Ramayana: Historicizing Myth and Mythologizing History 47Strauss and Gadamer take myth "as a serious social phenomenon which
reveals patterns in social existence." Levi-Strauss just reveals an unfamil-
iar realm, but Gadamer explores what this means to us.^5 Gianni Vattimo
argues that modern philosophical theories of myth have been formulated
within a metaphysical and evolutionary conception of history and that
an exact articulation of philosophical theory of myth is no longer pos-
sible because, according to him, this philosophical horizon of history is
lost. Because of this crisis in the philosophy of evolutionist metaphysics
of history, he says, the conception of myth as primitive thought appears
untenable.^6
Surveying the views that inform the use of the concept of myth today,
Vattimo arranges them under three titles: archaism, cultural relativism,
and limited rationality. Archaism considers myth a more authentic form
of knowledge that is untouched by quantification and objectification of
modern science, technology, and capitalism. Cultural relativism does not
accord mythical knowledge any superiority over scientific knowledge
typical of modernity, but simply denies any opposition between these two
types of knowledge. In limited rationality, however, myth means narra-
tion, and "it is distinguished from scientific knowledge not by a simple
inversion of the latter's characteristics, but by a positive gesture of its
own: narrative structure."^7
This narrative model of limited rationality is very relevant to the theory
of historiography because it uncovers the rhetorical models on which the
constitution of historiography depends. The irreducible plurality of these
models reveals the basis for a negation of the unity of history. In Vattimo's
own words, "insofar as this plurality no longer mirrors a reality-norm,
it is increasingly difficult to distinguish it from a collection of myths."^8
Whether history is a set of mere make-believe stories without any human
form or content has been dealt with in earlier chapters, and the focus here
is simply on the role of narrativity in historical discourses. History, myths,
and narrativity are integral parts of the holistic scheme of a people's past
memories and present identity. Their myths create a particular discursive
space for changes in the knowledge of the past.
This discursiveness gains a divine ordination when religious symbols
and sensibilities are added to it. Using Geertzian analysis, Henry May
argues that "religion involves a set of symbols endowed with ultimate
authority and tremendous motivating power, whose function is to bring
together a conception of the universe and a code of conduct." Accord-
ing to Geertz, the study of religion involves tracing "the socially avail-
able 'systems of significance'—beliefs, rites, meaningful objects—in terms
of which subjective life is ordered and outwarded behavior guided." For
him, culture is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embod-
ied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic
forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop