BHUTA KOLA THROUGH CAMPBELL'S LENS: AN INDIGENOUS HEROIC JOURNEY

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Bhuta Kola, a ritualistic performance tradition from coastal Karnataka, through the perspective of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth or Hero’s Journey framework. The study contends that Bhuta Kola represents a living mythic process where ritual, performance, and spirituality merge to re-enact the archetypal journey of transformation, mediation, and transcendence. By casting the Bhuta (spirit or deity) as a liminal hero bridging the human and the divine, the research interprets Bhuta Kola as a performative representation of the universal mythic structure outlined in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell 1949). Drawing from performance studies, anthropology of religion, and comparative mythology, the paper emphasizes how indigenous oral traditions maintain mythic consciousness in embodied forms that resist Western narrative rigidity. The methodology combines ethnographic accounts, textual analysis, and symbolic interpretation to explore ritual gestures, costume, trance, and orality as elements of mythic signification. Ultimately, this research redefines the heroic paradigm from a cosmic journey of the individual to a collective spiritual performance, highlighting how Bhuta Kola serves as both cultural preservation and mythic renewal. The study concludes that indigenous rituals like Bhuta Kola are not peripheral but central to understanding how myth continues to shape the spiritual imagination of communities over time.