Folkloric Motifs in Some Ṛgvedic Ākhyāna

Abstract: There is no dearth of narratives in the realm of Vedic Literature. Some of them have also earned universal fame for various reasons. The present paper attempts to describe two Ākhyāna from the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā and throws light on them to trace their motifs strictly on the basis of an American Scholar, Stith Thompson’s world-famous work ‘Motif-Index of Folk-Literature’. The Ṛgvedic Saṃhitā is divided into ten Maṇḍalas, and the total number of hymns contained according to Śākala Śākhā is 1017. After more than eleven supplementary hymns, called Vālakhilya, have been added that the number rises to 1028. The French term ‘motif’ means ‘motive’ in English. This term is used by scholars in widely divergent senses. “A motif is the smallest element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition” (according to Stith Thompson). Voegelin designates a motif as an isolable unit and further clarifies that “A motif may be, therefore, a tale plot, or a discrete incident within a tale, or a minor imaginative detail”. Jawharlal Handoo thinks that ‘Motif as a unit of classification at once suggests or measures that character (actor), the action, and objects.