Contextualising the Burkean Sublime in the Yapom of Galo Narratives

This paper explores the manifestation of the Burkean Sublime within the Galo narrative tradition through the figure of the Yapom, a formidable spirit race inhabiting the forests and mountains of Arunachal Pradesh. Drawing on Edmund Burke’s 18th-century conceptualisation of the Sublime as awe-inspiring, overwhelming, and often terrifying, the study examines how the Yapom’s dominion over nature, their complex moral agency, and their dual capacity for benevolence and terror evoke profound emotional responses in human encounters. Using a blended methodology of ethnographic fieldwork and literary analysis, the research situates the Yapom as sublime agents within the Galo imagination, revealing the interplay of beauty and terror, human vulnerability, and the limits of perception in interactions with the supernatural. The paper contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship bridging folklore studies, cultural psychology, and aesthetic theory.