians’ statuses were seen from the societal, economic, and based on the roles played in music production and rendering. The intra-status, a musicians’ relative position within the same group, is not clearly defined. The formal texts of HRM also do not categorically define a musician. In India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, people use the words vAggeyakAr, kalAvant, mirAsI, kasbi, AtAi, zauqI, and others, but these terms do not categorize musicians within the periphery of a specific musician’s close circuit; these words do not point to intra-status. The current investigation used the DELPHI method to find some objective answers to defining musicians and their intra-status. The HRM Experts from different parts of the world with an average HRM association of 39.11 years joined this investigation. The research exercise systematically generated an objective definition of HRM musician and suggested methods for defining HRM musicians’ statuses.

Keywords: Musician, definition, status, Hindustani Raga Music

Codifying the Oral Traditions, Resisting the Colonial Machinery: A Study of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller

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274 views

Babita Devi1, Divyajyoti Singh2, Satinder Kumar Verma3

1Research Scholar J. C. Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA, Faridabad Haryana. Orcid Id: 10000-0002-9699-864X

2Associate Professor, J. C. Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA, Faridabad Haryana

3Assistant Professor, S.D. College Ambala Cantt. Haryana

E-mail: 1babitakpunia@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.23

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Leslie Marmon Silko is one of the most important Native writers of America. The remarkable thing about her writings is that they never move away from tradition of her ancestors. She uses her writings to preserve and resuscitate the culture of the Natives and for that purpose, she uses the oral tradition of her people. Her writings serve both purposes: they codify the Native culture and traditions and at the same time they maintain the originality of the oral tradition. Storyteller, for instance, is one book that transcends the generic limitations posed by the Euro-American tradition. The codification of the oral tradition at the same time becomes a site for resistance to colonial policies. By codifying the oral tradition, she makes it more durable so that it is available for future generations and at the same time she exposes the reality of the colonial institutions. The book contains fiction, poetry, history, autobiography and photographs of the family. The book may seem like an interesting assortment of different genres, but it also carries an important message that it is the vitality of the culture of the Natives that has allowed them to survive against the colonial juggernaut. The paper is a study of Leslie Marmon Silko’s book Storyteller.

Keywords: Story, culture, oral tradition, whites.

Creating an Alternate Canon: Achebe to Obioma

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329 views

Virender Pal

Assistant Professor of English, Institute of Honors and Integrated Studies, Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra, Haryana, India.

Email: p2vicky@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.22

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Chigozie Obioma is a novelist of Nigerian origin who has published two novels so far. He has been hailed as an ‘heir to Chinua Achebe’ the master African novelist. The comparison of Obioma with Achebe is obvious because both of them belong to the same tribe, but what is more important is that Obioma seems to carry from the point where Achebe left. In his debut novel The Fishermen, Obioma foregrounds the problems that plague postcolonial Nigeria. In the novel, he confirms that whatever Achebe prophesied about the future of Nigeria has come true. Like his illustrious predecessor, he is critical of colonial institutions that have decimated the national culture of Nigeria. The paper is a study of Obioma’s novel The Fishermen.

Keywords: Nigeria, Christianity, Obioma, Achebe, Fishermen.

Laughing with and about Death? Werner Bergengruen’s Philosophical and Literary Approaches

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254 views

Albrecht Classen

The University of Arizona. Email: aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.21

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Werner Bergengruen (d. 1964) was one of the most popular German authors from ca. 1930 to at least 1970, but his reputation has faded a lot, and there are only a few scholars who are still engaged with his works. In his collection of novels, Der Tod von Reval, however, Bergengruen developed a fascinating range of literary reflections on death as people in this Baltic city (Reval, today Tallinn) had experienced it throughout their history. Drawing extensively from medieval and early modern legendary accounts, this author translated in a highly meaningful manner the fundamental experience of death into an existentialist process profoundly informed by humanist values.

Keywords: Werner Bergengruen; Der Tod von Reval; life and death; historical narratives; Baltic literature

Interrogating Strategies of Justice and Racial Politics: A Post-colonial Reading of Abir Mukherjee’s A Rising Man

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Febin Vijay1 and Priyanka Tripathi2

1Junior Research Fellow (PhD), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna. febinvijay777@gmail.com

2Associate Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna. ORCID: 0000-0002-9522-3391.

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.20

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The present article begins with a brief historical account of the exclusionary politics of Western crime fiction, with most of the works representing the East as ‘exotic other’ while assuming the subject position themselves. A post-colonial analysis of Abir Mukherjee’s A Rising Man (2016) is conducted to study how the novel deals with questions of justice and racial politics, and further encompasses a brief inquiry into it can be positioned as an anti-colonial text which advocates a move towards decolonization. The text can be seen as representing the body of work by writers who give voice to the oppressed within colonial contexts and vehemently refuse the idea of being inferior.

 

Keywords: post-colonial, justice, race, crime, violence.

The Word ‘Noor’: Tracing a Long Journey through Translation and Adaptation from Classical Arabic to Contemporary Punjabi/Hindi Pop Songs

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1.6K views

Azhar Uddin Sahaji

Assistant Professor (ad hoc), Department of English, Zakir Husain Delhi College (M), University of Delhi. ORCID id: 0000-0001-8675-4716. Email: info.azharsahaji@gmail.com  

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.19

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In contemporary India, through popular Punjabi, Bollywood songs, we often come across the word “Noor” (tere chehre ka noor etc.) in reference to a female beauty most of the times. We have become so familiar with the word that we almost forgot that the Arabic original word gained its immortal significance when it is mentioned in the Quran in association with the God. The exact and a fixed meaning of the of word “Noor” is not given in the Quran and perhaps, that gives an opportunity which enabled the word to travel worldwide in different languages with different significance attached to it, from spiritual Sufi literature to sensational pop music. This paper will attempt to show how the word Noor has been translated, transliterated, adopted not just literally but the spiritual and religious significances attached to it. This paper will argue that the word Noor itself has  not gone through so much of translation apart from transliteration but the significance associated with it have gone through tremendous translations in different languages and cultures. The paper will also argue that the journey of the word through different linguistic and cultural spheres have lost some of its significance as well gained significances through the process of translation.

Keywords: Noor, Translation, Adaptation, Arabic, Persian, Vernacular languages, Punjabi/Hindi Pop Songs

Of Dictionaries and Dialectics: Locating the Vernacular and the Making of Modern Malayalam

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412 views

Amritha Koiloth Ramath & Shashikantha Koudur

National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal. E-mail ids: amrithakr27@gmail.com/ sasikant@nitk.edu.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.18

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This paper looks at Hermann Gundert’s Malayalam-English dictionary at the juncture of the modernisation of the Malayalam language in the 19th century.  Gundert, the then inspector of schools in the Malabar district, saw the dictionary as the first step towards the cause of a universal education through the standardisation of Malayalam language. But what did a dictionary for all and by implication a language for all mean to the Kerala society? For centuries, much of the literary output in Kerala was in Sanskrit language, even as Malayalam continued its sway.  The diversity of the language system in Kerala navigated its way through the hierarchies of caste and class tensions, springing up new genres from time to time within these dichotomies. Like many other vernacular languages in India, the Malayalam language system remained as the society it was in, decentralised and plural. This fell into sharp relief against the language systems of modern post-renaissance Europe with its standardised languages and uniform education. The colonial project in India aimed at reconstructing the existing language hierarchies by standardising the vernaculars and replacing Sanskrit as the language of cosmopolitan reach and cultural hegemony with English. Bilingualism and translation was key to this process as it seemed to provide a point of direct cultural linkage between the vernacular Indian cultures and Europe. This paper argues that  Gundert’s bilingual dictionary features itself in this attempt at the modernisation of Malayalam by reconstructing the existing hierarchies of Kerala culture through the standardisation of Malayalam and the replacement of Sanskrit with a new cosmopolitan language and cultural values.

Keywords: Bilingual Dictionary, Colonial Language Policy, Vernacular, Education, Malayalam

Going Online! Use and Effectiveness of Online Mode of Instruction in the Teaching of English Language

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396 views

Amal Tom1 and Nagendra Kumar2

1PhD candidate, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-6072-0451 Email: amal_t@hs.iitr.ac.in

2Professor, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-8292-7947. Email: nagendra.kumar@hs.iitr.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.17

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Contemporary time necessitated the use of advanced, scientific and digital technologies to take forward the teaching-learning process uninterrupted, making teaching online effective, cheap, convenient, and an alternative to traditional classes. It has been a drastic change that revolutionised English Language classes. Unprecedented levels of digitalisation in the field of education cropped up many logistical and pedagogical problems. This research paper attempts to look into these problems through a survey, analysing the different perspectives and approaches of individual teachers in developing and evaluating language skills, developing primers and ICT tools, and using them for effective, pleasurable online language teaching-learning, making classes student-centred. It also analysed the scope of making online and traditional classrooms supplementary and complementary to each other. Certainly, there is a need for better infrastructure, training, connectivity, integration of Augmented and Virtual Reality to provide experiential learning and to cope up with emerging challenges

Keywords: Online classes, I.C.T. Tools, Evaluation, Syllabus, Teaching-Learning Process.

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