TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE ROLE OF ORAL NARRATIVES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE RABHA TRIBES OF ASSAM.

Abstract

Most of the tribal communities of North-East India lack any written scripture through which their tradition, culture, and indigenous practices follow. The tribes of North-East India follow a form of oral tradition which means their culture evolves from generation to generation orally through different myths, folklore, taboos, totems, etc. This oral tradition among these different tribes bears a sense of ecological sustainability. The paper endeavors to show how the sense of ecological sustainability is present in the oral traditions of North-East India, especially among the oral traditions of the Rabha tribes of Assam, which is one of the most significant tribes of Assam. The paper also attempts to discover how the stories, and myths found in the Rabha oral tradition provide an impetus for the conservation and preservation of the elements of nature in its pristine form. Moreover, the study tries to find a similarity between the oral tradition of the tribes of North-East India with one of the important notions of environmental ethics known as Deep Ecology.

Keywords: oral tradition, northeast india, rabha tribe, environmental ethics, deep ecology.