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Shapeshifting Traditions among the Khasi of Northeast India: Ecological Engagements and Multispecies Relationships

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Shapeshifting Traditions among the Khasi of Northeast India: Ecological Engagements and Multispecies Relationships (EN)
Lyngdoh, Margaret
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
2023-10-29
This article engages with Water as a core medium in folklore among Khasi, an indigenous community in Northeast India. In the context of the corpus of narratives that engage, interact with, involve, and folklorise water—what will henceforth be called the folklore of water—I look at human-animal transformation traditions. Leaning heavily on empirical material derived from primary fieldwork, this article looks at the folklore of water as home to sanghkini or ‘hybrid’ persons who transform into weresnakes during the monsoon season. Aside from fulfilling its mundane utilitarian purposes, water among Khasi is more: water is expressive of the Khasi knowledge of the world around them. As will be discussed, water is a form of indigenous knowledge. If we look at water as a tradition-resource, it will allow disparate expressions of Khasi religious expression—gender-switching in shapeshifter form; astral travel in sangkhini-dreaming and examples of multispecies relationalities—to be viewed together as articulations of water as mediator, enabling new layers of understanding. (EN)
Comparative Literature (EN)
Synthesis (EN)
stories (EN)
Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies (EN)
multispecies narratives (EN)
multispecies survival (EN)
multispecies (EN)
Khasi (EN)
re-storying (EN)
belief (EN)
human-animal transformations (EN)
ethnography (EN)
Synthesis
English
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EN)
1791-5155
Synthesis: an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies; No. 15 (2022): Re-Storying the World for Multispecies Survival; 100-125 (EN)
Copyright (c) 2023 Margaret Lyngdoh (EN)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens - Department of English Language and Literature
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