Birds in traditional wisdom

Prashanth N SrinivasInstitute of Public Health, Bangalore

The Malki Initiative, BR Hills

The weathervane bird?

Steve Browne & John Verkleir/Wikimedia Commons

Any guesses?

Kingfisher as a weathervane“The body of a mummified kingfisher with extended wings would be suspended by a thread, nicely balanced, in order to show the direction of the wind, as in that posture it would always turn its beak, even when hung inside the house, toward the point of the compass whence the breeze blew.”

“We are told that the fishermen of the British and French coasts hang these kingfisher weathervanes in the rigging of their boats ; and it seems likely to me that it was among sailors that the custom began. “

- Ernest Ingersoll User LoriS13 on Pininterest

Alcyone and Ceyx marble. Original work Thomas Banks Photo by Brianhull2/Wikimedia Commons

Along the coast the mourning halcyon's heard Lamenting sore her spouse's fate

- Ariosto

“For seven days before the winter solstice, and for the same length of time after it, the sea becomes calm in order that the kingfishers may rear their young”

- Pliny, the elder

The halcyons brood around the foamless isles, The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles.

- P B Shelley, Epipsychidion

“Turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters.”

- Kent, in King Lear (Shakesphere)

“But how stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill?”

- Jew of Malta (Marlowe)

…in the region of southern Italy a period of calm weather ordinarily follows the blustering gales of late autumn, which may have suggested this poetic explanation

What connection exists between this, which is simply a classic yarn, and the ancient knowledge of this species?

“…that the kingfisher hatched its eggs at the time of the winter solstice in a nest shaped like a hollow sponge, and thought to be solidly composed of fish-bones, which was set afloat, or at any rate floated, on the surface of the Mediterranean. The natural query how such a structure could survive the shock of waves led to the theory that Father Aeolus made the winds "behave" during the brooding-time…”

A global phenomenon

Garuda/Karura in Indian/Japanese mythology.

In both mythologies, sworn enemy of the “Naga” (snake)

Keen eye and watching over Vishnu, can fly faster than the wind (cf. Gwahir in Tolkien’s LoTR)

• Enlightened bird in Arab mythology (Hudhud) & of biblical fame (rescued King Solomon)

“The king of the hoopoes asks of Solomon a reward for having shielded the king from the rays of the sun. Solomon grants the request by bestowing golden crowns upon all hoopoes. This arouses the jealousy of the other birds, causing them to persecute the hoopoes. They complain to Solomon, and he, in turn, changes the golden crowns into feather crests.”John Gotthold Kunstmann, The Hoopoe, a study in European folk-lore (1938)

Dûrzan cîrano/Wikimedia Commons

“..he presented the bird with all the traditional foods that birds tend to like. The hoopoe refused to eat any of them. As punishment, God condemned the bird to forever only eat the excrement of other animals.”

- Eastern European mythology

• Anal gland giving a foul-smelling secretion & antiseptic properties.

• Hoopoe chicks squirt their feces when threatened.

Names as calls

“..wa`huhu' (the screech owl), u'guku' (the hooting owl), waguli' (the whippoorwill), kagu (the crow), gugwe' (the quail), huhu (the yellow mocking-bird), tsi'kili' (the chickadee), sa'sa' (the goose)…the nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) is called tsulie'na (deaf), and is supposed to be without bearing, possibly on account of its fearless disregard for man's presence. “

- Cherokees: the bird tribes (from firstpeople.us)

Muscicapa muttui

“…after my old and attached servant Muttu, to whose patient perseverance and hunting skill I owe so many of my best birds. This one he brought in one morning at Pt Pedro in the month of June...”

Kannan, R. 1996. Letters. Hornbill. 1996 (2): 9 cited in A dictionary of scientific bird names originating from the Indian region by Aasheesh Pittie

Chung Kiu, Ryan Cheng/Wikimedia Commons

Possibly from argoondah “Assamese name goondri for the Manipur Bush Quail Perdicula” by Sykes

Ogilvie-Grant, WR. A handbook to the Game-birds. (Wikimedia Commons)

Bhringa: Bengali (Indian) native name bhringraj for the Racquet-tailed Drongo given by Hodgson to the drongo he described Bhringa tectirostris (today Lesser Racket-tailed Drongo – Dicrurus remifer)

Nicolas Huet le Jeune (1838)

contra: “According to Albin the Pied Mynah Sturnus was called contra by the natives of Bengal (cf. Assamese name kan kurika).” In contemporary Assamese, the Pied Myna is known as Gobor salika (= ‘cow dung myna’ or ‘myna found near cow dung’).

J M Garg/Wikimedia Commons

pandoo: “Marathi (Indian) name pandu for the male Indian Blue Rock Thrush Monticola.”

Name Petrocincla Pandoo given by Sykes, in 1832

Jojo2000/Wikimedia Commons

chukar: “Onomatopoeic Hindi name chukor for the Chukar Partridge Alectoris.”

Factumquintus/Wikimedia Commons

Northrop BQM-74 Chukar/US Navy photo

“setklara seswala kinyona,” - Tswana

“ummuthi uzalwanyone”- Zulu

“the tree is given birth to by the bird.”

“Our people noticed that when birds from far away rest on the branches of certain great trees, sooner or later you would see strange trees growing at the feet of these big trees…”

- Credo Mutwa, South African witch-doctor

(Wildlife Campus – African folklore. From http://www.wildlifecampus.com/Help/PDF/Folklore_Birds.pdf)

The Soliga people

Kalyan Varma

(Natural) history taking

H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence and Avondale in Southern India with G. P. Sanderson

(From Wikimedia Commons)

GorukanaWeave, spider weave that web…Doddasampige, my LordSafeguard and protect me, O Lord

Weave, spider weave that web…Have you come to our forest,Have you seen our Maari-habba

Weave, spider weave that web…O the Laughing dove of Boodipadaga,The same one that cannot be caught!Behold the Sloth Bear of our forest…

— Gorukana, a Soliga folk song

Natural-history as stories

• Poki and its dungy tryst with Malki betta• The fearless quail which knew the Elephant’s secret• Shaming the tiger• Betegaaraa, the alpha male among wild dogs

L Shyamal/Wikimedia Commons

John Gould

Wikimedia Commons

NatureAtYourBackyard/Wikimedia Commons

ತಲಬಾಸಾ

J M Garg/Wikimedia Commons

Kclama/Wikimedia Commons

Yogendra Joshi/Wikimedia Commons

Sandeep Gangadharan/Wikimedia Commons

J M Garg/Wikimedia Commons

Geena - Mora

Yathin S K/Wikimedia Commons J M Garg/Wikimedia Commons

ಕಪುಟ

Kalyan Varma

ಕಾನಕತತಲ

Kalyan Varma

ಕಾನಗೊ ರವ/ ತೊ ದವ

Radha Rangarajan/INW

ಕುಗಗ�ಲು

Kalyan Varma M N Srinivasa Raju/INW Kalyan Varma

ಬ ಜೋ �ರ

J M Garg/Wikimedia Commons

Subramanya C K/Wikimedia Commons

ಕೋ �ಳ ಕೋ �ಟ

Kalyan Varma

ಗ ಬ, ಗುಮಮ & ನತತರ

Kalyan Varma

Kalyan Varma

ಪಾ- ಪೀ�ರ

Kalyan Varma

ಮರತೊ ಟಟ

Joydeep Sarkar/OBI Kalyan Varma

ಕೋ ಟಟಪೀಡಗ & ಕೋ ಟರ %�ಲ

Kalyan Varma

Malegodda

Dipayan Chakraborthy/INW

The Innominates?

• Flycatchers• Barbets• Shrikes• Larks and Pipits• Orioles• Robins• Malkohas

Agnihotri & Si, Solega ethno-ornithology (2012)

Birds and traditional knowledge systems

• Reflection of “proximity”• Behaviour – Food (NWP project), abundance estimates

(Crows/Kites/Vulutres), Tree Shrew/Hornbill works• Patterns observed over time• Utilitarian functions

– food, – hunting & tool-making– Ornaments/headgear– spirituality/tradition– “sense-making” & worldview (health, knowledge,

conservation…)

• Non-hierarchical knowledge systems

• Lesser barriers, more equitably shared

• Decreasing in granularity, becoming more like “us”, having to “learn” through formal institutions with many socio-economic barriers

• Losing in status vis-à-vis modern education (cf. 9/11 terrorism stories in textbooks, classroom pedagogy, de-privileging traditional knowledge as possibly “superstitions”)

Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1672)Enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths or “Vulgar Errors”

Ch. 1: Of the first cause of common Errors, the common infirmity of humane nature…

Francis Bacon & empericism and humanities’ historicism

Knowledge systems too evolved in favour of more emperically constructed knowledge….embraced more and more globally over time

“ the sum of all human knowledge ”

Source: http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/different-types-of-knowledge.html cited in L Shyamal’s presentation “Information literacy and Internet research”. See http://www.slideshare.net/muscicapa/presentations

Will the knowledge remain?

Thank you