The Story of Story in Early South Asia: Character and Genre across Hindu, Buddhist and Jain Narrative Traditions

Stories are important. It is through story that we communicate who we are, who we are not, what we hope to be and what we fear we may become. Recent developments in the cognitive sciences have shown that, in fundamental ways, human beings need stories in order to organize their memories, to learn, and to relate to one another successfully. Early South Asia, perhaps more than any other place on earth, has lived in and through its stories. South Asia has a vast repository of story traditions, which have been used to express insights into what it is to be human, into how the world works, its past, and what its future might be. These stories are integral to three of the world's most significant religious traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. However, research into these traditions has tended to remain separate and there has been little attempt either to move from one 'ism' to another or to integrate new perspectives on narrative and its role in human societies. This project sets out to do just that. It is our intention to explore the role of narrative across these three traditions in the context of recent perspectives drawn from cognitive and linguistic theory. Such a vast task must be broken down, and so the project focuses on literary characters that are shared by all three traditions. By focusing on these characters (such as Janaka, Sita, Vidura, and Nimi) and exploring the way they are used in different narrative traditions and ideological contexts, we will begin to trace the contours of a shared world of story-telling and story-hearing activities. This shared context, we will argue, was integral to the ways in which religious and political ideologies, identities and histories were transmitted and adapted in early South Asia. We will also suggest that the exploration of the role of story in early South Asian society, in the light of approaches to the study of narrative as integral to human cognitive and social development, opens up new vistas for research into the role of narrative both within and across pre-modern societies more generally. It can also help us to understand that no ideologies, identities, or histories, are fixed. This is an understanding that is of considerable importance if we are, as a society, to encourage inclusive and fluid models of identity and religious 'heritage'.

Who might benefit from this research?
The key beneficiaries of this research outside the academic community will be the following:
- The general public, locally and nationally.
- Storytellers in the local area, including those who use stories in therapeutic and pedagogic contexts.
- Religious practitioners and members of South Asian cultural groups, both in the UK and internationally.

How might they benefit from this research?

The general public will benefit from an enriched understanding of the role of story both generally and in the specific context of Early South Asia. In particular, the emphasis on the cognitive universality of the use of story in the making and unmaking of identities and histories, is critical if we are to establish an inclusive and flexible public discourse on citizenship as well as religious and cultural identity. In Great Britain, the history and culture of South Asia is less well established in school curricula, the academy and public discourse than that of the Euro-American world. Where well-publicised research does occur in the U.K., it tends to be associated with a particular religious tradition (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) rather than with South Asia as a geographical entity and as a cultural context. In addition to the more basic contribution of correcting the bias in the western academy to Euro-American studies, a major project on the role of story in early South Asia will serve as a powerful stimulus to public discourse which moves beyond contemporary identity formations (such as '-ism' and state) and which begins to acknowledge the malleability and openness of all identity formations. To address the religious and social history of more than one billion of the world's population, whilst simultaneously discouraging the conceptualisation of 'heritage' as stable, personal or communal property, is to address powerfully the AHRC's mission to enrich our understandings of human societies past and present and to impact on the modern world.

In addition, Wales has a rich tradition of professional and semi-professional storytelling activity and there are numerous cultural events in Wales that promote this tradition and others like it (such as the Beyond the Border Wales International Storytelling Festival). We intend to reach out to storytellers and performers in order to inform them of both the content and the analytic agenda of our work. We hope that this will serve the practical requirement of expanding performative repertoires and the more subtle agenda of destabilizing simplistic understandings of religious identity that circulate in public performance.

Story-telling also occurs in therapeutic and pedagogic contexts (e.g. family therapy, psychiatry and teaching). We intend to approach professionals in these areas in order to expand their repertoire and to help them develop more thorough contextual understandings of religiously-related storytelling activities in South Asia, which could benefit clients and patients.

As a consequence of our exploration of shared narrative elements in early South Asia, members of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain communities, both in the UK and overseas, will benefit from a richer understanding of their shared religious and cultural heritage. In addition, those who engage with their religious or cultural tradition solely in the English language will benefit from improved access to many stories through our translations. Our findings will also enable religious practitioners more generally (including Christians, Muslims etc.), and in particular those religious practitioners who use story to communicate religious history and values, to consider how their use of story compares to that of historic South Asia. In particular, we anticipate that our demonstration of the plurality of early South Asian story tradition, and its concern to re-work and re-interpret shared materials, will help to encourage inclusive and creative use of religious story-telling.