【文章內容簡介】 red to be the earliest and most typical of story tellers. Achkka is the storyteller of the novel, who is just like a grandmother. She tells the story to every new er to Kanthapura. According to Raja Rao, ―Achakka‘s exceedingly long sentences, use of blanks, and expressions like ?this‘ and ?that‘, ?here and there‘ are meaningful. She gives us plete charactersketch of Sankar, Bhatt and Rangamma. ? They are very much informative, as well as vital for the narrative. In this way, one episode leads to another, and so the tale tends to be interminably long. This also makes the narration episodic. ? There are so many episodes in the novel. Thus, the narration is characterized by verbosity and garrulity, which are the features of the Indian folklore. Raja Rao wanted to stress this admired tradition. As a result he didn‘t feel it necessary to divide the novel into chapters. ? In his Foreword to Kanthapura Raja Rao clarifies that the novel is to be judged with reference to the conventional Indian tradition and not with reference to Western methods of storytelling and theories and of the novel writing. ? begins with The breathless narration by the garrulous Achakka, playing many roles, recalling the orality of past traditions: ? ―Our villageI don‘t think you have ever heard about itKanthapura is its name, and it is in the province of Kara. High on the ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian Seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a center of cardomom and coffee, rice and sugarcane‖(Rao 1). ? It is Achakka who goes on to show how the village is presided over by the overpowering legend of Goddess Kenchamma: ? ―Kenchemma is our goddess. Great and bounteous is she. She killed a demon ages, ages ago, a demon that had e tom demand our son‘s as food.‖‘(Rao 12) ? The protagonist Moorthy is introduced by the narrator Achakka in familiar terms: ―Cornerhouse Narsamma‘s son Moorthyour Moorthy as we always called him‖(Rao 7). To describe with consummate skill a character as ―paradoxical as Moorthy and a theme as plex‖ (Sankaran 43) with its intricate mingling of the mythic and the rational, required great skill in narrative strategy. ? Moorthy offers a vision of reconstruction and of integration of the possibilities and impossibilities of the philosophic whole, where even intense inward questionings betrayed no jarring collusion or confrontation. The culmination of the conversion of Moorthy is Saint Sankaracharya‘s chant: ? ― …and closing his eyes tighter, he slips back into the foldless sheath of the Soul…and sends out rays of love to the east, rays of love to the west,…. And when he opens them to look around, a great blue radiance seems to fill the whole earth, and dazzled, he rises up and falls prostrate before the god, chanting Sankara‘s ?Sivoham, Sivoham, I am am am I.‘ ‖(Rao 67). ? ? This variability in interpretation integrates certain terms such as taste or essence (rasa) and sound (dhvani), which reconcile theories of linguistic expressionism with emotional nuances. ―What Rao‘s mantra did was to create what has been called ―unselfconsciousness‘ about English, about creativity in this language, about Indianness‖(K