Berkeley Folklore presents the Annual Alan Dundes Lecture by Anthropologist Professor Kirin Narayan that explores how family folklore can offer unexpected perspectives on a widely celebrated and well-studied heritage site.
ABSTRACT: Skilled craftsmen and the heads of work teams carry the title “Mistri” in many regions of India. In Western India, some Mistris recount an ancestral connection to the magnificent Buddhist, Hindu and Jain rock-cut cave temples at Ellora, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition to claiming that their ancestors worked at the caves, hereditary artisans have long viewed Cave 10, a seventh-century Buddhist chaitya or worship hall, as the original home of their hereditary deity Vishwakarma, the Hindu-Buddhist God of Making. Why this cave? What do these stories about Vishwakarma at Ellora reveal about artisans’ perceptions of the marvels and mysteries of making? This talk, honoring Alan Dundes, explores how family folklore can offer unexpected perspectives on a widely celebrated and well-studied heritage site.
BIO: Kirin Narayan received a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of California–Berkeley in 1987. She is the author of six books including Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching; Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales; and Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses of the Himalayan Foothills. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Australian National University. Honors she has received include the inaugural Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize for Folklore (co-winner), a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and, with Ken George, a five-year Australian Research Council Discovery Project Award.
