From the Desk of the Editor-in-Chief

The dead cat and the tradition A marriage ceremony was instituted in a rural family of a village. During that ceremony, the mother of the bride put a cat inside a bamboo box and locked it. Being asked , why the cat was put
in a box and locked , she answered that this is the custom and tradition that is followed by her family. Being asked why the cat is put in a bamboo box and why not a another animal in an another wooden box- she could not answer it. Finally it was asked to the oldest woman of the family she remembered it and said, that when she came as the bride to this home used to listen the story of putting a cat in the bamboo box .

 This means that the tradition must have followed at least four to five generations. Being asked, the old woman said, the reason was nothing, but the cat was using he mouth in the sacred food to be offered to the Gods and Goddesses. So to get rid of the cat, the house owner fixed the cat inside a box, and he forgot to release the cat from the box. Mean while the cat died in the box out of suffocation. When the house owner remembered the cat he opened the box and found the cat to be dead. He took off the cat and buried in the earth. The newly wedded bride was watching this whole event was assumed that this family has the tradition of killing a cat during marriage ceremony. Needless to say this was introduced by the bride in the subsequent marriages since the senior persons were no more alive and the bearer of the tradition had nothing to question about the authenticity of the event.
May be this story true or false, or folklore! 

The purpose and meaning of such a tradition should be logical with reason to the future generation. They should know why and how the tradition is helpful to the current situation and fit in to the current context. The story is not one alone, there are many traditions and customs in our society which is not questioned by the tradition bearers, rather they feel proud of practicing it. Rather in order to validate and justify the custom, a new folklore is Folklore Foundation , Lokaratna ,Volume IV 2011 created and thus the make belief becomes belief and belief becomes truth and truth become philosophy. Then our tradition bearers feel proud of it. Not only this, our researchers of tradition also love to document that dead cat and display the cultural image of our ‗great tradition.‘ During these last four years of working on folklore both in academic domain and public sphere , I have got diverse experience on its use , non – and misuse. Many people use folklore as their cultural system .They celebrate their life with natural and creative expression, which is context sensitive but not analytical as the folklore scholars do. Many folklore items in the communities are used in their everyday life, but the meaning of such customs and practices are not questioned by the tradition bearers of folklore. They follow the tradition and customs just for the cause that their ancestors were following it and they also need to follow it. The meaning of folklore is, therefore, subject to cognition and comprehension with purpose and meaning in a given context, or it may lose its social coherence.

 Folklorist, on the other hand try to decipher the meaning using the many glasses of theories and examine the item of folklore in her operation theatre to diagnose the why and how of the item. Both the practice and attempt need reexamination in view of its connectivity between the community of folklore and scholar community. I observed after traveling across the country for last two years , attending many seminars and workshops, and also travelling the tribal world , in spite of an invisible danger of terrorists, I found that , the many locals are now more keen to explore their social histories. The professors of Universities have started rethinking their disciplines from people‘s point of view. In two universities I found that the semi-literate tribal language speakers attended two days conference on revitalizing their languages and culture in the department of English , Vidyasagar University,
Midnapur of West Bengal. Another conference was in Central University of Rajasthan , Kishangarh, in same English Department, many semi literates attended the programme to work in people‘s linguistic survey of India initiated by Prof Ganesh Nath Devy, the founder of Adivasi Academy Tezgarh, Badodara. Gujarat.

The fate of linguistics, culture and folklore in global academic scenario, more or less has been affected by the global economic order. Ideologies, and theories have failed to establish their Folklore Foundation , Lokaratna ,Volume IV 2011

strength , rather the most powerful countries have also been victimized by the most powerless groups of people. This is the creation of a situation where the most powerless can also challenge the most powerful one. The social unrest , changing climate, inequalities of human development indicators, and tension of cross border issues , all have combined together against humanity. Our modern science and technology has not been able to win the heart of the people who created unrest and in human acuities. We are helpless in displaying our strength and vacuumed within the veil of theories and methods and our scholarship does not help the same folk from those we have been enriched. Now our main focus will be to perhaps understand the social and creative dynamics and see the
whole knowledge from people‘s point of view and to reexamine the meaning of tradition and to
connect it with the current life situation. 

Another issue is to examine the tradition logically with reason if the item of culture has really a meaning or it is a bad faith only. People’s Linguistic Survey of India Fortunately, Prof Ganeshnath Devy, the founder of Bhasha Research and Publication center in Badodara, Gujarat and Adivasi Academy, Tezgarh Gujarat, has initiated people‘s Linguistic Survey of India. This is a massive project initiated by the communities of Indian whose languages are either died or likely to die. Death of a language is compared to commit genocide by the major languages to the minor languages. According to the Census of India while there are 623 scheduled tribes, there are about 184 languages left with the Indian communities. In fact there are thousands of languages which have not been documented. Dr Devy‘s vision to document the living languages of India has led to document many languages by the communities concerned and now about more than 500 languages have been documented by the language communities alone. Folklore Foundation , Lokaratna ,Volume IV 2011 This volume is unique in its collection and representation of culture across the globe. While the first article is about a man turning in to a tiger found among the cultural practices of the Kondhs of Odisha , it is well researched by Dr.Francesco Bighenti, an Italian scholar on Odisha studies. His argument transcends the physical realities and takes us to a realm of an unseen world of metaphysics. 

Dr. Anand Mahanand speaks of the cultural geography where the nature becomes the foundation of culture. This article not only reminds of our association with the nature of the past, but also the mental text that is found among the singers. Dr.Harvinder Singh explores the rich oral tradition of Punjab through narrating the specimen of singing tradition as well as its narrative patterns in different social occasion. In fact while the rural and tribal areas of the country have failed to maintain the dance and songs in social ceremony, Punjab has retained it as a string cultural tradition. Mr Singh has given a comprehensive picture of Punjabi oral tradition in his paper. Dr.Bidisha Som has explored a spectrum of folklore by writing about the cognitive aspects of folk narrative. She has examined how the item of folk narrative contains the cognitive aspects and contributes to the human knowledge system. Needless to say, when most of the folklorists of India either study folklore either from anthropological or literary point of view, Dr. Som has treated folklore from psychological and narratological point of view in which linguistics also play a major role. Anuj Mohan Pradhan has take n the agricultural songs from Kondhmal and has shown how the work and song , reality and imagination go hand in hand and the local metaphor is created in women folksongs. He also has explored the context sensitive expression from the folksongs..

Dr Kailash Chandra Das has critically examined the literary texts of Odiya Mahabharata in the context of historical consciousness and has explored some vital points that speaks of his multidisciplinary approach of study and critical analysis. While Dr Das has taken the medieval period of Odisha history and found its evidence from Sarala Mahabharata, DR Padmaprasad paper on Jaina folklore is another critical examination of the influence of Jainism in literature in Folklore Foundation , Lokaratna ,Volume IV 2011 Karnataka in particular and India in general.Dr Padmaprasad has vividly shown the evidence of Jaina folklore in the past and present.From woman to Goddess is a case study of a tribal religious cult that emerged from Bastar and spread out to south western Orissa. Priyadarshini Mishra has critically examined the socio-psychological aspect of a woman who was victimized by her own brothers and later she became a goddess. A tribal women worshipped over 400 years and now the politics of religion entered in to this cult with neo political patronization. Her article is explorative and analytical from gendered perspective.
MCL Provost has given an amazing article on searching the roots of one‘s own identity. She gave three generations of oral history to establish the roots of origin and the story of indentured labour of Asian and African countries to Europe and America. Provost has fondly written this article and her own emotion is attached to this work. 

Dr.Basudeb Sunani has prepared his article on Dalit identity from the tradition and transition point of view. When Dalit issue is a modern trend, the historical perspective of its causes and reflections has been provided by Sunani. Dr Joshi has enumerated the manifold expression of postcolonial autobiography writings by the African, India and western writers and the voices they raise of locality and belongingness. Besides Joshi has critically examined the racial, geographical and Diaspora ventures of writers of different countries and has found out how they narrate their conflicting mind with creativity. Joshi‘s article is enriched with the trend of post colonial discourse in writings of autobiography where, like a fiction or novel, also has the ability of expression and autobiography as a genre of literature has the strength of spelling out narrative of the self and the landscape. Dr Chitrasen Pasayat‘ article is about the new rice eating ceremony in western Odisha. 

The paper represents the process and function of Nuakhai – festival which is a community based ceremony and celebration. Stella Paul has used personal narratives as a piece of modern folklore and has voiced the woman assertiveness in her work. She has narrated about the domestic violence as reflected in the oral tradition. Folklore Foundation , Lokaratna ,Volume IV 2011 6 Prof Aphilak Kasempholkoon from Thailand has given a beautiful account of using the Ramayana characters and events in modern context for marketing and advertising purpose and this catering to a new creative economy which promotes value addition to the products and tourism of Thailand. This is called creative economy as spelled out by Prof Aphilak. Prof Pulla Rao from Andhra Pradesh has written about the consumption pattern of Jatapu tribe of
Andhra Pradesh. This contains the tribal economic system and their patterns of economic behaviour. Prof Uma Ram has conducted study on Tribal Education in Bastar and has presented comprehensive information with analysis on education of tribal children in Bastar with some suggestions.

Pages from the History are a new area in Lokaratna. Sri Devendra Satyarthi, a noted folklorist of undivided India had collected more than 3 million oral songs across the country. This work was published in Lahore in 1841.This book is well known as ―Meet my People.‖ There is a chapter on Orissa folklore. Devendra Satyarthi came to Odisha during 1931 and had collected some folklore with the help of Chakradhar Mahapatra, a noted folklorist of Odisha. This book was not available to us. Fortunately, I found it in Gutenberg University archives and downloaded it. The Odisha portion of this book is retrieved and presented in this volume for our new folklorists to assess the trend of folklore
study in Odisha. Finally, I am thankful to all my friends who have been very kind enough to send their articles to me.
Special thanks to Dr Harekrushna Meher, Head in Sanskrit Department , Autonomous College Bhawanipatna to have given his tireless assistance in editing the papers and supporting me in bringing out this volume during 2011. I am also thankful to my friends from abroad MCL Provost, Francesco Bighenti, and Prof. Aphilak Kasempholkoon for their humble contribution. I am also thankful to my Indian professors who have been very kind to me to contribute their papers. I am also thankful to the Folklore Society of England who have been very generous to give their
advertisement in Lokaratna Vol IV on their Journal of the Folklore Society,UK. Instead they also
have wished us to put our advertisement in their journal. Thus a bond has been created among the
global with the local. Folklore Foundation , Lokaratna ,Volume IV 2011 7 I am thankful to Dr MD Muthukumarswamy and his colleagues of NFSC, Chennai to support this volume to be published in their web site for a global readership.
On behalf of Folklore Foundation, Odisha Bhubaneswar , I wish a Happy and prosperous new Year 2012.

Mahendra K Mishra