By Saukarya Samad
Bengal has historically been a land of diversity where time has witnessed the confluence of different races and cultures. This has given birth to an innately rich folk tradition which captures the essence of this land perfectly. It is necessary to look into the geographical and ethnic history of present-day Bengal, its people who are predominantly united by their mother tongue and its complex yet beautiful evolution through centuries in order to understand the unique traditional cultural media. Historically the extensive lower Gangetic plain where the Bhagirathi and Padma flows along with many tributaries and distributaries came to be known as Vanga or Banga. It had different physiological divisions like Rarh, Gaur and Samatata which still exist but politically the whole area is divided between the Indian state of West Bengal and the separate nation of Bangladesh. Folk tales encapsulating the spirit of rural Bengal has been passed down the generations in form of oral lore since time immemorial. They have been diverse in accordance with their places of origin, influenced heavily by the relief and climatic conditions. The people residing around the lower course of the Bhagirathi have enjoyed fertile soil, great agriculture and plenty of fishing whereas the residents of Rarh have lived in the outskirts of the Chotanagpur Plateau thereby struggling with harsh weather and relatively barren soil. Original inhabitants of North Bengal situated at the foothills of the Himalayas again endured completely different climatic conditions. This has made the rural indigenous sagas more vibrant, local yet united by a string of common consciousness. Dialects have varied, but the language at the base – Bengali in its myriad forms – has kept this intriguing collage of slightly variant cultures united.
Printing has been a relatively modern technique and long before its invention primitive people had found an enchanting way of preserving the nursery tales they narrated to their children. Dineshchandra Sen, the great Bengali scholar, said that Bengali folk tales always contained an underlying moral message and tried to portray an ideal society where justice prevails, talent translates into success and the amiable, generous people triumph over the lawless lot. In The Folk Literature in Bengal, Sen narrates a mundane scene of villagers gathered around a bonfire in a chilly winter night, listening to stories of the past from village elders. This strangely comforting and familiar visual vividly depicts the age-old process of transferring the folklores in order to preserve them. Even in the 21st Century, at the peak of modernisation, these traditions haven’t completely vanished. In different villages of South Bengal or by the misty foothills of the Dooars, groups of people still gather around the fire to keep warm, talking about the days gone by and share anecdotes containing grains of history and fantasy alike.
These tales often feature animals as important characters in the storyline, as moral guides or representatives of different human qualities which inadvertently prove the strong connection between man and nature in the past. In Bengali as well as folk literature, it is common to see a fox as the symbol of cunning or a lion as the symbol of bravery. Many historians assume that tales of Hitopodesa and Panchatantra had impacted Western folk literature greatly, thereby transferring these specific characteristics to them. However, except for these extremely popular collections, the Bengali folk tales mostly concocted by ordinary village women never ventured outside the boundaries of rural Bengal and couldn’t influence the traditions of fables and Arabian nights. These kept on being preserved orally till the late medieval era and were only put to writing when the tradition of Mangalkavyas started gaining popularity. Small intricate details of the local folklores left indelible mark on these great poetic endeavours, thereby giving them a unique flavour.
Bengalis as a community never came into direct contact with the Europeans until the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. Hence Panchalis (poems recited orally following a certain metre) or Pala-gans (songs of the local troubadours depicting various mythological events) never had a chance to travel to the west. The first literary documents written in the earliest recognisable form of Bengali are the Charyapadas, composed by Buddhist Sahajiya worshippers who were deeply involved in the day to day lives of lower caste Bengalis. A thorough objective scrutiny delineates how the folk tales of relatively affluent class consisting of kings, princes and enchanted birds called Bihangama and Bihangami differed from the stories narrated by the Shabars (lower caste Bengali sub-group) who were more concerned about their day-to-day subsistence via hunting and foraging. The stark distinctions between the two narrations act as a mirror of the then social echelons.
One of the earliest recorded Bengali folklores written in the form of pala-gan the Tales of Maynamati narrate a story of Queen Maynamati’s pursuit of the Lord of death Yama to bring her deceased husband Manik back to life. Similar to this, most of the other contemporary sagas are filled with vibrant descriptions of the underworld and introduction of minor shape shifting deities in the folds of human life. We can draw a parallel with the similar story of Caridwen and Gwin Bach which thrives on the theme of chasing a shape shifting foe. Hence, it can be easily inferred that locally originating stories formed by the words and imaginations of commoners had staggering similarities in absolutely different corners of the world.
The beginning of Islamic rule in Bengal, most pertinently the rule of Iliyas-Shahi Sultans like Hussein Shah, oversaw a great era of cultural cultivation and confluence. The Vedic epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, narrated orally in the Hindu households morphed into something colloquial, close to the commoners, shedding the bulk of Sanskrit jargons. These were crafted into new tales, narrating different incidents from the lives of Rama or Pandavas in different Bengali dialects in the form of panchali or folk song. Oral versions of these songs were later put to words by literary mavericks like Kashiram Das and Krittibas Ojha whose works are revered and adored till date. The development of the oral tradition of storytelling in medieval Bengal marked the assimilation of non-Aryan local Hindu deities into the Vedic pantheon of gods. The villagers, who worshipped gods and goddesses associated with natural spirits like Manasha who represented a snake, while narrating stories inadvertently blurred the barrier that separated upper-caste gods. The mighty Dharma became a friendly and colloquial Dharmathakur while Shiva, the perpetual vagabond, became someone very familiar to the downtrodden. These motifs permeated through the layers of Bengali fairy tales too.
Researchers like Lal Behari Dey extensively studied this intriguing phenomenon of assimilation and included them in the layers of folktales. While it can be assumed that with the advent of ultra-modern cultural media thriving on audio-visual support, the art of storytelling has completely vanished from Bengal. However, this is not entirely true. Although cinemas, short films, web series have encroached rapidly even upon the space of books or written documents, the scintillating charm of narration associated with oral traditions still remains. We just like our previous generations have been introduced to the magical world of fiction and fairy tales by our parents or grandparents. They have narrated to us stories from the quintessential collection of Thakumar Jhuli (Grannie’s Bag of Stories) which is actually heavily inspired by the age-old oral folklores of Bengal. Thus, the tales of Bihangama and Bihangami, a just king, the wily jackal and a clever bird named Tuntuni have been transferred to us verbally. They’ve entered our consciousness inextricably and impacted our psyche.
Western fairy tales and modern fictions like Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia have certainly entered the arena to provide a stiff competition but our own colloquial oral tradition still persists. The huge collection of regional literature in the form of oral narrations is not only an example of traditional cultural media but also a priceless historical treasure trove containing grains of truth. In the inexplicable art of storytelling, history has mingled with superstitions, events have turned into myth, unfulfilled aspirations and fears have turned into surreal notions. They are not always logical, not rich with articulate depictions of reality and yet have kept innumerable generations of the people of our land enamoured through the annals of time. Modern academic tradition has encouraged renewed vigour in collection and archival preservation of these priceless scrapes and bits which are firmly entwined with our collective consciousness, giving us, Bengalis a specific ethnic and cultural identity.
Bio:
Saukarya Samad studies master’s in history at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi. He has completed his Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Presidency University, Kolkata. His area of interest lies around excavating and identifying the alternative archives of authentic facts and interpreting them by delving into the history of music and literature. He intends to pursue doctoral research and dreams of teaching in a classroom someday.
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