Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c25.2

c25.2

We have pointed out on several occasions that most of the mediaeval saints who gave vent to their religious emotions through the medium of the different vernaculars were Sahajiyās in a general sense. We have also hinted that in the religious tenets as well as in the literary representation of the mediaeval saints the form and spirit of Ṣūfi-istic literature acted strongly against the Sahajiyā background. We have seen how in the case of the Bāuls the spirit of Ṣūfi-ism acted on the spirit of the Sahajiyās and other devotional schools. In point of time some of the Saint-poets of upper, central and northern India flourished earlier than the Bāuls of Bengal, and many of them were contemporary with, if not earlier than the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās of Bengal. When, therefore, we speak of the Sahajiyā background of these non-Bengali mediaeval poets, we mean the Buddhist Sahajiyā movement in particular. A study of the poems of these mediaeval poets, particularly of the poems of Kabīr, decidedly the most prominent figure of the middle age, will reveal that there is a clear line of continuity from the Buddhist Sahajiyā poets to the mediaeval poets. But the difference between the earlier school and the mediaeval schools lies in the element of love and devotion, which is conspicuous by its absence in the Buddhist Sahajiyā school. This element of love and devotion was supplied profusely to the mediaeval schools by the different devotional movements as well as by Ṣūfi-ism. Though devotion may be recognised to be one of the characteristics of later Mahāyānic Buddhism, it is not so in the case of the Buddhist Sahajiyā cult, which was pre-eminently an esoteric yogic school. But inspite of this difference the general similarity in spirit, in literary form and sometimes even in language, is indeed striking. Let us now demonstrate our contention point by point. As, however, we are not attempting here any comprehensive study of the religion and literature of these mediaeval Saint-poets, but dealing with them in relation to the Bengali literature, only those points will be touched that directly concern our early and mediaeval literature.