Page 179 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

154 Guy Poitevin

Maharashtra). The obvious structural similarity with the previous story is
all the more striking when we take notice of the distance in time and space,
and the unrelatedness of the narrators.
9. It was in January 1996, in the course of discussions between the collec-
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tor Datta Shinde and elder Vad . ars at Loni (taluk Shrirampur, district
Ahmednagar, Maharashtra). The narrator is Namdev Baburav Ghungare,
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a Gad . ī Vad . ar, aged 50. The narrative is classified as Vdr-24.
10. Vdr-07: prompted by hatred and jealousy, two sisters have taken away the
newborn twins of the king, their brother, and buried them in a garbage
heap, outside the palace. While scratching the garbage with his hooves, a
donkey finds the children. His master brings them home and takes care
of them as if they were his own children. The identity of the children is
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discovered and revealed when the Vad . ar happens to work with them at
the construction of the king’s palace. He then hands over to the king the
sole heirs of the kingdom.
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11. In Vdr-01 the Vad . ar community projects itself in a heroic eponym:
Madanya, the most dedicated servant of a king who eventually erects a
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samadhī to the memory of his famous worker killed in duty. In Vdr-23
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Vad . ars strike water for all in plenty from a rock when the king himself with
his whole kingdom is doomed to perish during a most severe drought.
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12. In Vdr-18 the jump of child Hanuman to swallow the sun repeats the jump
of Vdr-02. The same symbolic conduct of aggressive challenge of the god’s
ascendancy repeats in Vdr-26.
13. Collected in June 1996 by Datta Shinde, from Gondappa Dyappa Chavan,
60, at Tambewadi, Solapur, Maharashtra.
14. Analogically, in Vdr-16 the princess lives with a clay figure that is similarly
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an intimate symbolic alter-ego for the Mati Vad . ar (I have a similar iden-
tification, though in a different way, in Vdr-13). A significant element
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in these three stories (Vdr-10, 16 and 24) is that Matī and Gad . ī Vad . ar
identify themselves through an intimate association as equals with a
princess. The donkey and the princess are the two significant agents or
‘actants’ of those stories.
15. This is a recurrent representation: Vdr-01, 07 and 10.
16. When they display their expertise and extraordinary work capacity, it is
often for the sake of a whole kingdom to be maintained strong or simply
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saved, for instance, in Vdr-13, 21 and 23. Gad . ī Vad . ars in their myths as-
sociate their occupational skill as builders more with palaces and kingdoms
than common houses for the person on the street. In Vdr-21 and 07 the
association is with kings’ lineages and kingdom to be restored.
17. This process occurs in several other myths, for instance, Vdr-05, 06 and 28,
with the same intention of autonomous constitution of the community.
18. This happens to be the explicit function of Vdr-01, 14 and 22.