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The IUP Journal of English Studies

Ascertaining the Canons of Travel Writing Through Deepankar Aron's On the Trail of Buddha: A Journey to the East

Article Details

Pub. Date	: June, 2022
Product Name	: The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type	: Article
Product Code	: IJES050622
Author Name	:Sukanya Saha
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Arts & Humanities
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 14

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Abstract

Studies on travel writing in India are gaining momentum currently. People traveling to the nooks and corners of India or abroad and exploring geographies and ethnicities with their customized itineraries, visions and missions, and perspectives, are adding to its blossoming. The socioeconomic and political constraints of the past that hindered travels and writings consequent to them, are fast diminishing in the globalized world with increased knowledge, technology, awareness and above all, appetite for exploration. Overcoming the taboo and stigma attached to traveling and anxieties of physical discomforts, the travel enthusiasts are gauging the width and length of the evolution of the human race on earth. Deepankar Aron's travelogue is a tribute to the deep cultural connect that India shared with China and East Asia along the silk route, evident through similarities in manners of worshipping, ceremonies, customs, grottoes, cave temples, and of course statues of the omnipresent Buddha. The paper identifies the canons intrinsic to travel writings with Deepankar Aron's On the Trail of Buddha: A Journey to the East as its primary source for discussions, and argues why travel writing must be included in curricula alongside core literature courses in higher education.

Introduction

The prerequisite for an epistemological shift that would deviate from the Eurocentric interpretation of travel was initiated by Said's broader examination of the representation of power, influence, and desire in the globalized world (Ashcroft and Pal 1999). Douglas Ivison, for instance, identifies the genre as the "cultural byproduct of imperialism" (Edwards and Rune 2011) and studies its contribution in the specified context of colonial expansions. Said's critical attention to travel writing encouraged interdisciplinary models of thought to deconstruct the cultural, economic, and racial orientations formed towards travel accounts from and about colonized countries. Justin D Edwards and Rune Graulund trace the advent of alternative representations of travels and, "how postcolonial travel texts resist the gravitational pull of metropolitan