Structural analysis of myth of hunza myht of shiri badat

Abstract

This research is about understanding an indigenous myth of Hunza by doing structural analysis. In this study the researcher has emphasized on the underlying patterns of thought in myths and to understand how the mythical themes mediate the social tensions on different levels. Although there has been an extensive work in the field of religion but no one tried to focus on myths until the mid of nineteenth century, before that, myths have been thought to be some sort of collective dreams- dreams of wish fulfillment and the foundation of rituals. The Mythical characters are not mere human beings rather they are divinized beings, their characteristics and performances in the mythical stories are not that of ordinary people, the presence of divine element in myths makes it different from folktales. Some scholars also claim that primitive societies use to express their feelings through myths, feelings like love, anger, hater which are common to all human beings, or it may be an attempt of prehistoric and historic minds for providing an explanation for the natural phenomena's which were not possible for them to analyze on empirical grounds, in other words creation of myths may be a sort of ground work for the emergence of religion.