Tilottoma Misra - Literary Cultures in North East India
Tilottoma Misra - Literary Cultures in North East India
Tilottoma Misra - Literary Cultures in North East India
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There are other similar texts available which reveal a transregional character in language and content. The language of
Baru Chandidas Srikrishna Kirtan composed probably in the
earlier part of the 14th century, resembles the literary language
used by the Assamese poet Madhava Kandali in the same era
and the 15th century Vaishnava poets of Assam. It also has a
strong affinity to the Deshi-Rajbangshi bhasha of western
Assam and also to old forms of Oriya, Maithili and eastern
Hindi.1 The available manuscript copies of the text show that
even its script resembles the old Asamiya script (the two letters
wa and ra are written as in Asamiya).2 The poets who composed these texts were writing for a polyglot literary community whose works belonged to a wider canvas than the narrower limits set by modern nationalism.
The 14th century Maithili poet Vidyapati who popularised
the Brajabuli dialect which later became the chosen vernacular of
most Vaishnava writers of eastern India, was appropriated by
historiographers of Bangla literature (Kaviraj 2003; Sen 1960)
because the political boundaries between the Mithila region
and modern Bengal had not been clearly demarcated in colonial
times and Maithili was perceived as almost a dialect of Bangla.3
For similar reasons, most of the premodern vernacular writers
from Assam and Tripura have also been appropriated by
modern literary historiography of Bangla, thus, exercising a
cultural hegemony which overlooks the historical and linguistic
evidence that can identify literary texts belonging to separate
vernacular cultures.
Sukumar Sen, for instance, in his history of Bangla literature, while referring to the vernacular poets who had been
patronised by local rulers, includes the 14th century Assamese writers Madhava Kandali and Hemasaraswati and the
15th16th century Assamese Vaishnava writers Sankardeva
and Madhavdeva in his list without specifying that the
vernacular chosen by all these writers was the literary form
of the language which is spoken in Assam till today. He also
disregards the fact that the local rulers mentioned by him
actually ruled over regions, which were not a part of Bengal in
precolonial times.
The ancient Barahi-Kachari king Mahamanikya, who was a
patron of Madhava Kandali, ruled over a region in central
Assam in 14th century and the Koch king Naranarayan, who
was a great patron of vernacular literature ruled over the
Kamata kingdom in 16th century from his capital at Kamatapur
in the present-day Cooch Behar region. The vernacular in
which Madhava Kandali, Sankardeva and Madhavdeva composed their epic and narrative verses was a vibrant form of
the language spoken in this region stretching from Cooch Behar to the Brahmaputra Valley and which became a powerful
form of expression in subsequent compositions of the Assamese
Vaishnava poets of the premodern period.4 Thus, literary
historiography like the enterprise of nation-building has the
tendency to devour smaller literary communities existing in
the peripheries.
This process of building national consciousness through the
enterprise of writing literary histories, also acts as an instrument of exclusion, especially of texts that do not fit into the
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extensively as exemplars of the spread of the vernacular tradition in India). I would, therefore, briefly deal with the course
taken by the literary history of the Brahmaputra Valley during
the last six centuries or so and the relatively recent emerging
literatures from the other states of North East India.
Most literary cultures of northern India underwent a rupture
with the advent of colonialism and the modern and the premodern forms of the languages were distinctly separated.6
This rupture was visible not only in the contents, forms and
styles, but also in the changes that took place in the very structures of languages. Harish Trivedi and Sudipta Kaviraj in their
surveys of Hindi and Bangla literary histories respectively,
have drawn our attention to the patterns of change in the literary cultures of the premodern and colonial modern phases.
This break is visible in the Asamiya literary culture too from
around the middle of the 19th century. Significantly, this
rupture also heralded the beginnings of linguistic nationalism
in the second half of the 19th century. Did colonial modernity
transform the Asamiya language and literature and with it,
did it snatch away from the people the freedom to speak, read
and write in multiple languages without being obsessed with
national self-consciousness? Did the new colonial enterprise of
demarcating territorial boundaries affect adversely the fluid
nature of regional or even cosmopolitan languages to transform and adapt themselves in keeping with the social, religious or political needs of communities?
History of Asamiya Literary Culture
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The emergence of a vernacular cosmopolis is a remarkable feature of the initial stage of the process of vernacularisation in
India. This concept widened the territorial boundaries of the
vernacular writers of the premodern period and placed them
outside the narrow constraints of linguistic nationalism that
raised its head during the colonial times. When Sankardeva
went on his pilgrimages to various religious centres in northern
India and had a long and fruitful sojourn at JagannathPuri,
he could participate easily in religious discourses with other
Vaishnava contemporaries and compose hymns in an adopted
language (which has now been called Assamese Brajabuli).
Neither Kandali nor any of the famous Assamese Vaishnava
writers of the 15th16th centuries seemed to be concerned
about the possibility of not finding readers/listeners for their
works. While choosing or being commissioned by their royal
patrons to write in the vernacular, the writers were confident
of finding a literary community which would respond to their
ideas. The rupture with the very ancient Indian literary tradition of writing in a cosmopolitan language like Sanskrit or
Prakrit, took place gradually in most regions of the country. In
western India, for instance, the process began tentatively in
the 12th century, but reached its culmination only in the 15th
century, during the Bhakti period (Yashachandra 2003: 567
611). In northeastern India, however, the vernacularisation
process acquired its maturity at least a century before the
emergence of the great Vaishnava poets of the 15th century.
This literary community was spread across a wide area in
eastern India.21
Linguists have agreed that though none of the established
vernacular authors of ancient Assam have named their literary
language as Asamiya or Kamarupi, yet it is certain that a distinct regional language was in existence in this region as early
as the seventh century AD during the time of Hiuen Tsang visit
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the political power passed from the Koch, Kachari and other
indigenous tribal rulers to the new power. The Ahoms adopted
the local dialect of eastern Assam as the language for their
chronicles (buranjis) and gave it a new legitimacy as the official language patronised by the royalty. Later, the Christian
missionaries who set up their first printing press in Sibsagar,
the capital of the Ahom rulers, and published the Asamiya
journal Oronodoi from it in 1846, recognised as standard
Assamese speech, the dialect of eastern Assam which was very
similar to the language of the Ahom chronicles. The spoken
language of eastern Assam had fewer variations than that of
western Assam. This could have been either because of the
levelling influence of the Ahom rulers (Kakati 1941: 15) or
because eastern Assam was relatively more isolated as compared to western Assam which was the battleground between
the invading Mughal armies, Koches, Kacharis and Ahoms at
different periods in history.
Trans-regional Literary Languages
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global English and emerge as regional or trans-regional literary languages remains to be seen.
The literary cultures in the northeastern region of the
country have witnessed a gradual shrinking of frontiers from
the trans-regional vernaculars to a confined and limited
regional space, where atomisation of cultures is more visible
than development of cosmopolitan vernaculars. From a literary culture of broad inclusiveness cutting across ethnic, religious or political boundaries, this region has witnessed a
shrinking of boundaries, both political and cultural, transforming a cosmopolitan culture into a borderland culture
with all its political and social ramifications. The inheritors of
a literary tradition which produced poets who could sing in
Notes
1 Khan Choudhury Amanatulla Ahmed points out
the similarities between the language of the
Buddhist dohas and songs, the oral tradition of
Jugir-geet/Moynamoti-geet/Gopichandar-geet,
Gorakhnather-geet, the tiger-god Sonarayar-geet,
which may be cited as examples of the ancient
Koch language, and the literary language of
Srikrishna Kirtan, Madhav Kandali, Sankardeva
and other early Vaishnava poets of Kamarupa
(2015: 174). He also dwells upon the influence
of the languages and dialects of the neighbouring communities with which the Koch kingdom
had active commercial and cultural contact
(the Tibetans, Bhutias, Garos, Meches, Nepalis) together with the literary languages of the
Muslims (Persian and ArabicMusalmani
Bangla) (Ahmed 2015: 187).
2 Bora (2007 Introduction: pxv). This text has
been claimed by literary historiographers of
Bengal as one of the earliest available texts in
Bangla.
3 Ghosh (1948) says that Vidyapati was considered a natural-born Bengali poet by his admirers because there was no fundamental
difference between Maithili and Bengali languages (p 55).
4 Sukumar Sen makes special mention of
Hemsaraswati, the 14th century poet as the
poet who wrote Bengali narrative verse. In
his bhaneeta (colophon) to the verses in Prahlad Caritra, Hemsaraswati refers to his birthplace as Kamatapur (Kamatabhuvana) and the
name of his patron as king Durlavanarayan, a
13th14th century Koch king, who ruled in the
Darang region of the Brahmaputra Valley. The
language in which he composed his verses has
been recognised as the ancient language of
Kamarupa and Kamata in the pre-Vaishnava
period. This language was certainly not a variety of modern Bangla, but had more affinities
with that of the Charyapadas (for details, see
Chakravarty 1996: 14, 37, and also Sen 1960:
11520).
5 Contributors to Pollock (2003).
6 See the discussions by Harish Trivedi, Sudipto
Kaviraj and others in Pollock (2003).
7 See Gait (1963: 5253) Despite disagreements
amongst historians about the exact size of
Naranarayans empire, it is certain that he had
exerted his suzerainty over a large region east
of Mithila or Trihut, extending up to the
borders of Burma in the east, reaching up to
Bhutan and Tibet in the north and the Bay of
Bengal in the south (Ahmed 1936), translated
from Bangla by Anjan Sarma 2014: 206; Gait
1963: 5155).
8 The comparative obscurity of Assamese and
the spread of a powerful Bengali literature
almost all over the globe gives an impression to
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12
13
14
says that he was requested by the king to translate the difficult verses from the puranas which
can be understood only by the pundits, into the
language of the masses so that everyone can
partake of the wisdom of the shastras (nij
deshbhasha bande raciyo payar). It is obvious
from this royal command that whatever may
have been the original dwelling place of the
poet, the language in which he composed the
vernacular texts was the language of the common people of the Koch kingdom. In other compositions undertaken by poets in Naranarayans
court too, similar usages of verbal forms, pronouns and prefixes can be found (Ahmed 2014:
168).
Though not much material is available on the exact facts about the life and works of Madhava
Kandali (also known as Kaviraj Kandali), it has
been surmised from the linguistic evidence
gleaned from his writings and from his colophonverses in the Ramayana, that he lived in the
Nagaon area of Assam and was the court poet of
the 14th century Kachari king Mahamanikya, who
ruled in the Kapili valley at that time. Since
Sankardeva acknowledged him generously as his
gifted predecessor, it is surmised that he lived
and wrote in the latter part of the 14th century.
Rama Saraswati who was a contemporary of
Sankardeva was commissioned by king
Naranarayan to render tales from the Mahabharata into Assamese verse.
According to Datyari Thakurs SankardevaMadhavdeva Jivana-carita and the Kath-gurucarita (Neog 1998: 102).
A celebration of the divine attributes of Vishnu
in rolling alliteration (Neog 1998: 207).
Naranarayan and his brother Cilarai before they
took over the reins of Kamrup and Kamatapur,
had spent several years in Kasi and acquired
considerable mastery over the Sanskrit language (Darrang-rajbangshavali by Suryakhari Daivaigna, vv556557).
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15 Ananta Kandali, Dasama, v 3094, cited in
Sarma (1991: 4).
16 Madhava Kandali, Kishkindhyakanda, 26,
7278 in Ramayana (translation mine).
17 Mahamanikya was a BarahiKachari king who
ruled over the Kapili Valley from his capital at
Dimapur about the middle of the 14th century.
According to Pandit Hemchandra Goswami, an old
Ahom Buranji (chronicle) refers to seven generations of the Barahi kings the last of whom was
a contemporary of the Ahom king Suhunmung
(see Barua 1933: 321; also, Gait 1963: 5, 48).
18 Madhava Kandali, Lankakanda, 56, 2325
in Ramayana, Sarma 2008 (translation and
emphasis mine).
19 See Ramcharan Thakurias foreword to Lilavati
Saikias Madhava Kandalir Ramayanar Bhasha
(1993). Also, Khan Choudhury Koch Biharar
Prachin Bhasha, Dwijendra Nath Bhakat,
Bargitat Rajbangshi Bhashar Samal, in
Shukladhwaj (2015: 21318).
20 Madhava Kandali, also known as Kaviraja Kandali,
composed his Saptakanda Ramayana in the literary vernacular of Assam in the first half of
the 14th century AD. As stated in the KathaGuru-Carita, a prose narrative of unknown
authorship (written probably between 1678 and
1716 AD) devoted to the lives of the Assamese
Vaishnava preachers, Sankardeva and his disciple Madhavdeva (14891586) decided to complete the vernacular Ramayana of Kandali by
supplementing the initial and concluding
books which were missing in the available text
of Kandali. The Katha-Guru-Carita assigns a miraculous authority to Sankardevas task. The earlier poet Kandali was said to have appeared to
Sankardeva in a dream, appealing to him to
save his Ramayana from the hands of plagiarists. This might be a reference to endeavours
made by some 16th century Assamese Vaishnava poets to rewrite Kandalis Ramayana with
appropriate bhakti content inserted into it because the earlier text was found lacking in the
devotional element. Sankardeva decided to
keep the earlier text intact, introducing the
bhakti element only at the beginnings and ends
of verses, like the floral motifs in the borders
of Assamese woven garments. In his version of
the Uttarakanda, therefore, he seeks to retain the style and mode of versification of
Kandalis text, though Ramas divinity is
extolled here as in all bhakti texts. However,
though Sankardeva celebrates the unquestioned greatness of his predecessor, his Uttarakanda bears evidence of his own creative genius in his handling of the vernacular with
great maturity.
21 Banikanta Kakati, one of the foremost scholars of
the formation and development of the Asamiya
language says that there was a fair degree of
linguistic homogeneity in the language that was
spoken in the whole region east of the river Karatoya (in present day north Bengal) which included
probably the whole of northern Bengal including
Koch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Rangpur, Dinajpur and
western Assam. According to ancient sources
from Assam like Kalika-purana (10th century)
and Yogini-tantra (16th century), this whole area
was a part of the kingdom of Pragjyotishpur or
Kamarupa as mentioned in the Sanskrit epics
and kavyas. The mixed language spoken in this
region was a branch of the eastern Magadhi,
Prakrit and Apabhramsa which was the origin
also of Oriya (Kakati 1941: 4).
22 Significantly, the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang
in his travel notes does not mention the
language spoken in Gaura, but makes specific
mention of the language of Kamarupa as
slightly different from that prevalent in central India (see Kakati 1941: x of Preface).
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