FAQ re FAQs

How are “80% accurate” answers supposed to reassure anyone?

The problem/challenge/koan is that Gavari is and has been:

1.   an oral tradition for centuries without scripts or canons;
2.   practiced in hundreds of remote, dispersed villages; and
3.   thus subject to a lot of creative centrifugal diversity.

In other words, what is “true” about Gavari plays in one village or region may be contradicted by their enactment in another.

The only things you can be fairly certain of re Gavari plays & ceremonies: 

• the obvious sincerity and commitment of most players; 
• the beginning and ending of famous tales’ plot lines; 
• the reliance on trance/inspiration to enact their dramas; 
• the recitation of all songs & dialogues in the Bhils' Mewari dialect;and 
• the creeping entry of Hindu gods and myths into indigenous spirituality, e.g., the insertion of Krishna, Vishnu, Ganesha, Purana-based plays like Bhiyawad, etc.
  thanks to Sanskritisation, proselytization and osmotic patriarchal pressure from the surrounding “mainstream” cultures. 

Beyond that almost anything you say about Gavari dramas is subject to several standard deviations of accuracy and truth.