Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the negotiations between contemporary audiences and traditional performers of oral-visual narratives of Andhra Pradesh, through which this practice is able to embed new representations and create new social imageries.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper focuses on an ethnographic account of oral narratives of painted scrolls in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, India. Two features are very unique to Telangana scrolls in relation to other oral narrative traditions from South Asia. One, they are performed by different communities of itinerant bards who travel the region telling legends about the origin of particular jatis (barbers, herdsmen, washermen, leather workers). These legends are drawn from episodes of the Puranas, the characters of which ware claimed to be progenitors of a jati. Two, each jati is narrated its lineage only by a prescribed community of story-tellers. For instance, the 'Virataparva' episode of the Mahabharata is performed only before the Kanbis (agriculturists) solely by the Kakepadegollu community; Katamaraju-katha, the oral epic which traces the lineage of the Golla community (herdsmen) is performed before the Gollas only by the Mandaheccollu.

These itinerant practices can drawn attention to the many ways of imagining the historical in South Asia, by providing an alternative form of historical representation, within a truly popular medium - the 'local history'. However given that many from the audience communities have relinquished their traditional jati occupations, this paper will attempt to address the following within the contemporary conditions of this practice:

How are the negotiations between the performers and their 'new publics' regarding the verification and authenticity of the histories constructed?

Can these oral narratives be imagined as inter-textual, having no real boundaries, but waiting to embed new representations and create new social imageries?