Intertextuality between Mundhum and short stories from the Bible

Abstract

This research explores intertextuality between Mundhum and The Short Stories from the Bible and analyses the reasons for having similarity in terms of events, narration, myths, cultures etc. despite being far away from two different geographical locations. The paper tries to answer all the confusing questions that have arisen among the people of Kiratis about their own culture regardingauthenticity and originality of their holy scripture. While reading many similar events and narrations in both texts, there could arise one question in their cultural mind that: Are our cultures copied from Western culture of Christianity? Present paper tries to dismantle this basic question and confirm all Kiratis of our country that our Mundhum is the distinct, original, glorious, religious text that has been developedbytheKirati people through their long historical journey of their lifestyle in high Himalayas of Nepal. To consolidate my claim, I have borrowed insights from the theory of Intertextuality and Biblical Studies by Dr. Steve Moyise, Intertext and biblical Scholarship by Kristen Nielson, Julia Kristeva’s Intertextuality: Literary Theory and Criticism, Dialogism and carnival by Mikhill Bakhtin,idea of Teleopoesis by Jacques Derrida. Likewise, it also examines why and how the events and the narrations are perpendicular to each other in these two different texts despite being far away from two opposite locations. On the other hand, it also tries to explore the reasons and the causes of overlapping the events and myths of different tribal texts. So, aim of research here is to free every cultural mind from the confusion of overlapping scenarios from the different cultural and tribal texts and prove that their own cultural and religious creation is authentic and original.