Sarita Sutrakatha Riverine Cultures in Indian Narrative

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Arzuman Ara is an Associate Professor of ELE in the English and Foreign Languages University, Shillong campus. She was a visiting faculty at Oakton Community College, USA, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, NERIE-NCERT, Shillong campus.

Her writings are published in India and abroad on Literature, Film, Culture Studies and language pedagogy. She writes poetry and also translates them. Her translation of Imtiaz Mahmud's Maxim is published from Bangladesh. Her upcoming publication includes an English translation of Imtiaz Mahmud's poetry collection Kalo Kautuk, an authored volume on Critical Pedagogy and English Studies in India.

She has co-edited Indian Narrative Traditions and Narrative Cultures of Northeast India and edited Revisiting Partition: Identity, History and Memory. She has produced study-materials for different academic institutions on literature and language learning. She is the recipient of Barkakati Journalism Award, 2004.

Rivers speak to us in myriad ways. In India, rivers in diverse ways have shaped our cultural and civilizational ethos. Sarit Sutrakatha attempts to capture our creative, emotional and cultural engagements with rivers across genres and narratives composed in different languages of India. Being central to our cultural consciousness, this critical work re-emphasizes the centrality of rivers in our civilizational and cultural evolution.

Nature has been of immense importance in the Indian collective cultural and creative psyche. Among all the objects of nature, river is the most revered one as a nurturer of life. Most of the names of the Indian rivers are gendered as female which linguistically reinforces the role of nurturer played by the rivers in the human life and civilization. Indian civilization grew and developed around rivers that gave rise to a robust representation of the rivers in literature and other creative media. Not only the religious texts, numerous folklores, fables, stories, fictions, travelogues, paintings, films - all have rivers represented in some form or the other. Rivers appear and are represented, not only as a nurturer of life, but also as passage to the afterworld signifying their intertwined relationship with man's worldview.

This volume Sarita Sutrakatha: Riverine Cultures in Indian Narratives is a commendable volume that brings together various studies surrounding the rivers of India and offers a critique of the riverine cultures of India. The unique feature of this book is that it does not bring in the much hyped ecocritical reading of the rivers, rather, it presents a composite study of the river cultures represented across genre and in different Indian bhasha literatures. As we are proud of our diverse languages and cultures, this volumes gives glimpses of that diversity with a thread to bind all of us am grateful to my family, friends and students for being the ever-flowing source of encouragement. My life and work are made easier by the support I receive from Gin Muan Thang, I. Amenla Changkija and her family, Surajit Sen, Vikas K. Singh, Anil Lal, Ravindra K. Vemula, Alankar Kaushik, Abir Suchiang, Temsunungsang, Preetinichaa, Aparajita Bhardwaj, Joshua Smith, Erica Smith, Mr. Mahmud Laskar and family, Sandinaki Bamon, Jobeth Warjiri, Shariful Hakim, Kanka Sayoo and Pamela Ryntong. Thanks to them for surrounding me with so much of love and care.

I am looking forward hoping that this volume will be able to cater to the needs of the enthusiasts which will be my honour and reward.

As water has been vital for biological existence of animals and plants upon earth, water-bodies like rivers, seas, lakes etc. have occupied an essentially central place in the human world-view which often finds expression in culture and creative representations. Apart from providing drinking water, a river is used for bathing, swimming, fishing, moving across places through river routes, demarcating territories, for different rituals, and even for committing suicide, and floating of dead bodies in the river is considered a holy practice signifying the river as a passage from life to afterlife. Each of the activities signify how the "watery space" has been crucial in making (and unmaking) the very being of human around river and river-ecology which are 'appropriated in our everyday world. Rivers have enabled a hydro-social life-world and culture where human subjectivity is constructed/formed according to the flow, current and characteristics of the river. However, socio-cultural mediations, macro and micro dynamics associated with the river, which can be material, social, cultural, economic, and political, prompt us to perceive the river not just as a natural physical flow of the water, but as a space (specifically an environmental space) which is not socially, culturally and politically neutral when human navigate through/with it and build a life-culture around it. Human activities and engagement with the river, thus, form the basis of numerous narratives that call for serious academic deliberations. The present volume is an attempt to critically understand the representation of the river and riverine cultures in India as represented in various narrative traditions.

India is a land of rivers. More than 400 rivers flow from different regions across the country and merge themselves either with the Arabian Sea in the West or the Bay of Bengal in the East. India's rivers have always attracted people for their usefulness and beauty - be it the sages and priests, invaders, poets and artists or common inhabitants. Significantly, the national anthem of independent Indía composed by Rabindranath Tagore has a number of words related to river and flow of water-Punjab, Sindhu, Yamuna, Ganga, uchchhala jaladhi taranga which is symbolic of the centrality of river/water in the geography as well as the collective consciousness of the people of this region. The name of India itself is taken from the river Sindhu. A number of cognate pronunciations are there for the word Sindhu-Persian Hindu, Greek Indus etc.; the other cognate words are India, Indies, Indika. The name of the Indian state Punjab too is influenced by the presence of five rivers in the region (panj meaning five, ab meaning water/river). One would notice a magnificent tradition and linguistic culture even in the naming of the rivers. The Ganga has several names along its course, including its English version - the Ganges (both of which occur in this volume); the other names are Jahnavi, Shubhra, Sapteswari, Bhagirathi, Alkananda, Vishnupadi, etc. The river Brahmaputra similarly has a number of names-Tsangpo, Luit, Jamuna and Padma. A challenge to onomastics, river taxonomy, nomenclature and hydronymy reflect the linguistic culture, experience, and worldview of the people who name and distinguish the river as a "watery space" from other objects, and live by it. River as a living entity is deeply entrenched in our literary and cultural consciousness as represented in various kinds of texts. The religious texts and ritualistic chants venerate the rivers as divine or quasi-divine entities; folktales and other forms of literature represent and reflect upon the man and nature/river relationship with a rich hue of imagination; a biological explorer would describe the organic life in and around the river in her narrative; films show rivers as settings and characters; other visual media like paintings project rivers in the form of mimetic signification; legal documents would deal with rivers related to possession or demarcation of land while journalistic writings are often seen to bring out issues like pollution, irrigation, dislocation due to dam building, global warming etc. that affect the river; even the satellite pictures represent the rivers through/as technological iconisation or icono-scaping that penetrates our terra-centric viewing of the world/earth and understanding of topography. The fact is that each of these kinds of texts somehow has river as a part of the narrative. In the academic arena, apart from the different disciplines of science, rivers have been at the centre of Anthropology, Ethnographic Studies, Geography, Literature and Cultural Studies and so on. Obviously, reading of such vast array of texts would represent the rivers in many and varied way.

In Indian culture, river is divine; it gives and nurtures life. The river-consciousness is so pervasive in our cultural imaginary that it finds a place of importance in day-to-day life in the form of riddles, idioms, phrases, and also in folklores, songs, and fictional narratives. The mythic and the spiritual meet in the origin of rivers and many shrines that adorn their banks. Rivers in India are also pivotal to our ritual culture. The holiness and purifying power of rivers resonate in the common chant in Hindu ritual practice: