Some stories say that Saraha was a Prince. Some stories say that he was born in a family of arrow-makers. At times, even the same stories, in different telling, tell different tales. Some say he lived in the 9th century AD. Some say, in the 10th. Some even say that he was from sometimes between the 10th & the 11th centuries AD. Beyond all the dusty layers of time & misty layers of mythologies, there is one telling for certain – he was a bard.
Even the then famed “Atheist Pundit” from Bengal Atish Dipankar, (AD 982-1054) – whom, since, the Tibetans have remembered & the Bengalis have nigh-forgotten – was an admirer of his songs. When Atish began to propagate Buddhism in the Himalayas, so moved was he by one particular song of Saraha that he had wanted sorely to use it while preaching.
Atish had a disciple named Jaya. Like Saraha & Atish, even Jaya has since been forgotten in the subcontinent. He is remembered in the translated annals of Buddhism in Tibet as Jaya the Dom. For Jaya, his identity was also a part of his dignity. That is why, his clansname glows along with those of many other bards, minstrels, scholars & philosophers from the subcontinent of those days. Tibetan Buddhism remembers them as great wise people from the subcontinent. The subcontinent forgets them because in the subcontinent, race (jaati) is law.
Before we flow with Saraha, let us read a verse written by Jaya. It appears as Verse No. 47 in the Charyapada collections that compile songs of the Easy Path heterodoxy that had thrived among the people of the eastern subcontinent across ancient, medieval & modern times:
Like ideals seen in dreams
Such are the delusions that hide behind
the Mind, unto which, when free
All arrivals and departures fade
It doesn’t burn; it doesn’t flood; it can’t be torn
Behold, how all Illusions and Delusions – all Mā.yā, all Mo.hā –
get slain
again and again!
The Body, the Shadow and the Illusions are all but the same
In Two Wings, from Two Sides –
In breathing in & out – beyond all these binaries
many Sciences be
Of the Mind, in zen of Buddha-Being
Jayanandi says – it is clear, that.
no other ruptures & raptures be.
Let us come back to the story of Atish & Jaya – one involving Sarahapa’s Doha-kosh, a veritable manual of Easy Path visions.
But when Atish wishes to make that song by popular among the young & the faithful of the mountains, Jaya says – “no, you mustn’t.” Jaya was keenly aware how racism has spread deep claws and thus, how harsh can realities get. What was in that song that makes it so controversial? Let us see:
Damned (Brahmins) make fun of Yogis
& say – “worse than snakes their poison is
when you see them, flee!”
But Brahmins, in reality, are fools
They utter the four gibberish Vedas
Taking earth, water & grass
They mutter chants
The smoke that rises, when,
in the name of doing Fire Worship from home
they burn wood – does but only
makes their own eyes water.
Holding a variety of sticks
They don up as One Stick Holder, Three Sticks Holder etc
Feigning wisdom
Moving like Pristine White Swans
They cannot tell
religion from wrath –
All they do is lie
and swindle people
The Theists – they who rub ashes on their bodies
tie chignons atop their heads – sitting at the corner of their rooms
They light lamps and ring bells
As people wearing different clothes come to them
To those people’s ears these Theists whisper chants
To consecrate them –
And earn
Kshapanakas – the Jain clergymen – they have long nails
They never clean their stinking bodies
Naked, with tangled hair
They pretend self-liberation and
Swindle people by directing them towards wrong paths
If bareness brings freedom
Then why shall foxes and dogs be denied?
If plucking hair brings freedom
Then why do smooth & hairless posteriors
of the young and the dainty
be denied?
If dangling whisks
made of peacock-plumes and yak-tails
brings freedom,
then why shall yaks and peacocks be denied?
If eating leftovers bring freedom
then why shall horse & elephants
be denied? Saraha says, freedom, for
the the Kshapanakas – is beyond my reckoning
They know not the truths – and,
in that darkness, do they inflict torture
upon their own bodies
According to Theravadin advice
taking to the path of wandering hermitage
is the best thing to do
The Shramanas and the Bhikshus
read the Sutras, some
cumber their own minds
by quoting from the Shastras
Other run on the chariot of Mahayana
And boast that their scriptures
are the best – some put their zen
on chakric mandalas; Others explain
the Four Theories (of the Four Voids)
Some think of the sky as one of the elements
While some meditate on the Shunya-Void
They all move along wrong ways
They who leave the Easy
and run in hope of Nirvana – neither do they find
Parmarth – the Ultimate Essence, and nor the Attainment that is Siddhi.
They whose minds lie enchanted by subjects of othering
How can they be free?
There is no freedom in zen
There is no freedom in meditation
What will lamps do? What is the need
for oblations?
What is the point of chanting mantras?
Why go then, to pilgrimages,
to Tapovanas – those Forests of Austere Medication? Does freedom
arrive through holy-dips?
Leave the ties of Maya
Renounce False Philosophies
When you know the Easy
Nothing remains to be known. What others
think of as freedom – can be got
in such ways.
The Easy needs to be known, recalled
Shastras and the Puranas explain nothing
Easy is all. Here, all ideals
reach finality.
Neither Samadhi, nor the Wandering
that they call Prvrjya – take you there
Just live in your house
With your beloved
Until you have fulfilled all your desires,
quenched all your thirsts
Who shall you free yourself from shackles?
If it is so easy to find Ease
Then what is the need for zen?
And if the Easy is unknown
Then why fumble around
in the dark? So, Saraha speaks out aloud:
‘in the Easy there is no Bhava – being
nor Abhava – not being’
neither in Samadhi, and nor,
in meditation – shall the Easy
be found. Then why meditate?…
Tantra, Mantra, Zen – are but all ruse
Oh fools, why besmirch
the mind that is unqualified by nature?
Torture yourselves not. Stay happy.
eat and drink in happiness – make love
not just once but again and again; fulfill
the turning of this Wheel of Life.
crossing of the Samsara – shall be fulfilled
through this Dharma
Persecute not this samsara – (which, but, is) the earth
beneath your feet – think not of this world as less
Saraha says –
may your Chitta – your conscious mind – rest
in such Ease, where the breezes of mind
cannot enter, neither can the sun
nor the moon
Mingle. Distinguish not.
Judge not with futile logic
When desires peak, everything,
everywhere – feels like one and the same
No beginning, no middle, no end
no samsara, no nirvana,
in these splendid climes of happiness –
there is no self and no other
All that you see before you, behind you,
On all ten sides – all those realities
are the truths.
May you free yourself from all illusions today
Make no futile questions on othering.
What is the point of choking own breaths
in the name of that devoted praxis (which, the Sanskritics call,) Sadhana? Does mindfulness
imply that you fix your vision on your nosetip
and sit
for long hours, holding breath? Oh fools,
once, at least, enjoy Ease – all
shackles of samsara shall break.
In the Easy all are same
Here lies no Shudra-s and Brahmana-s – (no divisions on race)
Easy flows holy rivers – flows Yamuna with waters of goodness –
In Ease lie those pilgrimages – (such as) –
Where the Ganges meets the sea, as Benaras –
the Capital of the Universe! –
as the Confluence –
Here lies the sun and the moon
Much have I wandered across pilgrimages –
Been to divine fields, seen sacred seats,
ordinate ones so many! – (and, yet,) nowhere, have
I found a place of happiness so blessed as the body!
O you, who has no caste
O you, (repressed as) casteless,
O you, who defeats racism
In Ease, all Tantra, all Mantra, all rites & rituals
are meaningless
in here fades all divinity, all universe
They who drink not the ambrosia
that flow through words of wise teachers
Like thirsty rivers do they dry out in deserts
of claptrap banal, scriptured
Pardon me, pundits,
I have no other task
but to speak out all that I have learned
I shall hide nothing.
Make love, consummate the senses,
(for,) who is there in the Three Worlds
whom such raptures not make
feel bliss, realize all wanting?
But, they, who think of
everything
as either belonging to the self, or to others
Tied are they without ties
Freedom lies far from them…
Us humans,
we know not our own nature.
We have no bhava – being
we have no a-bhava – not-being.
It is all void –
it is all Shunya.
No wall stands
between the universe and freedom –
between bhava and nirvana –
between being in the universe
and being free.
Nothing separates them.
It is all there, resting in Ease –
we all be, with our beings,
in the being of the universe – bhava
build no illusions between self and the others, we’re all Buddha
– endless –
This is the lotus, serene –
– affirmative –
Your mind is clean
By its own nature
The mind is one
The tree of mind spreads free
across the Three Worlds
of Heaven, the Earth and Hell
The flowers of karuna
bloom
and they fruit –
the fruit is called doing good to others
….
Put in context, the verses have multiple political shortcomings, most ruefully, on questions of patriarchy and sexualness. Nonetheless, the revolutionary potential of the song was actualized throughout the 11th century AD, when the fishing community of Bengal rose against the oppressive Pala kings.
The Pala kings themselves had indigenous origins. In fact, the tale involving their first king was a chieftain elected by and among the local chieftains of Bengal after a period during which caste oppression through forcefully conducted shifts of endogamy had led to so many race crimes that even the Brahmins could not refrain from calling those ages Matsyanyaya – When Big Fishes Eat Little Fishes. In fact, the folktale on how Gopala came to ascend the throne corresponds exactly with a folktale from Gondwana about a Gondi mythic hero – Chief Jatva Khandat or Jatva the Falchion Yielder – accredited by Ferishta (AD 1560-1620) as a founder of one of the Four Gond Adivasi Confederates of the Ancient and Medieval Times. Both of them had to cut angry bulls with wooden falchions in palace-ground carnivals and then kill the reigning kings from hostile clans with those swords – to come to power. Even Lava-sena, hero of Bengali mythos surrounding indigenous deity Dharma – had to cut a rhino with a wooden falchion. This Dharma, once, was identified by the Buddhists, as Niranjan – the formless emptiness that, even later, became one of the foundational bases of Sikh philosophies. Tales weave more tales. And onwards they flow, carrying in them scents of the subterranean roots of histories that they nourish & get nourished by – all in harmonious reciprocity.
With time, especially since the times a Gaudapada, the Guru to the Guru of Shankaracharya, the Pala kings began to turn towards the caste-orders to consolidate political power. Born & “twice-born” as a Brahmin, Gaudapada, was from the Teacher-Student lineage of Buddhist visionary Nagarjuna who had reflected so deeply on negation of binaries to reach the Shunya that an entire school of Mahayana thought had emerged. Nonetheless, Gauda could not forget his Brahminical pride. With much cunning, he interpolated Nagarjuna’s visions of Non-Dual (beyond binaries) Emptiness with the Vedantas, that is, the Upanishads – a veritable fountainhead of the caste-system. Soon, the Brahmins forged alliance with the Mahayanas. The Pala kings, by then, had shunned their totemic identities in favour of the then powerful Mahayana orders. They began to support the Brahmins and their rituals. For one such yajna conducted in the Vikramshila Vihara where Brahmin priests engaged in fire-worship (hom), animal-sacrifice (vali) and such other rituals for longevity of the king & his kingdom, the king had expended nine lac & two thousands of silver-coin currencies from the royal exchequer.
With time, their brand of Buddhism was to give way to the Brahmins. Soon, the ‘Buddhist’ Palas (8th century AD-11th century AD) were replaced by the ‘Hindu’ Senas (12th century AD). Bit by bit, Buddhism began to wane away. Many people from the repressed castes, who had found shelter below the calming shades of Buddhism, suddenly, lost their shade. For some time, Vaishnavism afforded shelter. But soon, that, too, got enmeshed into all the caste-violence that makes Hinduism thrive. Some sought shelter below the equitable shade of Islam. With time ideas of caste and race began to caste long shadows on that, too.
Kulinism, child-marriage, suttee, death-like austerities imposed upon widows – everything that hurts – thrived. Totems were changing into gotras fast. Kurmi people – many of whom had adhered to their turtle-totem thereby giving the tribe its name – began to get lynched for rearing chicken. Beef-lynchings were conducted to infuriate the Sultans of Delhi and Gour. Divide and Rule was the name of the game and the Brahmins excelled at this, like ever.
The people suffered. There were wars and there were famines. Heinous atrocities committed in the name of power made communities bleed. This ballad, a conversation between a thief and his beloved, belonging to the Rajbongshi people – people of many tribes ruled by many great Chieftains in ancient times – record such misery:
(Thief says:)
Me, thief, leader of chakras
I worship you, my Radha, my enchantress
In the strength of your love, when i
set out – like ancient secret devotees
to the Mother Goddess do – as
a dacoit – but even in broad daylight, who can catch me?
Such thief has no fear, loses no hope
People whose houses I visit thus –
sees me not, even when I stand
right before them. Jealous neighbours
whisper in conceit. Oh the greatest thief
in the universe (i thus become) –
like a jewel shining in the crown of all thievery
…
(Hir lover says:)
I have seen that you, thief
are but all talk & gawk & gab-gab-gab
As for the other thieves – their lovers
wear sarees of jute – from bustling settlements to the west, the south
from thriving seaside ports – further to the west
further to the south – as for you, your lover
wears nothing but flowers
wears a chuddar made out of
nothing but air; thus ze sits – inside the room
what fun to look at, eh? what beauty, eh?
Why do you not cut your bravado
and fetch some real hustle?
…
(Thief says:)
Why worry, my love?
Don’t you worry. (It is) true that i
could not gift you ornaments & jewelry
when we wedded. But out shall I go and steal
And I shall steal well. I shall bring to you
jewelry, clothes, and so many things that
rich householders have. On that day
shall you see, my love, your beauty –
dazzling,
anew, each hour, each day
..
(Hir lover says:)
Thief, steal something for me today
I have only one piece of cloth –
To drape my body with
unwashed since ever – for,
each time I bathe, I have to wear it again
because there is no other.
for me, steal a pair of clothes
How many days must a woman walk down
wearing the same piece of rag?
…
(Thief says:)
O my love, in our country
there is much strife
there is no peace
Now, we have little to do
but die; o my love, on our lands
famine has unleashed
So long have the rich hoarded
to make money from the poor’s hunger
that, in their granaries, the rice of wrath have rotted
Currency has lost all value
Even when people take money
and go from door to door, seeking, –
they fail to buy rice and paddy;
Even rice that is baked, dried and flattened,
Even parched paddy that is coated in molasses –
Food that every household had until
these ravages befell –
has vanished from all the houses
…
And yet, the live on. In and as real songs. In and as real lives. But how?
As it has ever been with all our histories, wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. The kings have guns & laws. The oppressed – their cultures. It is from the people that great poets and singers came up – from the Shabar people came Shabari, from the Dom came Dombi, Jayanandi, from the Chandalas came Yogi, from the weavers came Tanti, from the tanners Chamri, from the fishers came Meena, from the distillers Naro, from the sweepers came Dukhandi and Jalandhari, from the washers Dhombi, from the tillers came Kuchi, Medhi et al, from the smiths came Kangpari, from the travelling sweet-sellers came Pachari. From the divers who dive into the Bay to collect pearls came Samud. Two daughters of a boatman – Mekhla and Kankhala – they lost their heads to the vile realities of patriarchy – only to be remembered forever by the people as a goddess – Chhinnamasta! There were many more – all Daaks (from Tibetan gdag, meaning, ‘Wizard’) and Khanas (from Tibetan mkhana, meaning, ‘Oracle’), bearing primeval shamanic wisdoms down the ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron. Scriptures have not remembered them all. But the people have. And histories have. Proper nouns are but trivia in all these collective remembrances.
For it is these people – the Bauls, their songs which were but people’s songs, their visions of the Easy Path, of Lokayata – which, but are People’s Wisdoms – that form the foundations of these wars on oppression, those against forces that divide. For, far beyond all battlefields & binaries, negating all that breaks & divides, these wisdoms celebrate the triumph of love over hatred. The fishing people of the 11th century had taught the Pala emperors a lesson. They had to lose their empire. When the marauding gangs of Adi Shankaracharya sought to loot & coopt Shiva as a Hindu god, the weavers resisted. Recalling all their ancient mystical inheritances, they did not concede to the idea of their father god being worshipped by those who kill & loot them. The Brahmins hurled them down the caste-ladder – made them Yugi-s. The Dom people refused to let go of their drums, their music, their ancient formless father god – Dharma, Niranjana. The Brahmins forced them out of the cities, into crematoriums – made laws condemning them to the jati-vritti (race-assigned-profession) as corpse-burners. Through ruse & guile of patriarchy verily similar to those adopted by the Aryan invaders in further ancient times to defeat adivasi chieftain Narakasura, they wrested the seat of ancient deity of the Shabar adivasi people by the Bay and named the deity – Juggernaut. And yet, the Yugi-weavers, the Doms, the Shabars – they bore the torches of resistance – forward and forward – with the rolling wheels of history. To live, for the oppressed, is to resist.
Across the Middle Ages and beyond, the resistances are on. Songs remind us of the resistances. Songs take them forward. Cultures of materialism – those that emanate from the common people and celebrate dignity, equality and living together as communities – flow on, ever in stout resistance against cultures of spirituality – those that the privileged conjure to divide & rule, to unleash power & dominance through propagation of false ideas – ideas such as those that say that some races are bound to rule others because of divine providence, that some people deserve more to live than others based on which race they are born into because of deeds of past life. Some people call these resistances – dialectic. Let us call them – the River of Life.
Sources (in alphabetical order):
- Bangalar Loko-Sanskriti o Samaj-tatwa, Benoy Ghose, 1983
- Bangali Hindu-r Varnabhed, Niharranjan Roy, 1945
- Bangali-r Itihash – Adi Parva, Niharranjan Ray, 1949
- Bharatbarshia Upasak Sampraday, Akshay Kumar Dutta, (Vol.1, 1871, Vol.2, 1883)
- Bharatiya Samaj Paddhati, Bhupendranath Dutta, 1983
- Buddha’s Lions – the same book as above translated into English by James B Robinson, 1979
- Churashi Shiddhar Kahini, translated by Alaka Chattopadhyay, 1969 based on Chaturasiti Siddha Prvrrtti, biography of the 84 Siddhas by Abhayakaragupta from Gour, Bengal (d. AD 1125)
- Gondwana Ka Sanskritic Itihas, Moti-‘Raven’ Kangali, 1984
- Hajar Bawchhor Puratawn Bangala Bhasha-ey Bouddho Gaan o Doha, Charyapada Compilations ed. by Pt. Haraprasad Shastri, 1916
- History of Buddhism in India by Lama Taranatha (AD 1575-1634), translated into English by Alaka Chattopadhyay and Lama Chimpa, 1970
- Obscure Religious Cults by Sashibhushan Dasgupta, 1946
- Siddha-Sahitya, Dharamvir Bharati, 1955
- The Blue Annals by Kumarshree from Goye (AD 1392-1491), translated into English by George de Roerich, 1949
- The Royal Songs of Saraha by HV Guenther, 1969
- Tribes and Castes of Bengal, HH Risley, 1891
- Uttorbonger Rajbonshi Somprodayer Lokgeeti o Nari Jibon, Niyoti Ray, 1993
Atindriyo Chakraborty is a writer and poet
http://atindriyo.blogspot.in/
