UNIVERSALITY AND CULTURAL VARIATION IN METAPHORS IN MAHARSHI RAMANA’S POETRY

Metaphor and its versatility as a mode of thought continue to offer areas to scholars which still remain to be explored. Universality andcultural variation are two aspects of metaphor which have been discussed by the scholars in the West at length. Zolton Kövecses, Raymond Gibbs, Gerard Steen, Olaf Jakel and many others have discussed it in view of cognitive theory of metaphor but the area stills needs to be explored in Indian literature. Zolton Kövecses has devoted a whole book to this particular study of metaphor in Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Cultural Variation (2005). Gerad Steen and Raymond Gibbs have discussed this aspect in Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics (1997). Olaf Jakel has written extensively on the subject. He has also discussed conceptual metaphor, the cognitive theory of metaphor and its tenets applied to religious texts in his articles published in Metaphorik De. He discusses nine main tenets of cognitive theory of metaphor in “Hypothesis Revisited: The Cognitive theory of metaphor Applied to Religious Texts”. The present paper is an attempt to locate the universality and cultural variation in metaphors engendered in Indian literature with reference to the poetry of Maharshi Ramana, a South Indian saint