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Peregrinations

Land of magic...

Syed Naimuddin Hashim
This write-up was to have been the first of a two-part article Star Literature means to carry for its readers. It first appeared in 'East Pakistan Review: An Anthology', published in Karachi in 1958.
—Literary Editor
This subcontinent has always been the home of such rebels and objectors. It should not of course be presumed that all of the fakirs are dissenters. In point of fact many are not. Many have found their individual oudook fully consonant with a particular system of religious or speculative thought. Others have not. It is not the conformity or non-conformity that matters. It is the common approach of all of them. The insistence on ploughing one’s lonely furrow — that is significant. Also important is the common man’s ready acceptance and profound understanding of his bard, who is variously and concurrently termed by them in loving indulgence as 'Saint', 'Beggar’, 'Madman', 'Lover'. In a society so rigidly governed by accepted codes, it is refreshing to see a recognised and honoured place given to these rugged individualists. It speaks for the essential sanity and strength of our rural society that it accepts as natural deviations from the norm by 'abnormal' people. There is hardly any fear of the unknown, for the entire universe beyond of whose existence people are sure, lies in the unknown. Hence we find none of the senseless cruelty to the village idiot as one finds in the city streets. Being close to Nature and God, the villager in Bangladesh knows that He makes them as He wishes and according to no set standard of perfection.
We have unwittingly crossed into the realms of mysticism and speculation, which are the province of the scholar, philosopher and the critic. We will leave them to it and return to the magic. For them the fruitful conjecture about how much the best of our later poetry of Tagore Tagore and Nazrul owe to these obscure bards and to the uninterrupted stream they represent. For them also the study in analogy, comparisons between the symbolism of Bengali folk poetry, the ornate formalism of Persian Sufis, the overelaboration of parallel ideas in the 'conceits' of that prodigy of perverse learning, John Donne, the heredity of the present-day Bauls and
Fakirs stretching way back to the days of the Vedas, picking up on the way the varied fare of Vaisnava, Buddhists, and Nath Yogis, etc.
Since we have strayed into the realms of spiritual songs we might as well start with a few common genres like murshidi and marfati. Examples will illustrate better their distinctive features. Murshidi derives from irshad or 'ordinance of direction from above'. In other words, search for fulfillment or salvation through a Guide. The essential feature is the unending search for this guide and complete and willing surrender to him:
'How shall I ever ford this world-river without a kind Murshid? I have fruitlessly frittered away my days and did not search and find my kind. The oarsmen, who were in the boat, have one by one taken their leave and I am in a quandary'.
Marfat is from irfan or Communion. It is of a more wide latitude being the vehicle for the most diverse spiritual and philosophic soliloquies and discourses. Here the attempt is generally more ambitious, a lonely quest for the Universe, without a third person to light the way:
'The days have been wasted in the search for mundane things and in this quest I have been reduced to a beggar. Oh, my heart I have bought lead at the price of gold. I have not learnt my way about in this world'.
An allied genre is the large volume of poetry and song that build their superstructure on the analogy of the human body to the world, to the human situation and dilemma, as already seen in the song of the bald-headed fakir. A more plebeian example will bring this home.
What led you, my besotted fool, to build this colored edifice, to build this coloured edifice in the midst of this confusion? The hair has gone grey, the teeth have fallen, and the high tide of youth now is at the ebb. Gradually, the multi-coloured plaster of your proud house has bitten the dust'.
Almost identical to the above are Baul, based on non-Muslim spiritual themes:
'Awake, you citizens. Open wide the doors of your mind’s temple. The new sun is up and touches with its crimson fingers the eastern sky. This auspicious moment will perhaps never come again. In this world, on the seas of doubt launch our vessel, Pilgrim, but keep your wits about you'.
The Baul has a distinctive tune blended of many folk elements and the Kirtan with its high-pitched and long intonations. The Kirtan deals almost exclusively with with the love story of Krishna and Radha on the banks of
the sacred Yamuna. But its devotional content transmutes the dross of the love affairs of particular persons to one long paean of joy at the human soul's proximity with its creator, a somber dirge at their temporary separation. Though meant in the beginning for the four walls of the temples, Kirtan has become the vehicle for all the human emotions, and holds sway over the millions.
Just as Kirtan sings about Lord Krishna who came down to earth and as a cowherd stole the hearts of the maidens of Brindaban, the Shyama-sangeets are devoted to the Goddess Kali. The difference in the character of the two deities, one playful, compassionate, nearhuman, the other lonely in her awful grandeur, her unreasoning anger and destructive instincts, her jealous command of exclusive devotion, all are reflected in the songs about
them. It is perhaps for this very reason that Kirtan belongs to the mass of people while the other to votaries of the goddess and a handful of others. Also Shyama-sangeets and Ramprasadis (songs about Kali written by Ramaprasad in a distinctive tune) have been more limited in their appeal than Kirtans, which all manner of things to all people. The central attraction, of course, is that to the average person Kirtan is a love lyric and all the world loves a lover.
Despite our preoccupation with religion, speculation and matters of the spirit, the bulk of our folk-songs of course belong to this world. Their diversity is so breathtaking that all one can do is to run over a few selected kinds.
Among them all the best known are the boatmen's songs, most prominent of which is the Bhatiali. Our people spend half their life on the water sailing down the rivers. The boatman thinks back to his home, to his beloved, scenes of parting and reunion. The murmur of the waters keeps tune to his sad longing and like the even flow of the river he sings a monotonous tune dealing with all facets of life. The river is equated to the journey into Eternity or the unknown, and the longing and dread of a man alone under lowering skies and on rolling rivers induces a mood of mysticism, obstinate questioning about the why and wherefore of this seemingly eternal sojourn.
Shari is the oarsman's chorus primarily, but generally is the collective song of wherever people work together, whether in the rice fields or in the boat regatta.
There is a bewildering variety in our narrative songs. The Jari's main theme is the martyrdom of Imam Husain and the legends around the Kerbala. They are not strictly authentic and true, but this is only to be expected when the popular imagination ranges free over a subject dear to its heart. Even the learned Mir Musharraf Hossain, writing about this theme, lost sight of the historical bearings and as a result produced a
real work of art. The form of the Jari is also very interesting. Into the main narrative are inserted choral songs or 'dhoas' expressing appropriate comments in a given situation. Then there might be extempore interpolation of musical debates between two parties of singers, and in some areas are even followed by dances.
The Ghazi songs are ballads based on folk tales sung by professional singers. The narrative opens with an invocation which salutes practically everybody, from the religious figures to symbols of nature and even one's parents. Then follows the story which deals with feminine beauty, the toilet of a blushing bride, entreaties to the lover to stay awhile, et cetera. Most of the themes come from the Arabian Nights.
The main difference between these two closely allied genres is that while the Jari ballads are based on Muslim religious stories, particularly about the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain, the material of the Ghazi ballads comes from ordinary folk tales.
We have traced the spiritual and mystic element in sufficient detail to be able to explain the main theme of the songs written by Rabindranath Tagore. His is the same world as that of the Fakirs and Bauls, a lonely world predominated by the refrain of the lonely shepherd's reed in the mountain fastness, the burning incense in a hermit's cave like a lifted prayer, a world of detachment in which one yearns for the Being who rules our life and destiny, in which one is an onlooker while the Universe hides from the thirsting soul its dark mysteries according to its dark logic.