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Abstract/Sommario: The article treats narratives in the text of songs as a cultural script by which indigenous people organize experience and make sense to their lives. It explores the context of the Santhal (the largest indigenous community in the Bengal, Jharkhand, and Orissa belt in the Indian subcontinent) narratives by delving into the symbols and cognitive pattern enfolded in them

Abstract/Sommario: The Asiatic Black Bear, or 'moon bear', has inhabited Japan since prehistoric times, and is the largest animal to have roamed Honshi, Shikoku and Kyushu since mega-fauna became extinct on the Japanese archipelago after the last glacial period. Even so, it features only rarely in the folklore, literature and arts of Japan's mainstream culture. Its relatively invisibility in the dominant lowland agrarian-based culture of Japan contrasts markedly with its cultural significance in many upl ...; [Leggi tutto...] The Asiatic Black Bear, or 'moon bear', has inhabited Japan since prehistoric times, and is the largest animal to have roamed Honshi, Shikoku and Kyushu since mega-fauna became extinct on the Japanese archipelago after the last glacial period. Even so, it features only rarely in the folklore, literature and arts of Japan's mainstream culture. Its relatively invisibility in the dominant lowland agrarian-based culture of Japan contrasts markedly with its cultural significance in many upland regions where subsistence lifestyles based on hunting, gathering, and beliefs centers on mountain deity (yama no kami) have persisted until recently. The article explores the significance of the bear in the upland regions of Japan, particularly as it is manifested in the folklore of communities centered on hunting, such as those of the matagi, and attempts to explain why the bear, and the folklore focused on the bear, is largely ignored in mainstream Japanese culture

Abstract/Sommario: An epic narrative poem known as Hnewu tepyy (Book of origins) holds a central place in the mythic and ritual imagination of the Nuosu people of South west China. Existing both as oral performances and oral-connected written texts, the narrative relates the origins of the sky, earth, geographical features, and life forms -culminating in the origins of the forebears of the Nuosu people. Animals and plants populate the landscape of the narrative world, clustering in the categories of wil ...; [Leggi tutto...] An epic narrative poem known as Hnewu tepyy (Book of origins) holds a central place in the mythic and ritual imagination of the Nuosu people of South west China. Existing both as oral performances and oral-connected written texts, the narrative relates the origins of the sky, earth, geographical features, and life forms -culminating in the origins of the forebears of the Nuosu people. Animals and plants populate the landscape of the narrative world, clustering in the categories of wild and domestic. Individual species tend to be associated with specific niches in the natural and human modified landscape, their origins occurring in a dynamic of creation and destruction throughout the ages. Among the forerunners of living beings in the present age are the"tribes of snow", catalogued in taxons comprised of wild plants and animals. Moreover, many portions of the epic feature domesticated stock and crops that are associated with, and in some cases even sanction, Nuosu customs current today. In an approach drawing on folkloristic theory and ecocriticism, the article introduces and outlines a hitherto undocumented version of the Hnewu tepyy, examines how select images of life forms in the text relate to historic and contemporary Nuosu culture, and suggests that in the traditions of the Hnewu, boundaries between the realms are conceptually mitigated by the ultimate origin of all life in the sky