Konknni: Myths and Facts by Pratapananda Naik, S.J.

 

Konknni: Myths and Facts

Pratapananda Naik, S.J.

 

Myth comes from the Greek word mythos means story.  Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for advanced Learners (Third edition 2001) defines myth as follows: i. A myth is a well-known story, which was made up in the past to explain natural events or to justify religious beliefs or social customs.  ii. If you describe a belief or explanation as a myth you mean that many people believe it but it is actually untrue.

     Myth in one form or the other exists in almost every culture known to history.  It deals with questions of cosmic and human origins, the origin of human institutions, the end of the world, the nature of gods with man and many other topics related to metaphysics.  In religion myths play an important role.  The reality which myth presents in symbolic form is the unknown transcendental reality, which lies beyond observation and simple deduction, but which is recognized as existing and operative.  Myth presents in a story the constant reality of the universe.  It does not pretend that the symbol is the reality, but it proposes the symbol as that which gives an insight into a reality beyond understanding.  In religion myths are necessary and they try to give meaning to an event, which cannot be explained through mere reasoning and logical explanations. Therefore in the sphere of religion one cannot question the myth whether it is true or false.  Rather one could question the meaning and function of a particular myth.  For example the myth of creation in the Bible is not a historical or scientific event but it tries to explain to Jewish community the origin meaning and purpose of creation.

     Every society creates its own myths to defend, justify its own history, language, literature, traditions, culture, etc.  Creation and propagation of language myths is part of language politics.  Here I have the used the term myth means falsified statement or a statement which is partly true and partly false.   Konknnis (Konknni speakers) too have created their own myths to explain the origin of their language, the importance of Devanagari script, Konknni literature prior to 1510, the population of Konknnis, Konknni in education and so on.  These myths are used as powerful tools to control, dominate and subjugate a large section of the Konknni society.  At times they are used to hide or suppress the truth or the existing reality of Konknni.  Vested Konknni groups to manipulate others create myths related to language, script, literature and culture.  These myths are used as defence mechanism to negate the inferiority complex of a section of Konknnis.  Here below I have given a list of important myths found among Konknnis. Most of Konknnis believe these false statements propagated by writers and pseudo intellectuals as reality or the ultimate truth.  Researchers must critically investigate these myths based on empirical evidence to rediscover the reality.