Dr. Alles Lecture on the Ādivāsīs in India was very
different from what I was expecting in a variety of ways. Firstly, his actual
presentation and lecture was less formal and not in a negative way. Dr. Alles
presented the information in a way that allowed the class to interpret it for
themselves. I think Alles chose to present the information in this way because
the Ādivāsīs story tradition is almost an untouched by Western scholars
and our insight could be beneficial. Due to the lack of knowledge on the topic
available, I was opened to a whole new world of traditional stories. The
stories presented and videos shown of those stories, reminded me very little of
any of the story traditions the class learned this year aside from possibly the
Native American Tradition. However, when I heard the stories of the Ādivāsīs,
I was reminded of another learning point in the class. Max Luthi's theory of
the origin of fairytales- tales were created by local events- fits pretty well
with the stories told by Dr. Alles. For instance, many of the stories were
related to a particular location or life event. The story of the tiger and the
cow could have conceivably resulted from a tiger killing a farmer's cow one day.
Other examples to prove the Ādivāsīs connection to Luithi's theory
are the multiple stories relating to the mountains in the surrounding areas.
Stories of mountains probably originated to explain trade routes.
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