Myth
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Myth- a story describing the origins of the world, some natural phenomenon, or some aspect of culture, which contains at least one physically or humanly impossible event or situation. Myths are often acted out in ritual and encapsulate a culture?s cosmology and cosmogony and provide justification for culturally prescribed behaviour.
Keesing: ?myths are accounts about how the world came to be the way it is, about a super-ordinary realm of events before or behind the experienced natural world; they are accounts that are believed to be true and in some sense sacred.
Malinowski (1925): His sociological interpretation of Trobriand myths;
he said they made sense not by themselves for psychoanalysis, but only
as living social events in context of real political relations. They were
needed; they served a social function (in the functionalist view).
E.g. Trobriand origin myths explains and validates brother/sister taboo;
local emergence leading to local sub-clans; others legitimise food taboos,
rank and precedence. (i.e. mythological charter validating present social
relations).
Levi-Strauss (1969-1974): disagrees; he says realm of myth helps people transpose symbolically the contradictions of existence which worry them; like death, the origin of the first man, and the first mate etc.
Edmund Leach (1974): Problem of avoiding incest if man and woman were created equal (see Chagnon Pg104)
Ardener (1972): symbolic associations between women and the world of nature
Ortner (1974): women marginal: both cultural and natural beings; symbolically associated with the moon, blood, darkness, nature etc.
Needham (1978): Myths- timeless stories that describe the origin of
something- the world, a natural phenomenon or some aspect of culture and
?confronts us with at least one event or situation which is physically
or humanly impossible? (e.g. the immaculate conception)
Some rituals are the dramatic re-enactments of myths.
Myth In Yanomamo society:
- Yanomamo consider themselves to be ?real? humans, whereas foreigners are degenerate copies of real humans. In one of their myths, there was a great flood and many drowned. Some floated off on logs, and now came back speaking ?crooked? Yanomamo (foreigners). A spirit fished them out off the water downstream, made them come to life again, and sent them back ?home?.
- Man: Yanomamo dwells on a layer of Hei Ka Misi created by the falling of another layer called hedu from above. There were original humans (Nobabdabo) who were part spirit and part human and part animal, When they did, they turned into spirits. Yanomamo men tell the stories of these myths to the locals whilst tripping on hallucinogens.
- Much of Yanomamo life revolves around sex: humour, fighting, insulting etc.
- Men are considered superior to women. Men were created via Moonblood. One of the ancestors shot Moon in the belly, his blood fell to the Earth and changed to men, who were inherently fierce. Thicker blood created more ferocious men and thinner blood less ferocious men.
- Women came from a fruit called ?Wabu?. While picking vines, one man noticed a fruit with eyes, tossed it on the floor and it became a woman with a large vagina. She eventually caught the men?s attention with her large and hairy vagina, and they all copulated with her and produced many daughters, and everyone slept with the daughters too.
- Jaguar myths- A theme that repetitiously appears in Yanomamo myths is about Man?s relationship to Jaguar. In mortal form, the jaguar is an awesome and much-feared beast, for he can and does kill and eat men. He is as good a hunter as the Yanomamo are and is one of the few animals of the forest that hunts and kills men- as the Yanomamo themselves do.
- The Yanomamo see great distinction between ?nature? and ?culture?.
An animal captured in the wild is ?of the forest?, but once brought into
the village, it is ?of the village? and somehow different, for it is then
part of culture. Jaguar is an ambiguous creature to the Yanomamo, for he
combines several human capacities while at the same time he is ?natural?.
Yanomamo are somewhat jealous of him. But in their stories about him, he
is consistently portrayed as a stupid brute, constantly being outwitted
by man, and constantly subjected to the most scathing, ridiculous, and
offensive treatments at the hands of Man.
Myth in Trobriand Society
- The origin stories that document the first ancestors- usually a brother and sister- who founded the hamlet and garden lands that each matrilineage claims are not perceived as myths of primordial or legendary times. In the minds of the Trobrianders, the stories recount the actions of real people who made decisions that continue to affect the affairs of each successive generation. Among all the ancestors who established matrilineages, only some of them came to Kiriwina with extensive food taboos and certain shell body decorations; these, from the beginning, ranked them as chiefly lineages and separated them from the commoner matrilineages, whose ancestors came without elaborate sumptuary rules. Whether expressed as taboos or prescriptions, these sumptuary rules sharply isolate the chief and define him and other members of his matrilineage as different kinds of social persons.
- Each founding brother and sister did not arrive alone. Other sibling sets identified with other matrilineages in the same and other clans often came from the same place together. The lineage ancestors who came together continued to be allies, and today these same alliances continue. In the case of chiefly lineages, however, those who came with them as commoners worked for them by raising their pigs and growing betel nuts and coconut palm trees. From time to time, the chiefs rewarded them with stone axe-blades or shell valuables.
- The ancestress and her brother emerged from the underworld from ?a hole?. In that underworld, in the days before life on earth, people lived as they do now. The ancestral brother and sister brought up with them scared objects and knowledge, skills and crafts, and the magic that distinguish this group from others. According to Malinowski, this myth can only be understood in the rich context of Trobriand life and cultural meaning. Brother and sister emerged because they represent the 2 essential elements of a subclan; a husband did not emerge because he is, in terms of the subclan, an irrelevant outsider. The ancestral pair lived in separate houses because the relationship of brother and sister is marked by sharp taboos. This myth validates the rights of the subclan to the territory and encapsulates the magic and skills that make them sociologically and ritually unique.
- Other origin myths known by all Trobrianders relate the emergence of the four clans, legitimising their food taboos, but, more particularly. Matters of rank and precedence. Finally, other local myths deals with the relative rank, position, and dispersion of high-ranking sub-clans beyond the point of original emergence. Such myths, Malinowski says, validate the political structure and provide a mythological charter to justify and reinforce present social relations. Pulling Trobriand myths out of this social context, we would not understand them.
- Levi-Strauss disagrees with the above paragraph. Levi-Strauss is seeking
to explicate the universal workings of the human mind by looking at varied
cultural forms as artefacts. The realm of myht is crucial in this
enterprise because here human thought has its widest freedom. Levi-Strauss
argues that peoples everywhere are plagued intellectually by the contradictions
of existence- by death; by man?s dual character, as part of nature yet
transformed by culture; by dichotomies of spirit and body; by the
contradictions of descent from a first man (where did a non-incestuous
first mate come from?); and so on. The realm of myth is used above all
to tinker endlessly with these contradictions, by transposing them symbolically.
See also Pg 317 in Keesing.
Myth in Gopalpur Society
- The most important deities in the Gopalpur region are Hanumantha and Bhima, different manifestations of the same violent, untamed god. Hamunmantha is the monkey-like god who helped Rama, the hero of Ramayana, to rescue his wife, Sita. It is recorded that Hanumantha entered the capital city of Ceyoln and set fire to it by tying a torch to his tail. Bhima was the largest and most warlike of the 5 Pandava brothers, the heroes of another epic, the Mahabharata. Surrounded by a rugged and forbidding countryside with such gods as models, the people of the Gopalpur region have maintained a way of life relatively unaffected by the distant cities.About the Author
by: Admin
Total views: 129
Word Count: 1460
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 Time: 12:00 AM
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