Girish Karnard’s Treatment of Myth and Folklore in Naga-Mandala

Abstract

Naga-Mandala, published in 1988, is derived from folk-lore. In Naga-Mandala Karnad turns away from the ‘classical’ traditions to the local Kannada folktales as his source, which he had heard from A.K. Ramanujan, India’s renowned scholar of oral traditions. Here Karnad combines two tales – the flame story, and the story of Rani and Appanna to bring out his chosen premise. The flame story explores the notion of stories derived from oral traditions, having a life independent of their narrators, while the second, the central one, focuses on the snake – lover motif, which is instrumental in the “exploration of women’s sexuality within the confinements of domesticity” (Sreekumar and Bindu 216).