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The Forest in Myth and Memory

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The Forest in Myth and Memory Aranyaakhyaan: The Forest in Myth and Memory '" OCCASIONAL PUBLICATION 21 Aranyaakhyaan: The Forest in Myth and Memory The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author and not of the India International Centre. The Occasional Publication series is published for the India International Centre by Cmde. (Retd.) R. Datta. Designed and produced by FACET Design. Tel.: 91-11-24616720, 24624336. Aranyaakhyaan: ·The Forest in Myth and Memory* Eko vasah pattane va vane va. Sunny spots of (Bhartrihari) greenery where Moha vipin ghan dahan krishanuh Xanadu stood Santsarorukkanan bhanuh amidst fragrant Nishicharkarivarruthmrigrajah trees were a rarity Tratusadanubhavakhagbajah. (Ramcharit Manas /Aranya Kanda) and a testament to man's hubris *** that believed a Woods shall to me answer and my echo ring ... ' primeval forest (Edmund Spenser, 1552-1599) could be tamed or forced to yield The opening lines of Coleridge's celebrated poem Kubla Khan evoke land for urban compelling images of a fabulous city carved out of 'forests as ancient settlement as the hills .. .' where 'AIph, the sacred river, rani Through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea... .' This dramatic opening almost effortlessly recaptures the myriad associations of the Forest with hills, sacred life- sustaining streams, mysterious darkness and a vast expanse. Sunny spots of greenery where Xanadu stood amidst fragrant trees were a rarity and a testament to man's • This paper was specially written for the IIC Experience 2010, a Festival of the Arts celebrating 'The Forest'. hubris that believed a primeval forest could be tamed or forced to yield land for urban settlement. In the end, till now at least, the forest seems to have scoffed at such heroic ambition and has managed to reclaim what our ancestors had snatched away for a while. The remnants of the once mighty Machu Picchu and the majestic ruins of Ankor Vat stand as an abiding testimony of the power of the Forest. One is reminded from Peru to Cambodia, to quote another poet, that 'I have come to the borders of sleep) The unfathomable deep/ Forest where all must lose/ Their way ..... ' (Edward Thomas, 1878-1917) The moment a thicket of trees is called a wood, the aura of the forest diminishes. Robert Frost is tempted by the woods that are 'lovely' though 'dark and deep'- not at all menacing but inviting a tired traveller to enter their soothing embrace and call it a day. Frost's 'promises to keep' may have prevented him from stopping by the woods but the enduring enchantment of the woods remained eternally distracting. However, George Meredith's cautionary lines about the woods are also well worth remembering: 'Enter these enchanted woods) You who dare.' In the Western mythological tradition, the forest is often seen as 'Terra Incognita' - impenetrable, full of invisible danger and unknown threats, a realm of magic and mystery and a repository of fabulous riches. The Greeks, who resided in small city- states, were awestruck by the cedar forests in the Mediterranean region. Several epic Greek heroes, such as Hercules, prove their prowess battling beasts and giants in the forest, an essentially hostile, alien territory. The Bible, too, mentions the Cedars The Bible, of Lebanon but such references are few. As in the holy Koran, the too, mentions major Biblical episodes are set in a desert. the Cedars of By the middle ages, the forests of Europe had all but vanished. If they Lebanon but survived at all, it was mostly in fairytales and fables. And, here too the such references images were recreated from exotic Asia - India to be precise. Aesop's are few. As in the Fables that humanize animals, are clearly inspired by the Panchtantra and the Hitopdesh where many a tale begins with, 'Once upon a time, in holy Koran, the a forest, dark and deep... ' Thesestories were preceded by the lataktales major Biblical - allegorical stories of the Buddha's previous births. Kathasaritsagar, episodes are set based on an even earlier Prakrit work - Brihatkatha - is also replete in a desert with references to the forest. The Shola and Palani forests are frequently 2 mentioned in Tamil poetry of the Sangama period, made accessible Till the beginning to us by A.K. Ramanujan's brilliant translations. Ramanujan uses of the nineteenth the older Tamil names for these: Pa/ai, a wilderness that is a century, the wasteland, and Mul/ai, a thick woodland where trysts are kept or Conquistadores, broken. In contrast to these evocative terms, for a western writer - such as Hans Christian Andersen - the forest was the abode' as well as armed of dangerous creatures: terrifying and treacherous, where wicked traders, remained horrible witches, big bad wolves, hungry lions lurked everywhere confined to the to devour innocent children. coastal belt in Till the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Conquistadores, fortified factories as well as armed traders, remained confined to the coastal belt from where they in fortified factories from where they could quickly escape to could quickly their ships anchored nearby. The European victors vanquished escape to their the (indigenous) enemy more by guile than by superior force and continued to enrich themselves by plundering the stored ships anchored riches but remained unaware of the riches of the forest. Even nearby when aware, these intruders baulked at the thought of venturing into the domain of the anaconda and tarantula after penetrating the dense equatorial rainforests. Even in the North American continent, the temperate rainforest was systematically cut down and destroyed only in the nineteenth century when the 'wild' West was 'won'. The story was no different in Africa and Asia. A handful of adventurers and fortune-hunting Europeans encountered the real forest only when the age of great explorations dawned and a period of colonial conquests started in the wake of the 'discovery' of America and the Indies by Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The history of the exploration of the African and Asian rainforest often blurs borders between fact and fantasy. Fading memories mingle with carefully nurtured racial myths and larger-than-life characters, such as Cecil Rhodes, David Livingstone and James Brooke who founded a kingdom in Sarawak (North Borneo) to become the White Rajah, and continue to cast their confusing shadow as national stereotypes. Forthese 'pioneers' Africa remained a continent of darkness where one could spend a lifetime only to realize the 'horror of it all!' (James Conrad, The Heart of Darkness). 3 The Orientalist's construction of the forest as the 'Heart of Darkness', an extremely dangerous place that was unfit for civilized settlement, .crystallized with the publication of the records of journeys of explorations undertaken by Stanley and Livingstone, Hooker and Cecil Rhodes. Fiction reinforced these images and ideas. From colonial classics, such as Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books (set in the Mahadeo Hills in what is now Madhya Pradesh) and popular thrillers for adolescents - Rider Haggard's Tarzan of the Apes and comic strips such as Lee Falks' Phantom: the Ghost Who Walks - cast a bewitching spell on readers. The denizens of the forests depicted in these 'stories' as pygmies and head-hunting cannibals wielding poison arrows to deter intruders, went on to become stereotypes that continue to dominate popular imagination - not only in the urban West but everywhere. It is also worth remembering that these terrifying creatures are regularly and unfailingly disciplined and dominated by the White Man. The saga of James Brooke, the 'White Rajah' in Sarawak, which spawned the film Sandokan, may be cited as an illustration of this tendency. As an aside, it may be added that the chronicles of the clash between the immigrants and the native Red Indians on the North American continent also reflect this trend. Burma, Borneo, Indonesia, Indo-China somehow managed to retain their dense forest cover till the mid-twentieth century and the invading Japanese forces had to cope with the dangers lurking in the jungle. The US had to use defoliants, such as Agent Orange, in the mid 1960s to poison the environment in a desperate attempt to devastate the forest and deny the invisible enemy, the Vietcong/ Vietminh, their defensive cover. For th~ White Man carrying a civilizing-democratizing baggage, the \ forest remained a formidable foe. For the White The Survey of India was established in 1802 when 'The Great Man carrying Triangulation' project, starting from the southern tip of the peninsula moved up to the impregnable Himalayan range in the north. As the a civilizing- intrepid officials-technical staff and Indian assistants-marched democratizing through uncharted terrain and dense forests, they suffered a large baggage, the number of casualties. Wild animals, poisonous snakes and malaria claimed many more lives than unfortunate survey-related accidents. forest remained a Mapping the Indian forests and filling in the gaps continued through formidable foe the next 175 years and more as other institutions, such as the 4 Botanical and Zoological Surveyof India, joined hands with the Survey Colonial policies of India. This prepared the ground for 'scientific' forestry. In India, the and practices, establishment of British domination and expansion of their control it is difficult accelerated the process of deforestation. It also marked the rupture in to overlook, the harmonious relationship between the people of the sub-continen.t and the forest. aggravated the divide between Modern 'scientific' forestry and conservation happily, and perhaps not the forest merely coincidentally, coincided with commercialization of the forest and prepared the way for establishing the government's monopoly dwellers and the over it. Large stretches of forest were cleared to make way for modern State plantations and trees were felled to supply sleepers to the railways.
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