Structuralism and Dastan Narratives

Axes of Knowledge, Desire and Power in Hoshruba

Abstract

This article takes a structuralist approach to understand dastan which is a classical storytelling genre in in the subcontinent. Being a text of popular culture, the dastan constitutes popular actions such as sorcery, chivalry, trickery, seduction, charms, magic, adventure, battles, and murders; but, at the same time, the line of demarcation between ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ reflects the nexus of ideological signifiers underlying the narrative patterns of the text. Seen through Greimas’ narrative model, the text manifests three sets of binary oppositions (a) subject versus object, (b) sender versus receiver and (c) helper versus opponent. In line with the Greimasean trinity of ‘knowledge (communication),’ ‘desire’ and ‘power,’ the narrative discourse of dastan, Hoshruba, appears as a text of deeper significance. In this actantial model the subject is asked or ordered to accomplish the task by the sender which is an axis of transmission or knowledge. On the axis of desire, the subject pursues the object. Faced with an opponent, he finds a helper who is the axis of power working in narrative patterns. Along these lines, the ‘subject’ of Hoshruba is Amir Hamza Camp (including Asad, Amar Ayyar and fellow tricksters) and its ‘object’ is the sacred mission to materialise a decisive crackdown on transgressors (characters and settings) of Hoshruba. The ideology—to accomplish the sacred mission—stays with the sender and characters such as Amir Hamza, Asad, Amar Ayyar and neophytes are receivers (of benefits). The tricksters play the role of helpers, whereas the Emperor Afrasiyab and his followers, who oppose them in the story, act as opponents. The analysis addresses the structural, semantic and ideological values of narrative patterns found in Hoshruba, the Land and the Tilism.

Keywords: Narrative analysis, dastan Hoshruba, structuralism, ideology, knowledge, power, desire