Documentation of oral cultural traditions needed: Assam Guv

Assam Governor Prof Jagdish Mukhi today said there is need for documenting the rich oral cultural traditions of the North East region.
"Northeast is a treasure trove of oral culture which are unparallelled and unique in nature. One of the chief characteristics of this region is its rich oral culture and most of the communities in this region are predominantly oral in their social transactions," he said.
The Governor said this while inaugurating a 7-day national workshop on 'Documenting Oral Cultural Traditions of North East India' here.
"The North Eastern region of India embraces great demographic diversities since time immemorial which form a crucial link between the two great civilisations of India and China. It is a microcosm of India in terms of sheer diversity. It is a meeting point of different racial and linguistic groups," Mukhi said.

Stating that this predominant mode of social transaction is the root for the birth of various traditions in forms of myths, legends, ballads, riddles, folklore, etc, he said these traditions were circulated from mouth to mouth and generations to generations before some of them got textualised.
He also emphasised on the importance of documenting these traditions as they constitute vast pool of cultural knowledge of these communities, besides containing social memory in different shades, as they form a part of mnemonic traditions of these societies.
Mukhi said documenting of these traditions was required as they run the risk of facing a grave danger of extinction.