An illustration from ‘Jungle Nama’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Ecological concerns echo from ‘Jungle Nama’, Amitav Ghosh’s verse adaptation of the medieval Bengali tale about the forest goddess, Bon Bibi
While researching for his 2016 book,
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh paid close attention to the way premodern texts are written and designed, specifically how they engage with the natural world. Among other things, the book elaborates upon two points: medieval texts across language and region have a wide-ranging engagement with nature, and a great many of them have a strong visual component to them. The illustrations aren’t static accessories; they are essential to the ‘grammar’ of these texts.