Article Written By EIH Researcher And Writer
Aadrit Banerjee
rāsa-mandala mājhe yugala-kisora ।
duhu-ange anga diyā duhu bhela bhora ॥
radha-ange anga diya nagara cali yãy ।
naciya caliche bhali manda-gati tay ॥
(Within the Rasa arena the Young Couple, reclining each against the other’s person, were full of joy. Throwing (the weight of his person) against that of Radha the Beau walked on. He was walking in dancing steps, and his gait was slow.)
– Visvambhara-deva.
Brajabuli is a mixed language – a mischsprache – that became established largely in Bengal, and to some extent in Assam and Odisha, during the sixteenth century. It is really “a dialect – only it is literary – of Bengali, and in the sense that it had originated and developed in Bengal and had been cultivated exclusively by the Bengali poets” .
In Brajabuli, “Maithili is the basic part, while Bengali, with oddments of Hindi and Brajbhasa, forms the superstructure” . The emergence of this dialect could be perhaps due to the result of a “direct influence of Maithilī lyric poetry on the literature of Bengal. Brajabulī is practically the Maithili speech as current in Mithilā, modified by its forms to look like Bengali, and at the same time influenced by reminiscences of the old Apabhramsa and Avahatta traditions in Indian Literature.”
The Sanskrit students from Bengal, desiring higher education, especially in Nyaya and Smriti, after the Turki conquest of Bengal, sought refuge in Mithila which then was under the control of Hindu kings who patronized ancient Sanskrit learning. Having acquired the Sanskrit scholarship, when these students returned from Mithila, they also brought back popular vernacular songs, like those written by Vidyapati and his predecessors, usually centered on love and related themes. The lyrical charm, the appeal of the music, the exoticity of the language made these songs an instant hit, and soon Bengal scholars began experimenting and composing songs using the imported lyrics. This coincided with the revival of Vaishnavisim in Bengal, which gathered a crescendo with the arrival of the androgyne divine figure Chaintanya Deva, and this explains why these lyrics were based on the Radha-Krishna legend. And thus began the journey of this artificial literary language, Brajabuli. This, however, should not be confused with Brajabhasa which refers to an actual spoken language, a dialect of Western Hindi, used in and around Mathura.
The extent of the literature in Brajabuli is noteworthy, consisting of some five thousand short lyrics. These were meant to be sung. Most of this literature is found in anthologies of Vaishnava lyric poems, or padas, called padabali such as the Ksnada-gita-cintamani (The Wishing Stone of Festal Songs) and in poetico-philosophical doctrines of Neo-Vaishnavism such as the Ujjala Nila Mani propounded by Rupa Goswami. Among the eminent poets of Brajabuli were Jnanadas, Narottamadas, Govindadas, etc. Several Mohammedan poets, who had perhaps later adopted the Vaishnava faith also used this language such as Nasir Mamud, Sala-beg, Saiyad Murtaja, and others. In the modern period, Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Rabindranath Tagore also wrote poems in Brajabuli. Tagore’s Bhanusingha Thakurer Padabali (The Songs of Bhanusingha Thakur), written under the pseudonym of Bhanusingha, which the Nobel Laureate composed at a very young age remains a classic till date. About the language, Tagore wrote in his My Reminiscences.
“Their language [that of the old Vaishnava poets], largely mixed with Maithili, I found difficult to understand; but for that very reason I took all the more pains to get at their meaning. My feeling towards them was that same eager curiosity with which I regarded the ungerminated sprout within the seed, or the undiscovered mystery under the dust covering of the earth.”
In recent years, one of the iconic film auteurs Rituparno Ghosh had composed songs in Brajabuli for his movies Memories in March (2010) and Raincoat (2004). The songs Bahu Manuratha and Mathura Nagarpati were critically acclaimed for their lyrical vigor and innovative use of language. Brajabuli, despite its artificial literariness, reflects a confluence of cultures, a resistance against domination, and the lyrical quality of the language and its style till date continue to fascinate the creative minds.
Memories In March (2010)
Bibliography
Sen, Sukumar. “Chapter XVIII : Poets in Bengali: Seventeenth Century or Earlier”. A History of Brajabuli Literature, University of Calcutta, 1935, pp. 414-427.
Sen, Sukumar. “Chapter I : Origin and Nature of Brajabuli”. A History of Brajabuli Literature, University of Calcutta, 1935, pp. 1-10.
Sen, Sukumar. “Chapter I : Origin and Nature of Brajabuli”. A History of Brajabuli Literature, University of Calcutta, 1935, pp. 1-10.
Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra. The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. VI: The Delhi Sultanate. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1960. Tagore, Rabindranath. My Reminiscences, trans. Surendranath Tagore, The Macmillan Company, 1917.
