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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s6: The Positivism of Bengali Poetry

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s6

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The Positivism of Bengali Poetry

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Writings on the history of Bengali literature as on that of other Indian literature have been vitiated by a fundamental fallacy. In the story of a thousand years' literary development, for instance, people have managed to watch only the struggle for supremacy among the various orders of gods and socio-religious systems.²⁴ According to the methodology of literary historiography and art-criticism prevalent in and about Bengal or for that matter All-India, *Aeneid*, the great national epic of the Romans, would have no significance except what may be gathered from the ultimate triumph of Venus over Juno in the life-history of Aeneas. The method is not uninteresting, but when art-appreciation is obsessed by such a religio-theological "interpretation" the result is likely to be misleading, as in the case of Max Weber's *Religionssoziologie*.

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²⁴ D. C. Sen : *History of Bengali Language and Literature* (Calcutta 1911); T. C. Das Gupta : "Mediæval Bengali Literature" (c. 1250-1750) in the *Calcutta Review*, June, 1934.

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As an expression of this ultra-religiosity in the interpretation of literature and art is to be mentioned the attempt to exhibit the creations of poets, painters and sculptors in terms of *dhyāna* (meditation), *yoga* (communion with God) and what not. Love between man and woman has likewise been attacked by this method and presented as nothing but an allegory of the union between God and the soul.

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The successive stages in the evolution of Hindu literature,—in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, etc.,—have been labelled with the hall-mark of one or other of the metaphysico-religious systems, e.g., Vedic, Upaniṣadic, Śaiva, Buddhist, Tāntric, Vaiṣṇava, Jaina, Śākta, etc. The entire literary material of India is generally presented to the world as the hand-maid of creeds, dogmas and rituals.

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The absurdity would be evident if one were to treat the whole course of Western literature as nothing but Hellenic and Roman paganism, Oriental Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Pilgrim Fathers, Oxford Movement, Unitarianism, Christian Science and so forth in succession. Students of world literature who are obsessed by the influence of religious ideas on human achievements would read in the *Aeneid* only a *Purāṇa* of Latin mythology, in the *Divine Comedy* only an encyclopædia of mediaeval Christianity, and in the *Paradise Lost* just a Bible of the Puritans. Or, where in modern literature and art they find the treatment of subjects from Hellenic mythology they would be inclined to interpret it as "Back to Paganism!"

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It is necessary to cry halt to this sort of ultra-religious or metaphysical approach as has been done by the present author in *Love in Hindu Literature* (Tokyo 1916). A sober interpretation of the facts of Hindu literature is a desideratum. Even where the setting or scaffolding is religious or mythological and the *dramatis personae* divine or semi-divine one need not be tempted to mean by the texts "more than what meets the ear."

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Most of what has been passing in India for otherworldly literature and art is in reality the literature and art of human passions, human ideals, human interests and conflicts. To be more definite, it may be said that folk-life and sex-life have been the two chief *motifs* of a considerable portion of Indian literature and art. The medieval writings like the Rādhā-Kṛiṣṇa songs (*Padāvalī*) of Vidyāpati (c. 1450), the *Kavikaṅkaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (1589) etc. of Bengal ought to be approached as one approaches the literary creations of Eur-America with the methodology of modern art-criticism.

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Under the title of *Bāra-māsyā* or the "twelve month" story of men and women an extensive literature grew up in Bengal. Generally it was incorporated as a section in large works the titles of which end as a rule with *Mangala* (Welfare, Blessings). In the *Chaṇḍī* by Mādhava of East Bengal, available in manuscript one comes across a narrative of the joys and sorrows of the year. Such calendars of human vicissitudes constituted a stock in trade, so to say, of the poetry of creative Bengal.

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These stories are not always the stories of opulence and happiness. The hunter-girl Fullara, for instance, in the *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (pp. 199-202) describes her own *Bāramāsyā*, and this is nothing but a tale of woes, both physical and economic.

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Perhaps after the *Rāmāyaṇa* of Krittivāsa (c. 1450) no Bengali poetical work is more popular than Mukundarāma's *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (c. 1589), already referred to several times. This work *pro forma* should appear to be a treatise on *Chaṇḍī* the Mother, and therefore something like a contribution to religious poetry. But one has only to open the work, available in print, at any page and be convinced that no literary work in any language is more profane, secular and worldly than this Bengali composition, written as it is with the object of propagating the cult of Kālī. Every line in it breathes the spirit of living human beings, their daily exploits and ambitions, their hatreds and quarrels, their joys and sorrows. Mukundarāma is the poet *par excellence* of man's mastery over the things of this Earth, and the prophet born to accord an “Everlasting Yea” to life. It is of life and the world that he sings, of men and women in action and in struggle. He has furnished the Bengali masses with the well of *śaktiyoga* (energism), pure and undefiled. It is for a dose of inspiration in human endeavours and for the sunny atmosphere of human humour that one turns to this apostle of humanism in the sixteenth century.

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The establishment of a town by Kālketu belonging to the lowly and untouchable caste of *vyādha* (hunter or fowler) is an important item in this work.²⁵ And this furnishes the poet with an occasion for describing the diverse races and classes of population, the occupational structure of the people,—the milkmen, the Kāyasthas, the Brāhmaṇas etc., and the different wards of the city. The Moslems also come in for treatment and their manners and customs, marriage ceremony, and other social institutions have commanded the author’s attention. In this realistic account given over to the Moslem *mores* the Mollahs (Moslem priests) are described as officiating in the *jabāi* (i.e., ceremonial sacrifice) of hens and of she-goats for the Moslem householder. The poet is objective enough to mention that the fee obtained by the Moslem priest in connection with the hen-“sacrifice” is 40 cowries (=0-0-6 pies approximately) and that that for the she-goat “sacrifice” is *the head of the animal plus* 120 cowries (=0-1-6 pies approximately). It is interesting sociologically to observe that in sixteenth-century Bengal the Moslem householders are described in a manner which we of today should consider similar to the *āchāra* or practice of the Hindus in so far as the services of a priest in regard to the *jabāi* or sacrifice of animals are being requisitioned. The socio-religious *rapprochement* between Hindus and Moslems is a phenomenon that strikingly arrests our notice.

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²⁵ *Kavikaṅkaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (Calcutta University, 1924), Vol. I. pp. 258-261; J. N. Das Gupta: *Bengal in the Sixteenth Century A.D.* (Calcutta 1914), pp. 57-95.

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The animal world of Bengal has been the subject matter of a special section (pp. 99-101). The diverse animals are described in their relations with one another. And these relations are found to be identical with those obtaining in the human society. The king and his officers, priests, medical men, school masters etc., are all brought together in this survey.

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The movements and activities in which Mukunda-rāma is interested in this *Chaṇḍi* are not all confined to the home and the village. He knows the larger world too,—the cities, the merchants, law courts, battles, pilgrimages, boat life, social intrigues and what not. Nay, a considerable part of his poetry is given over to foreign lands, trade with distant countries,—Ceylon, for instance, and the exchange of goods (p. 814). The result of all this "world-sense," of wear and tear among diverse men and movements is noteworthy. His merchant, Dhanapati, is quite a reasonable man in whom sobriety has been engendered because of the experiences of life. While his wife Khullanā's character is being publicly impeached in his own gild he knows how to keep his head high. He is realistic enough to remember the stories of the *Mahābhārata* in which the morals such as can be questioned by the conventional standard have even been glorified. Nay, he tries to dissuade Khullanā herself from the determination to submit to the fire-test, famous in the Sītā-story of the *Rāmāyaṇa* (pp. 582-585).

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The author of the *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī* is a chastened man. He knows of all the excesses and vices of the *Kali Yuga* (pp. 992-996). But he does not get inspired to moralize over them or indulge in hysterics. He is a fine story-teller, an objective dramatizer, so to say, and endowed with the Chaucerian outfit.

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Moralizations do not belong to the grain of this poet's temperament. He is too human to be upset by the indiscretions of life, however grave they be. It is the sweet milk of human kindness that he administers to the people. His spiritual patents are very democratic, simple, naïve. Just the use of the divine name of Hari is enough to save anybody and everybody (997), he believes.

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Dvija Rāmachandra is the poet-singer of the narrative poem *Ambikā-Mangala*,²⁶ a work which is still in manuscript. Much of the material contained in this work resembles the contents of the *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī*. In point of literary excellence it should appear to be of at least the same merit as this famous *Chaṇḍī*, which happens to command the attention of the reading public perhaps on account of the sheer accident of being available in print.

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²⁶ It is accessible in the Calcutta University collection of Bengali manuscripts. The information is derived from Sj. Haridas Palit, author of *Ādyer Gambhīrā*, a treatise on the socio-religious history of Bengal, who

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At one point of the *Ambikā-Mangala* we have the description of the marriage ceremony of the heroine *Rambhāvatī*. Among the festivities are described the musical entertainments, dances by female dancers etc.

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At another point the merchant's wife Khullanā is being assisted by the maid Durvalā in the kitchen. The description of cooking points to the diverse items of household economy such as is prevalent in Bengal even today. One finds here among other things the jack-fruit seeds, pulse-cakes, prawn, *chitol* fish and *mān-kachu* so characteristic of Bengali dietary.

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The literature of creative Bengal has contributed untold springs of action for social energism. It is not surprising that a most remarkable emphasis on the dignity of man should be associated with the Vaiṣṇava poetry of Chaṇḍīdāsa (c. 1350).26a No two lines in the entire range of the world's classics can possibly vie with the following from this great poet of Bengal consecrated as they are to the apotheosis of man as the only reality or truth:

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26a See *Chaṇḍīdāser Padāvalī* ed. by N. R. Mukherji (Bangîya Sāhitya Pariṣat, Calcutta), p. 345, No. 809.

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"*Sabār upare mānuṣ satya*
*Tāhār upare nāi*."
(More real than all else is man,
Beyond or above him is nothing).

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Thus sings Chaṇḍīdāsa, who as the creator of this tiny verse can rank among the greatest *avatāras* of humanism and benefactors of mankind. And this is a bit of Bengali mind in the fourteenth century.

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Nothing short of an "Earthly Paradise" is furnished by Vidyāpati (c. 1450) in his *Padāvalī*,²⁷ thus:

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²⁷ Englished by A. K. Coomaraswamy as *The Songs of Vidyapati* (London 1915). See Sarkar: *Love in Hindu Literature* (Tokyo 1916).

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"Drunken are the honey-bees in honey-season
With the honey of the honey-flowers:
In Honey-Brindāban resides
The Honey-Lord of honey-love.

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Amid the companies of honey-maids
Is honey-honey-dalliance :
Honeyed are the blissful instruments of music.
Honeyed hands are beating honey-measures.
Honeyed is the dance's sway,
Honeyed are the movements of the dancers,
Honeyed are their happy songs,
And honeyed are the words of Vidyāpati."

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Pessimism and other-worldliness are the farthest removed from this mentality.

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A specimen of "dalliance in spring" is furnished below :

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"The new young maidens, maddened with new longings,
Are hurrying to the groves.
For ever and for ever new diversions such as these
Delight the heart of Vidyāpati."

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These are some of the delights with which Vidyāpati, the Bengali-Maithili or Maithili-Bengali poet of the fifteenth century, enriches the Bengali households from the lowliest upto the highest. Indeed, in the Chaṇḍīdāsa-Vidyāpati complex as in the *Chaṇḍī*-poems it is the masses that speak. We encounter here the direct delineations of the diverse incidents in the life that is actually lived by the folk,—the hunters, the milkmen, the cowherds, the traders, the boatmen, the cultivators. Bengali poetry is nothing if it is not democratic. It is life's urges, the *élan de la vie* in its thousand and one forms, that furnish the Bengali poets with the sunshine of Bengal's villages and towns.

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While dealing with the Vaiṣṇava love-poetry of the Bengali people it is appropriate to observe that humanism in India as in classical Hellas and in the modern West has ever been an expression of all-round secularism or positivism. And of this humanism sex-interest has been a great part. The sex-element is as important a factor in Hindu culture as the folk-element. Instead of starting with the hypothesis that Vaiṣṇava poetry is the metaphysics or allegory of God and the soul it should be more reasonable to begin with the objective anthropological foundations of daily sex-life among the cowherds, cultivators, and other teeming millions.

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The Rādhā-Kriṣṇa songs or sex-hymns of Vidyāpati have a background or context sufficiently wide and varied not only in India's art and literature but also in the incidents of her daily existence. They constitute indeed some of the specimens of actual folk-life, or folk-lore elevated to the status of "dignified" culture-lore. The worship of *lingam* or phallus as the creative male element is too deep-rooted in Bengali and other Hindu consciousness to be treated as an aberration. Nor is the male sex deified only in its generative function. Śiva "the Great God" stands for the thousand and one functions and aspects of the male principle, both beneficent and malevolent. If the Bengali and other Hindus know one Kriṣṇa to be a lover and a sweet-heart they know another Kriṣṇa as a statesman and a warrior. And there are the ideal husband, the ideal father, the ideal brother, the ideal ruler and so forth of the Rāma-stories.

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None the less prominent in Bengali and other Indian poetry is the deification or extollation of the female element. If Rādhā is a sweet-heart and a darling, Kālī, Chaṇḍī, Ambikā, Annadā, Bhavānī, etc. is the inspirer of a Perseus the Deliverer, of an Andreas Hofer, so to say, e.g., of a Pratāpāditya of Bengal or of a Śivāji the Maratha. If Rādhā enlivens maidenhood and young age, Sītā and Sāvitrī are the idols of the *Hausfrau's* daily life. The female sex as the embodiment of *śakti* or energy has been really accorded the highest and most comprehensive place in Bengali societal polity.

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Bengali positivism expressed itself also in democratic and socialistic forms. The *bhakti* (faith or devotion) movement associated with Chaitanya (1485-1533), which led somewhat to the annihilation of barriers between the castes as well as those between the Hindus and the Moslems, has been no less powerful in the pluralistic make-up of the Bengali mind than the cult of *śakti* which has come down to Rāmaprasāda (1718-75) and Rāmakriṣṇa in the nineteenth century (1836-86).²⁸

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²⁸ H. M. Mukhopadhyaya: *Bangabhāṣār Lekhaka* or "Writers in Bengali" (Calcutta 1904), pp. 210-227; B. K. Sarkar: *The Folk-Element in Hindu Culture* (London 1917), pp. 258-262; which is based in the main on H. Palit's Bengali work *Ādyer Gambhīrā*; S. K. De: *History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century 1800-1825* (Calcutta 1919), pp. 35-38, 412-419; J. N. Sarkar: *Chaitanya's Life and Teachings* (Calcutta 1922). *The Life of Sri Ramakrishna* (Advaita Asrama, Calctuta, 1925).

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While in the atmosphere of the Bengali poetry of *śakti* and *bhakti* it is desirable to observe once more that the external paraphernalia of gods and goddesses, rituals and ceremonies, i.e., the apparently religious or mythological scaffolding should not blind one to the genuine literary qualities of these productions. The authors are real artists, i.e., creators of characters and situations. Indeed, the gods and goddesses themselves are to be treated as the creations or inventions of these poets, representing as they do the folk-consciousness or rather the constructive capacities of the folk-imagination. The Hindu god-lore is essentially an item in the creative achievements of the human brain,—and hence an aspect of positivism in the most profound sense of the term.

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The Bengali *Śūnya-Purāṇa* (c. 1050) has created the semi-Buddhistic gods and goddesses of all sorts. Rāmāi Paṇḍit’s *Dharma-Pūjā-Paddhati* is likewise cast in the mould of folk-Buddhism. In the *Dharma-mangala* of Ghanarāma (c. 1350 ?), Māṇik Gānguli and others, again, is encountered the *rapprochement* of folk-Hindiusm and folk-Buddhism on a common Tāntric foundation. Among the other folk-deities prevalent in medieval Bengal may be mentioned *Śītalā*, the goddess to propitiate against small-pox, and *Manasā*, the goddess against snakes. Many of these are directly or indirectly associated with the Śiva and Kālī (Chaṇḍī, Tārā, Ādyā) complex.

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No matter what be the name, and what the formal affiliation of these gods and goddesses to the leading pantheons, their sociological significance is self-evident. The inventions or creations of these deities by medieval Folk-Bengal are calculated to annihilate the enemies and difficulties, both natural and human. In the second place, these are some of the agencies that are invoked to promote health, wealth, success in life and general prosperity. In Bengali folk-consciousness the gods and goddesses are but handmaids to human welfare. They are the instruments of man in the achievement of worldly success.

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One type of gods and goddesses is exhibited as incorporating *śakti* or energy. A second type of divinities was created by Folk-Bengal to furnish the masses with “Great Exemplars” from whom might be learnt the duties and obligations of life, individual, domestic and social. It is in and through this group of gods and goddesses that the people are instructed in the ideal relations between parent and offspring, husband and wife, brother and brother, ruler and subject and so on. The literature through which such gods and goddesses become the instruments of positive morality has its chief *forte* in *bhakti*, the emotional element in human personality. It is to love, faith and hope that this *bhakti*, devotional or emotional poetry appeals rather than to the practices of intellectual gymnastics and ratiocinative argumentation. Krittivāsa's *Rāmāyaṇa* has furnished the Bengali people with positive morality in and through the stories of Rāma and his consort Sītā as well as the ancestors and allies of the great hero. It is by this Bengali epic that Folk-Bengal is introduced to the "whole duty of man." The rôle of man as the creator of gods, goddesses and God has nowhere been so prominent as in Hindu Bengal, nay, in Hindustan through the ages. And this is an aspect of world-culture that remains yet to be assimilated to the investigations into the universal currents in positive philosophy.

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To come down to our own times, it may be said that Folk-Bengal of the nineteenth century has not cared much to inquire into the Sanskrit *Vedas*, *Samhitās*, *Purāṇas*, *Tantras*, etc. for the origins and legends of its faith and devotion, but has sought for the "whole duty of man" in Bengali treatises like Krittivāsa's *Rāmāyaṇa*, Vidyāpati and Chaṇḍīdāsa's *Vaiṣṇava Padāvalī*, and the *Kālī Songs* of Mukundarāma and Rāmaprasāda. Through all this literature there has been a steady increase in the number of gods and goddesses, saints and *avatāras*. In some cases a new interpretation has been imparted to the older deities and heroes, who have thereby acquired an altogether fresh significance in the people's thought and activity. There has been no generation of Bengali history without its own mythology, hagiology and anthology.

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This is perfectly natural: because the Hindu is fundamentally an agnostic, i.e., has never believed in the possibility of human intelligence ever to unravel the mysterious eternal truths of the universe, or to understand, except negatively, the nature and attributes of God; and therefore he has ever felt to be at complete liberty to *imagine* and invent whatsoever God or Gods he chooses to adore. He has not feared to conceive the Divinity as He, She, It or They. He has worshipped his Deity as father, mother, brother, sister, sweetheart, lover, friend, and what not; and has endowed his own creation or invention with any attributes he likes for the time being. He has borrowed his god-lore from the Mongols, he has taken his god-lore from the hill-tribes, he has imbibed his god-lore from the speechless message of sunshine and snows, and he has evolved his god-lore out of his own head and heart. His polytheism or heinotheism is based essentially on his agnosticism.

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An expression of this profound agnosticism and human creativeness in regard to the Divinity or Divinities is to be found in the intimacy and man-to-man familiarity with which Rāmakriṣṇa (1836-86), a modern saint, wants the peoples of the world to attitudinize themselves to God. "Why do you dwell so much upon the glories of God?" asks Rāmakriṣṇa, "Does a son when with his father think of his father's possessions,—his houses, gardens, horses and cattle? On the contrary, he thinks of his father's love. He knows that it is proper for a father to maintain his children and look out for their welfare. We are all children of God. So what is there to wonder at in His paternal care of us?’’²⁹

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²⁹ *Life of Sri Ramakrishna* (Advaita Asrama, Calcutta 1929), p. 310.

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According to Rāmakṛiṣṇa the ‘’real devotee never thinks about these things. He looks upon God as his very own,—his nearest and dearest,—and says boldly, ‘Thou must fulfil my desires—must reveal thyself to me’.’’ ‘’If you dwell so much upon His glories, you cannot think of Him as your own,’’ says Rāmakṛiṣṇa, ‘’nor can you feel intimate with Him. You are awed by His Majesty. He is no longer near. No, no, you must think of Him as your nearest and dearest. Then only can you realize Him.’’

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The Hindu tendency to deify the energies, Nature-forces or personal attributes and emotions has constructed all the gods and goddesses of India, practically speaking, as so many embodiments of the various phases of the Country itself and of the Culture it has developed through the ages. And the invention of deities has not yet ceased.

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Rabindranath Tagore, probably an iconoclast in socio-religious opinions, has been, however, pre-eminently an idolator, nay, a polytheist, in and through his art. His celebrated hymn (c. 1895) to Mother India is in the right orthodox strain which is noticeable in the psalms and songs in eulogy of Sarasvatī (Goddess of Learning), Lakṣmī (Goddess of Wealth), Durgā, Jagaddhātrī and other goddesses. With Tagore we sing as follows:

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‘’O Thou, who charmest all mankind!
O Thou, whose lands are ever bright

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With ray serene of pure sun-light!
Mother of fathers and mothers!
> With the blue deep's waters thy feet ever wash'd
> Thy scarf of green ever waving in breeze,
> Sky-kiss'd on high thine Himalayan brow,
> Crown'd white thy head with tiara of snows.
First in thy firmament appeared the dawn,
First rose *Sāma*-chants in thy holy groves,
First were revealed in thy forest-abodes
Wisdom and virtue and poesy's self.
> Ever beneficent! glory to Thee!
> From Thee flows food to countries far and wide;
> Jāhnavī and Jumna, streams of thy love;
> Giver of sweet sacred milk, O Mother!''

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It is again the traditional folk-imagination, saturated with the monism of Vedantic thought, that has inspired the following verses of Tagore:

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"O Thou Dust of my Motherland!
> Down to Thee alone do I bend my head.
> Upon Thee is the mantle spread
> Of universe-bodied Mother Divine!''

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The same deification of the Country is evident in the following outburst (1905) of Dwijendralal Roy:

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"Goddess mine! meditation's aim!
> Country mine! O Heaven on earth!''

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But the man who has started them all in this modern Bengali *bhakti*-literature is Bankimchandra Chatterji. According to him the ten-armed Durgā (consort of Śiva) with her whole family and retinue, the most popular goddess of Hindu Bengal in the nineteenth century and after, who was, historically considered, one of the Tārās (Energies) of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva in mediæval Mahāyānic India and still receives worship as Tārā in Buddhist China and Buddhist Japan, nay, can perhaps be traced back to the Mother Goddess of the Mohenjo Daro epochs, is none other than Motherland itself with all its resources and forces in natural agents and human arts. This synthetic interpretation, crystallized in the song *Vande Mātaram* (c. 1885), is bound to remain the greatest hymn of Folk-India during the twentieth century. Bengal, and with her India, sings as follows :

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Hail! Motherland!
*Vande Mātaram!*
> Thou art my muse, Thyself my creed;
> In Thee my heart and soul;
> And in my limbs the spirit Thou!
In mine arm Thou art strength (*śakti*);
Thyself heart's devotion (*bhakti*);
Thine the images bodied forth
In temples one and all, Mother!

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To worship Durgā is to worship Motherland, or to worship Motherland is to worship Durgā. This is the cult that in diverse forms has been invented by the brain and soul of creative India from the Vedic age of the adoration of World-Forces,—or rather, as just indicated, from the epochs of the Indus Valley Culture (c. 3500 B.C.), down to the present epoch of neo-Tantrism represented by Bankimchandra and Rāmakṛiṣṇa-Vivekānanda.

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