Many of the folk narrative traditions kept alive by tribal communities in Telugu-speaking areas are fading away. The number of people telling such stories is getting reduced with the passage of time.
‘Korrajulu’ and ‘Pujarulu’ are two such communities that are patronised by ‘Padmanayakas’ or ‘Nayakpods’ in Warangal district of Telangana. They usually tell the caste myths and stories from the Mahabharata using a scroll (patam).
The scroll is 60 to 90 feet long and using the pictures on it they narrate select stories from the epic.
According to former professor and dean of School of Folk and Tribal Lore of Potti Sriramulu Telugu University, Warangal, N. Bhakthavathsala Reddy, only one group comprising five members of ‘Pujarulu’ and three groups of ‘Korrajulu’ of 15 members are presently carrying out the folk tradition.
“They go to the villages and narrate the stories in Telugu. They have 300 villages to cover and going by their present strength they can’t go to a village once in 10 years,” he told The Hindu .
Ancestral right on villagesThe artistes have an ancestral right on villages by a process called ‘Tyagam’ and some of them have copper plates detailing how they got right over the villages. In the past when they visited villages they used to go to the head of the village who indicated the support he would give by placing cowrie shells and some seed. The shells represented paddy and the grain money.
By the number of 300 ‘Tyagam’ villages they had one can say that they enjoyed good patronage in the past, he said. But with changing times the patronage is waning and both the supporting and performing communities are moving away from it, he says.
Mr. Reddy video recorded two troupes of ‘Korrajulu’ and ‘Kakipadagalu’ (patronised by Mudirajs) communities performing for a month — for 18 days in a village and 13 in another — for Indira Gandhi National Centre for Performing Arts.
‘Korrajulu’ are no more now and they passed on the tradition to ‘Toti’ a migrant community from Adilabad district, who are carrying it out now.
Mr. Reddy, who lives at M.D. Puttur near Tirupati, was here recently to participate in a two-day seminar on “Tribal Languages and Literatures in Telugu Speaking-Areas” organised by Sahitya Akademi in collaboration with Girijan Co-operative Corporation, Visakhapatnam.
