STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF YATCHANI MYTH NARRATED IN GILGIT: MYTHEMES, BINARY OPPOSITIONS, AND SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19996570

Abstract

Myths are ancient narratives often revolve around gods, heroes, and supernatural beings, reflecting the cultural beliefs, values, and collective consciousness of society. This study aims at identifying the underlying structures, binary oppositions and their symbolic meaning in the Yatchani myth, one of the most famous Shina myths in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan. The study employed the structuralist methodology, drawing upon Levi-Strauss's framework of mythemes, as the fundamental units of mythological analysis, and binary opposition to interrogate the Yatchani myth’s underlying structures and its deep cultural logic through textual analysis. This qualitative study classified various mythemes into events, characters, deaths, and spatial settings which possess algebraically triadic structures. These structures have been further categorized in Evental mythemes, Symbolic mythemes, Actantial mythemes and Spatial mythemes. In close collaboration, these mythemes suggest the significance of the overall structure of the Yatchani myth. Both the identified binary oppositions and the above structured  mythemes in the myth found aligning with Levi Straussian universal model, however, some of the mythemes inversely suggest an indigenous hermeneutics to unfold the meanings of these underlying structures. Significantly, the interplay of the identified structures reflects the tapestry of history and Shina cultural milieu of the region.

Keywords: Yatchani, Myth, Structuralism, Levi Strauss, Shina