Sounds as Bodily Accretions: Transformative Roles of Orality and Aurality in Bhīl Adivasi Traditions of India

This paper examines two distinctive practices of orality and aurality among Bhīl Adivasi communities in northeastern Gujarat and southern Rajasthan. Drawing on ethnographic research among Bhīl performers and devotees, it analyzes how orality and aurality are understood as material substances that can accumulate within and transform the human body. The study focuses on two devotional practices: the singing of bhajanvārtās (devotional song-narratives) during the ritual of dhuṇvu, and the listening to kathāvārtās, narrative discourses circulated among Bhīl devotees initiated into the BAPS Swaminarayan tradition. In dhuṇvu, sung words are believed to reside within the body prior to their release through song, ideally emerging from the heart to generate events of ecstatic possession. In kathāvārtā, attentive listening allows sacred narratives to accumulate within the body, forming what practitioners call śabda śarīra, a “body of words”, which is a vessel for cleansed senses, memory, mind, and consciousness.