CHANDRABATI
Chandrabati was a medieval Bengali poet, widely considered as the first woman poet of Bengali language. She is best known for her women-centered epic Ramayana. Chandrabati was born to Dij-Banshidas Bhattacharya, 1550 CE in the village of Patuyari, on the banks of the Fulesshori river in Kishoreganj which is currently located in Dhaka division of Bangladesh. Bansidas was a composer of Manasa’s ballads known as Manasar Bhasaner Gan (Manasha Mangal).
Chandrabati was the first woman from the Indian subcontinent to re-compose the ancient epic Ramayana in Bengali. She narrated the Ramayana from Sita‘s point of view and criticized Rama. Chandrabati is a highly individual rendition as a tale told from a woman’s point of view which, instead of celebrating masculine heroism, laments the suffering of women caught in the play of male ego. Besides the epic Ramayana, two other long Ballads were also found to be written by Chandrabati namely Molua & Dossu Kenaram.
Chandrabati’s life was also very tragic. After being betrayed by her happened to be husband Jayananda, she decided not to get married again and rather devoted herself in writing Ballads living inside a Shiva Temple, built for her by her poet father. She lived her last breath living inside this Shiva Temple and composed her Ballads till her death. The temple still exists in the village she lived inn.
MYMENSINGH GEETIKA
Witter, educationist, scholar and researcher of Bengali folklore-Dinesh Chandra Sen had some popular narrative ballads collected from greater Mymensingh with the help of local collectors and, after editing, published them in 1923 as a book under the title Maimansingha Gitika. After its publication it earned appreciation from all for richness of its contents and artistic quality. After reading ‘Mahua’, folk-lorist Stella Cromoreach commented- ‘in the dizziness of fever I saw Mahua, Nader Chand and Humra as if in a vision. Whatever I have studied of Indian literature, I have not come across any story so touching, so simple and so fascinating. The sad story of Mahua dazed her.
The book contains ten ballads ‘Malua, Chandravati, Kamala, Dewan Bhabna, Dosyu Kenaramer Pala, Rupabati, Kobko O Leela, Kajolrekha and Dewan Madina. The names of the writers of some of the ballads are known from their ritualistic introduction. For instance, Mahua’s writer was Dwij Kanai, Chandravati’s writer was Nayanchand Ghose, Kamala’s writer was Dwij Eishan, Dasyu Kenaramer Pala’s writer was Chandravati and Dewan Madina’s writer was Mansur Bayati. The names of four writers are mentioned for Konka O Leela ‘ Damodar Das, Roghu Soot, Sreenath Binod and Nayanchand Ghose. The names of the writers of the other ballads are not yet known. The ballads having names of their writers are however indistinguishable in poetic style. In fact, they largely appear similar in themes, artistic and linguistic styles and presentation. The stories have been picked up from the folk society and local history.
The ballads primarily feature the life stories of the mortal beings and not of religion. Except the Dasyu Kenaramer Pala, all other nine ballads reflect the worldly loves of men and women, some ending as comedies and others as tragedies. The ballads are named after the heroines. The roles of the heroines are brighter and more lively compared to those of the heroes. The heroines struggle more and sacrifice more than their men in establishing the depth of love. The steadfastness of women’s love and boldness of their character make some critics believe that the ballads may have been influenced by some matriarchal society. In eulogizing the roles of female characters, Dinesh Chandra Sen claims in the foreword of the book: ‘The female characters of the ballads vividly reflect invincible forces in love, inviolable purity of self-respect and humiliating defeat of the oppressors. Womanhood has risen not by memorizing religious hymns but by way of love.’
By analyzing the period of appearance of the writers, the themes of the ballads, socio-economic background and linguistic features, it is assumed that the ballads were written in the Middle Age. ‘Kajolrekha’ is a legendary ballad. Its theme is of ancient nature. All other ballads reflect the social ideas and values of medieval society. Such characters as kings, zamindars, dewans, kazis, karkuns or revenue officials, saodagar or merchants, pirs and darveshes, sadhus and sanyasis indicate Muslim rule. Despite bearing the values of a feudal society, the ballads of Maimansingha Gitika uphold the supremacy of human love, individuality of persons, concern for worldly affairs and values of morality. These features have given the ballads such literary merit and status as comparable to those of the novels of the modern times.
In this context, mention may be made of the Purbababga Gitika. Following the success of his Maimansingha Gitika, Dineshchandra Sen collected many more ballads from such areas as Mymensingh, Noakhali and Chittagong and after editing published them as Purbobanga Gitika (1926) in three volumes. Local village people call them ‘pala gan’. Dineshchandra Sen used ‘gitika’ to render English term ‘ballad’ into Bengali. Bengali ballads are narrative stories in songs. But these have enough spaces for dramatic dialogues. A singer narrates the entire story and dialogues of the dramatic characters in songs. Choristers repeat after him as the musicians play on their instruments. The common rural folks are the audience. They sit around the stage to enjoy in utter enchantment the musical and dramatic beauty of the ballads. [Wakil Ahmed]
A Ramayan not about Ram
HISTORY, WOMEN, STORYTELLING, MYTHOLOGY, GENDER
This piece was originally published in Mint Lounge. Cover image: ‘Agni Pariksha’ (Trial by fire) – A scene from the Ramayan where Sīta undergoes the ordeal by fire watched by Rām, Laxman and Hanuman, circa 1820, artist unknown. Photo: Wikimedia commons
In the 16th century, a Bengali poet reimagines the Ramayan. Far ahead of her time, she chooses to offer her rendition of the epic not in Sanskrit that was revered at the time, but in her mother tongue. Though she will be scorned for her attempt, her retelling will be revolutionary, for it will possibly be the first of its kind, written from a woman’s perspective: Sita’s.
It is 1575 and 25-year-old Chandrabati is sitting by the Phuleswari river in Patwari, a village near the town of Kishoreganj, now in Bangladesh. Chandrabati appears disturbed: Her father has set her an herculean task—she must rewrite the Ramayan.
Her retelling will languish in obscurity. Centuries later, in one of the last surviving tattered copies, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, an award winning academic and an authority on the 16th century poet, will meet Chandrabati in her epic’s introduction: “Chandra sings the Ramayana at the insistence of her father.”
The poet will have no inkling that her Ramayan will be criticized by some of the respected literary authorities of the day, most of them men.
But let’s return to the day Chandrabati is sitting by the river, lost in thought. A few days earlier, she had learnt that Jayananda, whom she was promised to, had wedded another woman. Heartbroken, she will seek her father’s permission to stay unmarried and dedicate her life to Lord Shiva. And he will allow her to do so, on the condition that she writes the epic.
Chandrabati’s father, a poet, worshipped the snake goddess, Manasa. Referring to him as a “poor Brahmin”, folklore historian Dineshchandra Sen, in his collection of The Bengali Ramayanas (1920), describes Bansi Das as “one of the best exponents of the poetical literature of the Manasa-cult”. In her epic’s introduction, Chandrabati thanks her father, saying it is he “who has educated me in the Pauranic literature”.
Historically, her version of the Ramayan is one of the early—possibly one of the first—examples of feminist literature. Historically though, it has been cast aside as a shoddy piece of writing, incomplete and structurally fragile. Though he appreciated Chandrabati’s attempt, Chandra Sen called it an “unfinished” piece: “She had brought (the epic) down to Sita’s exile, and there it ends,” he wrote. Noted 20th century linguist Sukumar Sen “ripped the text apart, and (believed) it to be fake,” writes Dev Sen in her paper, Rewriting The Ramayana: Chandrabati And Molla (India International Centre Quarterly, 1997). For Chandrabati takes a quintessential epic—known to be a Valmiki masterpiece that glorifies Ram in all his muscle, wit and grandeur—and upends it in the most (to his mind) inconceivable manner: She makes Sita the beating heart of the story.
An unlikely narrator
Chandrabati crafts an epic far from the heroic, far from the Bhakti tradition of absolute veneration. It undermines the extravagant and gallant battle fought between Ram and Ravan, and gives a detail-drenched perspective of Sita’s emotional turmoil. “As unconventional as ever, (Chandrabati) begins her Ramayan with the story of Sita’s miraculous birth,” writes Dev Sen.
In fact, Chandrabati does something even more unthinkable. While Valmiki’s epic is grounded in the premise that Ram was born as the destroyer of Ravan, Chandrabati steers the spotlight away from him and introduces Sita as the one birthed to destroy the Lanka king.
In A Woman’s Ramayana: Chandrabati’s Bengali Epic, authors Mandakranta Bose and Sarika P. Bose describe a Mandodari (Ravan’s wife) distraught at Ravan’s affairs with the women he has abducted. In a moment of absolute helplessness, she “consumes the blood drawn by Ravana from the sages he torments, mistaking it for poison”, they write. Mandodari conceives an egg, but is cautioned by a prophecy: “The child born from (the egg) would bring ruin upon Ravana.” Fearing Ravan’s descent, she hurls it into the ocean. The egg, discovered by a fisherman, is gifted to king Janak’s queen, and Sita is born.
Chandrabati paints Ram as an ordinary, flawed man who abandons his pregnant wife. The poet is subversive, but this is a subversion driven by an urgency to give agency to the plight of women.
“She made the Ramayan a kind of women’s unending tragedy,” says T. Vijay Kumar over the phone, a professor of literature at Osmania University who has translated The Liberation Of Sita (2016), a book also written from Sita’s perspective by Telugu feminist writer Volga. “Chandrabati links Mandodari’s plight (a husband who lusts after other women) to Sita’s (whose husband banishes her). Also, Chandrabati took on the exercise of retelling the Ramayana when she was going through her personal trauma. Therefore, it is through that theme of rejection that she connects herself with these two mythological figures, making it a larger tale of women’s misery.”
Chandrabati’s epic is rooted in the folk genre. “In the second part of her epic…she brings in Sita herself as the narrator,” explains Dev Sen. “The war is over and Sita is back in Ayodhya, with her girlfriends in the palace. Chandrabati gives us the whole story through a Baromaasi.” A Baromaasi, characteristic of the folk genre, is a song sung by women to describe their woes, and the poet uses this as a literary device for Ram’s wife. Sita’s lucid and layered narration of grief then, becomes the linchpin of the epic.
In the 16th century, at a time when women had a peripheral presence in literature and the public realm, Chandrabati flouted the norm. That was the beauty of her epic.
***
A more ‘feminine’ Sita
While Chandrabati was retelling the Ramayan in Bengali, another woman in Andhra Pradesh—unmarried, equally subversive in some ways and equally vocal—was choosing to write the epic in Telugu. Unlike Chandrabati though, she belonged to the potter caste. And while Chandrabati’s Ramayan was rubbished, hers was embraced.
So how did Atukuri Molla manage to have her voice heard? “Though it was a custom for poets to dedicate their poems to kings or other powerful persons, Molla…chose to dedicate her work directly to Rama,” says the book Women Writing In India: 600 B.C. To The Early Twentieth Century (edited by historians Susie J. Tharu and K. Lalita).
Molla is unequivocally deferential towards Ram. Her epic does not have unfamiliar contours. In her literary offering, Ram retains his title as the hero, while Sita is elbowed to the periphery.
Not only does Molla exclude the part about Sita’s birth, she barely makes Sita’s presence felt in her swayamvara—a ceremony that revolves around the bride, notes Nabaneeta Dev Sen, the award winning academic. In addition, she doesn’t include the final chapter, “Uttarakanda”, the aftermath of the battle, where Ram banishes his wife.
“Molla brings in her own style: She adds, deletes, imagines, interpolates, suffusing the text with metaphors and similes. She introduces songs in the epic where there were none, and brings in the native flavour,” says Osmania University professor T. Vijay Kumar. In addition, Molla gives her readers (predominantly male at the time) two popular themes: sex and violence.
She weaves in the gut-wrenching battle scenes, the artillery, the dismembered bodies, and introduces salacious descriptions. “(Molla) portrays the strong urban nature of Ayodhya by telling us how everything is brimming with sexual energy,” writes Dev Sen. “When Surpanakha describes Sita to her brother Ravana in order to incite his lust, she uses a sensual language that would make anyone lust after Sita.”
Believed to be king Krishnadeva’s concubine, and a poet vying for respect in the royal court, Molla would embrace the structural and ideological conventions of the traditional epic. She would conform. In fact, Molla portrays her Sita as extremely feminine. “In her Ramayan, the feminine quality comes through very strongly, in terms of the songs she interpolates,” says Prof. Vijay Kumar. “She makes Sita even more feminine than perhaps Valmiki’s Sita.”
All this, perhaps, makes Molla’s rendition more “acceptable”.
Molla is driven by a different agenda though: For her, the need to retell the Ramayan is more of a linguistic experiment. For although it was available in Telugu in the 16th century, it was written in a complex language. “So she puts herself in the place of the reader and asks, ‘What about people like me who don’t appreciate the Ramayan written in the highly literary, chaste Telugu? What is the point of such a wonderful story if it’s not understood by the common people?’” says Prof. Vijay Kumar. She takes the onus of making the epic more accessible to the common man.
Centuries later, Molla’s Ramayan has survived; its light vocabulary made it popular among readers. If you go looking, you might be able to unearth a copy or two of her epic in book stores in Andhra Pradesh even today. Chandrabati’s Ramayan, however, is harder to come by.
Chandrabati was a medieval Bengali poet, widely considered as the first woman poet of Bengali language. She is best known for her women-centered epic Ramayana. Chandrabati was born to Dij-Banshidas Bhattacharya, 1550 CE in the village of Patuyari, on the banks of the Fulesshori river in Kishoreganj which is currently located in Dhaka division of Bangladesh. Bansidas was a composer of Manasa’s ballads known as Manasar Bhasaner Gan (Manasha Mangal).
Chandrabati was the first woman from the Indian subcontinent to re-compose the ancient epic Ramayana in Bengali. She narrated the Ramayana from Sita‘s point of view and criticized Rama. Chandrabati is a highly individual rendition as a tale told from a woman’s point of view which, instead of celebrating masculine heroism, laments the suffering of women caught in the play of male ego. Besides the epic Ramayana, two other long Ballads were also found to be written by Chandrabati namely Molua & Dossu Kenaram.
Chandrabati’s life was also very tragic. After being betrayed by her happened to be husband Jayananda, she decided not to get married again and rather devoted herself in writing Ballads living inside a Shiva Temple, built for her by her poet father. She lived her last breath living inside this Shiva Temple and composed her Ballads till her death. The temple still exists in the village she lived inn.
When Women Retell the Ramayan
Nabaneeta Dev Sen
Epic poets the world over are men singing the glory of other men—armed men, to be precise. In a study I did a couple of years ago, I noticed that out of the thirty-eight basic things upon which most epic narratives of the world are based, only nine are associated with women. The ideals of the epic world obviously do not have much to share with women, nor do the women enjoy the heroic values. There is little they can do there—other than get abducted or rescued, or pawned, or molested, or humiliated in some way or other. So, what happpens when women choose to retell an epic? There are many alternatives.
- You could tell it like it is, by borrowing the traditional eyes of the male epic poet, as Molla does in her 16th century Telugu Ramayan.
- You could tell it like it is, looking at it with your own women’s eyes, as Chandrabati does in her 16th century Bengali Ramayan.
- You could tell it like it is by borrowing an ideological viewpoint as Ranganayakamma does in Ramayan Vishabriksham, rewriting the Ram tale from the Marxist point of view.
- You could tell your own story through the story of Sita, as the village women of India have been doing or hundreds of years.
For me it all started in 1989 with an accidental re-reading of the text of Chandrabati Ramayan. That is where I discovered that a women’s Ramayan tells a different story. Since then, I have been fascinated by women’s retellings of the Ram tale. My studies on Chandrabati’s, Molla’s and Ranganayakamma’s Ramayans have been published. Chandrabati and Molla are the very first omen to retell the Ramayan in their regional language, and they have amazing similarities. Both remained unmarried out of choice in order to become professional poets, both worshipped Shiva, yet wrote a Ramayan. But here they took different routes. Molla, a woman and Shudra, threw a challenge to the Brahmin court poets by writing a perfect classical Ramayan. Chandrabati, on the other hand, composed a Ramayan which told only the story of Sita and critiqued Ram from a woman’s point of view. The Brahmins did not allow Molla’s work to be read in the royal court. And critics have rejected Chandrabati’s as a weak and incomplete text. Ranganayakamma suffered a great deal of social ostracisation for her attack on the ‘Holy Book’. The village women care neither for the court nor for the critic—and they are not out to change the world. They continue to sing for themselves. I am grateful to the late A. K. Ramanujan for his encouragement of this work. He was vastly enthusiastic after reading my paper on Chandrabati Ramayan in February 1991, and told me about Professor Narayana Rao’s unpublished work on Telugu women’s Ramayan. Ramanujan felt that a lot of Chandrabati’s perceptions were shared by these Telugu women. Chandrabati also supported Ramanujan’s view that women’s traditions held an alternative perception of Indian civilisation. Thus, the connection was made in my mind. With references from Professor Rao, I went to Andhra Pradesh looking for more material. Then to Bangladesh and flourishes only on the periphery. The male Sita myth, where she is a “devi” (deity), continues in the mainstream. In the women’s retelling, Sita is no rebel; she is still the yielding, suffering wife, but she speaks of her sufferings, of injustice, of loneliness and sorrow. In the women’s folk tradition in India, never mind where you are, which century you belong to or what language you speak, you are all sisters in sorrow. Though the singers may live in different parts of the subcontinent, wear different clothes, cook very different food and vote for totally different political parties, when they sing the story of Ram, they are astonishingly close to one another. In their feelings, their perceptions, their expressions, their choices of events and their responses, they echo each other. So much so that it took a good deal of careful screening and categorising of the songs to keep their identities clearly separated in my mind. These work songs and ritual songs have opened up a rich world of women’s Ramayans. While weeding or sowing in the field or husking or grinding in the courtyard, or preparing for religious ceremonies, the women all across the country sing these songs. These are connected with different moments of a woman’s life, and here Sita is the name of the woman who attains puberty, gets married, gets pregnant, is abandoned and gives birth. They call it the Ramayan but it is of Sita that they sing.
In their retellings of the Ramayan for women naturally to pick and choose their episodes; they are not interested in the heroic epic cycle, which has no relevance to their lives. If what they create is fragmentary, it is because their lives are fragmentary. For them, it is the whole story. It reflects a woman’s world in its entirety. These are the four language of my present area of interest: Bengali in the east (Bangladesh), Marathi in the west, Telugu in the south and Maithili in the northern Hindi belt. The favourite episodes of the women singers seem to come mostly from the Balakanda and the Uttarkanda, the two so-called spurious books, excluded by strictly classical Ramayan scholars. The Balakanda deals with the birth and marriage of Sita and what happened before Ram’s coronation plans were made. And the Uttarkanda tells us what happened after the war, after Ram-Sita’s return to Ayodhya.
Uttarkanda is not a flattering book for Ram. The topics that interest men do not seem to interest the women. They leave out the details of war, Ram’s glory, Brahminical rituals, and so on. The women seem to sing mostly of abandonment and injustice, and of romance, weddings, pregnancy and childbirth. Naturally, the songs centre around Sita, rather than Ram. The areas where Ram usually shines brilliantly, those of moral strength (like father worshipping) and of physical prowess (like demon killing), do not seem to interest the women at all. One area of Ram’s moral judgement does bother them though—his wife-testing (agnipariksha) and abandoning of Sita. Incidentally, the man who seems to appear most in the songs is Lakshman, the brother-in-law and forest companion of Sita (the other slave of Ram). He appears to be the only man whom the rural women of India and Bangladesh care for, with whom Sita can communicate.