Page 200 - Education World Dec 2021

Books

Rescued legacy VOICES FROM THE LOST memory.
Luckily for posterity,
HORIZON: STORIES AND advanced technology has
SONGS OF THE GREAT
RITTEN BY ANDAMANESE enabled these lost voices to
experienced Anvita Abbi come alive via interactive
Wresearcher and QR codes provided at
academic Anvita Abbi, NIYOGI BOOKS the end of each chapter
this book is essentially a Rs.995 Pages 176 through which some
valiant appeal to preserve audio-visual recordings
the fragile status of the can be accessed.
languages, beliefs and and arrows is recounted This book records Besides the narrative of
practices of tribes that by Nao Jr, one of the Great remembered stories ethnogenesis, the other
are remnants of the first Andamanese adults in the and songs retrieved narratives explore the
migration from Africa to eight households of Strait from linguistic and symbiotic relationship
South Asia almost 70,000 Island that make up the cultural amnesia. The between language and
years ago. These tribes community. history of migrant environment.
settled and remained iso- Initially, the narration tribes from Africa is In a tale Maya Jiro
lated in the Andaman and started in Andamanese reconstructed Mithe, a boy from the
Nicobar Islands until the Hindi, because Great An- Jero tribe who lived by
mid-19th century, when damanese had slipped into the seashore is swallowed
the British India govern- oblivion. Yet persistent by a Bol fish and rescued
ment designated the jogging of tribal memory of communication. by friends led by Kaulo.
islands a penal colony. completes the tale of the There are other media The stomach of the Bol
A valuable work of first man who discovered that record cultures, fish is cut up to release the
linguistic and ethnology drinking water from a mirror their social ethos, trapped Mithe crouching
research, tories & S ongs spring, foraged potatoes distinctive environment inside. There was general
S
imaginatively illustrated from soil, discovered and worldview. The ten excitement about cutting
by Subir Roy, features dhoop that generated fire stories and 46 songs up the massive fish to be
k
indigenous Great Anda- and aut, fine soil out of in the surviving native roasted on the machaan,
manese songs written in which he not only made language, a mixture of but inadvertently a nerve
Roman script with English pots but carved a human four northern varieties of the fish that was tossed
translation. They provide look-alike sculpture. How of Great Andamanese into the fire burst with a
K
S
J
readers glimpses of an the figurine comes alive ( eru, hora, Bo, are) loud bang and all the chil-
extraordinary socio-cul- and laughs, the joy of are part of an oral culture dren and boys were turned
tural environment, and a discovering a companion, that encapsulates history, into birds. This story of
learning experience about the peopling of a clan, philosophy, beliefs and evolution explains why
an integral but neglected form part of the Phertajido values of these forgotten birds are revered as the
region of post-indepen- myth. people. ancestors of the Andama-
dence India. Phertajido’s wife makes Such ardous fieldwork nese.
This book records a rope with creepers found initiated in 2005 and Inevitably in primi-
remembered stories and in the jungle. Pherta- meticulous documentation tive civilisations, cultural
snatches of songs retrieved jido ties a stone to it and subsequently, has values are handed down
from linguistic and cul- throws it up in the sky preserved the diversity from one generation to the
tural amnesia. In the pro- where it gets entangled and richness of an ethnic next by way of songs and
cess, languages/voices that creating a pathway to out- heritage from completely oral narratives. The Tale
have been forgotten regain er space. The philosophical slipping away. Nao Jr and of Maya Lephai narrates a
vitality, and the history of climax of the story is about Boa Sr who were infected story of love, betrayal and
the islands where migrant finding another world and by Abbi’s enthusiasm honour killing in the hills
tribes from Africa began deciding to retire into the to revive a critically of Bontaing, the indig-
life as hunter-gatherers is clouds, climbing up the endangered language, enous name of the north
reconstructed. The myth of rope from earth and cut- died in 2009 and 2010 side of the Jarawa Reserve
Phertajido, the first man of ting it off after their time respectively, carrying near Bluff Island in the
the Andaman Islands who on earth was done. away with them precious Middle Andamans. Social
lived alone and searched Language is only indigenous knowledge and practices like cannibal-
for food, and made bows nominally a medium the last vestiges of racial ism and funeral rites for

200 EDUCATIONWORLD DECEMBER 2021