Tribal Verse Class 11 NCERT Solutions 2026-27

Concept used. A shared characteristic is a feature that appears across many communities. Devy describes tribal communities as cohesive, nature-centred and guided by intuition, sacred space and personal time.

1. Tribal communities usually live in close, organically unified groups.
2. They do not treat wealth accumulation as the main purpose of labour.
3. They see nature, human beings and the divine as closely linked.
4. They trust intuition and experience more than detached rational systems.
5. They often treat the surrounding space as sacred rather than merely secular.
6. Their sense of time is personal, inherited and connected with community memory.

Tribal communities share cohesive group life, closeness to nature, limited interest in accumulation, intuitive knowledge, sacred space and a personal sense of time.

Concept used. Imagination here means the way a community pictures reality. Tribal imagination accepts fluid movement between humans, animals, nature, spirits and time.

1. The secular imagination usually separates planes of existence clearly.
2. It distinguishes human from animal, natural from supernatural and present from past.
3. The tribal imagination allows these planes to meet and overlap.
4. In tribal stories, mountains, seas, stars, animals and humans may share feelings and actions.
5. Animals may speak like humans and natural forces may behave like living persons.
6. This makes tribal art dreamlike, flexible and hallucinatory rather than narrowly realistic.

The tribal imagination differs because it fuses levels of existence and time. Nature, animals, humans and spirits interact freely in a dreamlike artistic world.

Concept used. Oral literary tradition means songs, stories and chants passed by memory and performance rather than by print. Devy argues that orality can be rich literature, not casual folklore.

1. Devy points to the large body of tribal songs, stories and ritual chants passed orally.
2. He shows that these works carry a distinct worldview and artistic structure.
3. They have imagery, rhythm, convention, playfulness and community memory.
4. Their absence from written records does not make them less literary.
5. He asks students to make space for these traditions within Indian literature.
6. He also warns that ignoring orality may lead to the loss of many traditions.

Devy brings out the importance of oral tradition by showing its artistic richness, cultural memory and distinct worldview. He asks students to treat oral forms as literature.

Concept used. Distinctive features are qualities that make tribal arts recognisable. Devy highlights flexible space, mixed imagery, convention, playful creativity and complex bilingual expression.

1. Tribal arts create space and imagery in a flexible, hallucinatory manner.
2. They blur the boundary between art and ordinary life.
3. They may mix episodes from different traditions, such as Ramayana and Mahabharata material.
4. They combine traditional and modern images without anxiety.
5. They follow inherited conventions but also subtly change them in each performance.
6. They are playful, relaxed and often bilingual or multilingual in expression.

Tribal arts are marked by flexible imagery, blurred art-life boundaries, mixed sources, inherited convention, playful tone and complex use of more than one language.

Concept used. A misnomer is a wrong name. Devy says tribal literature is not new; only the modern attempt to recognise it as literature is new.

1. Tribal songs and stories have existed for a very long time.
2. They were transmitted orally, so many written literary histories ignored them.
3. Western or mainstream critics sometimes called them new because they had only recently noticed them.
4. Devy rejects this label because the tradition itself is old and rich.
5. What is new is the effort to hear tribal speech as language, not dialect.
6. What is new is also the effort to read tribal expression as literature, not mere folklore.

'New literature' is wrong because tribal literature is ancient. Only its recognition within written literary studies is recent.

Concept used. The established notion of literature often privileges written texts. Devy asks students to include oral performance, memory and chant in the idea of literature.

1. If literature is defined only as writing, oral songs and stories remain outside the canon.
2. This exclusion reduces the value given to tribal languages and performers.
3. Once a tradition is seen as non-literary, it receives less care and documentation.
4. Modern schooling, print culture and market pressure can then weaken oral transmission.
5. Changing the definition of literature helps protect these traditions.
6. It also makes Indian literary history more honest and inclusive.

The statement is valid because oral traditions can decline when literature is treated only as written text. A wider idea of literature can preserve them.

Concept used. This question asks for a balanced view. Non-commercial art can protect authenticity, but lack of economic support can also make preservation difficult.

1. Not being made for sale helps tribal arts remain part of community life.
2. It protects ritual meaning, collective memory and spontaneous performance.
3. It also prevents market taste from flattening the art into decoration.
4. However, artists need material support to continue their work.
5. Without patronage, poverty and migration may weaken performance traditions.
6. So preservation needs respect, fair support and community control, not crude commercialisation.

The non-commercial nature helps preserve meaning, but growth also needs support. The best path is respectful patronage that does not turn tribal art into a market product.

Concept used. Bilingualism means using two languages. Devy warns that tribal languages may be misread as dialects merely because they borrow from or coexist with dominant languages.

1. Many tribal communities use their own language and a regional contact language.
2. This bilingualism may create shared vocabulary with a major tongue.
3. Outsiders may wrongly assume that the tribal language is only a dialect.
4. A language's identity does not disappear because it borrows words.
5. Tribal languages often have their own structure, songs, ritual registers and worldview.
6. Dismissing them as dialects weakens cultural dignity and literary recognition.

Bilingualism can create a danger of mislabelling tribal languages as dialects. They must be recognised as languages with their own structure and literature.

Concept used. Scientific temper means evidence-based reasoning. The question asks how tribal conventions can still offer ecological, social and ethical insights to modern life.

1. Tribal communities may not always organise knowledge in modern scientific terms.
2. Yet they often live with deep ecological awareness.
3. They treat nature as living and sustaining, not merely as raw material.
4. Their community life can challenge extreme individualism and consumerism.
5. Some tribal customs also question dowry, gender hierarchy and rigid social status.
6. Modern societies can learn ecological balance, restraint and community responsibility from them.

Tribal conventions can enrich modern society through ecological respect, community feeling, anti-consumerist values and alternative social customs.

Concept used. Perspective means attitude or way of seeing. The Munda song welcomes the birth of a girl child as auspicious and valuable.

1. The Munda song celebrates the birth of a girl child.
2. The image of the cowshed filling up suggests prosperity and blessing.
3. This differs from many mainstream social attitudes that value sons more highly.
4. The song does not present the girl as a burden.
5. It associates her birth with abundance and good fortune.
6. This shows a different social imagination around gender and value.

The Munda song treats the girl child's birth as auspicious. It shows a tribal perspective that values the daughter through images of prosperity.

Concept used. Domination over time here means keeping a living relation with the past. The Kondh song speaks to ancestors as present forces, not as vanished history.

1. In the Kondh song, the living address the dead ancestors directly.
2. They make an offering, such as a baby fowl, to ancestral spirits.
3. They ask the spirits to accept the offering because the living still remain in the world.
4. They also request the spirits not to cause pain after departing.
5. This conversation makes the dead part of present community life.
6. The song therefore shows an attempt to overcome separation between past and present.

The Kondh song shows domination over time by making the dead ancestors part of present conversation, ritual and community protection.

Concept used. Language sensitivity means awareness that different situations need different registers. The Adi use one language form for ritual chanting and another for daily speech.

1. The recovery song uses Miri Agom, a ritual and rhythmic language form.
2. Routine conversation uses Adi Agom.
3. This shows that the Adi distinguish sacred performance from daily speech.
4. They understand rhythm, register and occasion with great precision.
5. Modern languages also show such differences between literary and colloquial varieties.
6. Hindi, Bengali and English all have formal literary styles and everyday speech styles.

The use of Miri Agom for ritual and Adi Agom for daily conversation shows high language sensitivity. Many modern languages also separate literary and colloquial registers.

Concept used. Significance means deeper meaning. The Ridin creeper symbolically ties health, soul and body together during a healing ritual.

1. The speaker uses the Ridin creeper in a recovery ritual.
2. The creeper is believed to have medicinal or protective value.
3. Fastening the soul to the body means preventing health and life-force from escaping.
4. The lines connect plant, body, soul and ritual action.
5. They show the tribal belief that healing is physical and spiritual at once.
6. The image also reflects the closeness between nature and human life in tribal verse.

The lines mean that the healing creeper symbolically binds the soul to the body, protecting health and life through ritual contact with nature.

Concept used. The central argument is the main claim of the essay. Devy argues that tribal oral literature must be recognised as literature within the Indian canon.

1. The speaker introduces the enormous wealth of tribal oral literature.
2. He challenges the belief that literature must be written to be valuable.
3. He shows that tribal songs, stories and chants have complex imagery and convention.
4. He asks students to treat tribal speech as language, not inferior dialect.
5. He also asks students to see tribal expression as literature, not merely folklore.
6. The central argument is that the Indian literary canon must make space for tribal oral traditions.

The speaker argues that tribal oral traditions are rich literature and must be included within the wider Indian literary canon.