Resonances of a time and milieu

Wonder-tales of South Asia, containing tales and romances from the subcontinent, is a work of affection and scholarly vigour. The tales are also remarkable for the eclectic vision of community life they present, says M. ASADUDDIN.

SIMON DIGBY'S Wonder-tales of South Asia is a book written with love, affection, and scholarly rigour. Digby is known for his work in a wide-ranging area of South Asian history, culture and literature. He has a special interest in subaltern life and deviant or nonconformist figures. His multilingual skills make him uniquely capable of accessing archives of popular romances and tales in four languages and present it to us in an English that is delightful, reader-friendly and yet does full justice to the genre and the period in which the texts were written down.

There are three fairly long romances and many other tales collected from medieval Indo-Persian sources put together in this volume by Digby. There are also some popular Hindi favourites that belong to a comparatively modern period. The romances and tales collected in the book have been translated from written versions in Persian, Hindi, Urdu and Nepali. In this respect they are different from the adapted folklorist collectors' versions available earlier in English and in recent times in other South Asian languages as well. The earliest of the texts collected here was recorded in the 13th and 14th Centuries and the latest, only a couple of decades ago.

The first two romances, i.e. ``Madhumalati and Madhukar'' and ``The Flower of Bakawali'' have been popular in northern India for the last several generations and there are a number of versions of them, differing substantially from one another. For example, the Nepali text from which ``Madhumalati and Madhukar'' had been translated differs substantially from Shaikh Manjhan's "Madhumalati", a 16th-century poem in Hindawi that inspired numerous adaptations in Bengali, Dakhni and Persian in the 17th and the 18th Centuries. It is set in a timeless ideal brahminical India and its central plot deals with the love between Prince Madhukar and Madhumalati, an apsara who had been cursed by God Vishnu to live 12 celestial years as a witch, from which Madhukar releases her. But she is bound to do her duty as a dancer in the court of Vishnu. Through many vicissitudes Madhukar releases her from her heavenly duty as the divine dancer and brings her home as his queen. The details of life depicted in the romance reflect the greater kingdom of Nepal, united under Gorkha rule by Prithvinarayan Shah at the close of the 18th Century, and consolidated under the ascendancy of the Ranas in the 19th Century. This romance is distinguished from other Hindi and Urdu prose romances by what Digby calls, ``a deeper quality of poetic sensibility''.

The diffusion of these popular tales in different languages and culture is a fascinating area of study that reminds one of Fraser's Golden Bough. Digby points to a striking case of such diffusion of ``The Flower of Bakawali'' which was collected by a British folklorist, H. Parker, as a folk tale from the tongue of a humble Sri Lankan peasant at the beginning of the 20th Century. ``The Flower of Bakawali'' has been translated from the ornate Urdu prose version written in 1802-3 by Nihal Chand under the aegis of the Fort William College, Calcutta. Nihal Chand acknowledged as his source a version written in Persian in Bengal by one Shaikh Izzatulla in the beginning of the 18th Century. The opening of ``The Flower of Bakawali'' falls on the pattern of a hero's quest cycle. The young prince sets out in search of the unusual magic treasure, i.e., the flower that would cure the blindness of his father. He not only wins the treasure but the bride as well. But, unlike Madhukar's, his homecoming is not triumphant. The prince is betrayed by his brothers, who rob him of the magic treasure. The narrator then falls back on the traditional pattern of the medieval romances of the love between a pari and a mortal man, ``leading to the expulsion from the court of heaven and wanderings through earth, the mortal rebirth of the pari after harvesting of the crop, and final reunion''. The first two romances share many features that are an integral part of medieval romance cycles. For example, the love of a celestial, immortal pari or nymph or apsara for a mortal man is a perennial feature. If apsaras are an integral part of the Hindu mythology, paris are inalienable to Muslim medieval romances. Similarly, devas, demons and giants are common in both. These figures of an elaborate supernatural machinery often collapse depending on the language, culture, historical period and the mode of diffusion.

About ``The Tale of Gorakh Nath'', Digby points to the lack of any single and accessible prose narrative of this tale which is the most significant among the Nath legends celebrating the yogic miracles of Matsyendra Nath and his disciple Gorakh Nath that has been popular from Sindh to Assam. The modern Hindi version is a comparatively recent composition and, arguably, filled with modern accretions. The Nath legends are shared by the Hindu Shaiva and the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions, and can be seen as reflecting the changing religio-cultural ethos of northern India roughly between the eighth and the 12th Century A.D. However, the disadvantage with such a modern version, as Digby aptly points out, ``is that it is moulded by perceptions and sentiments which certainly were not shared by an earlier generation of devotees of the cult, of the miracle-working Holy Men, or by more traditional narrators of their stories''. The accretions militate against any attempt to locate the tale in its proper context, so much so that Matsyendra. Nath and Gorakh Nath have been shown as ``motivated by a high-minded post-Gandhian concern for social improvement and the redress of wrongs...''

The smaller tales, of which there are many, mainly deal with the lives of the Hindu and Muslim mystics, the Sufis and the Jogis, sometimes locked in combat to outwit each other, often sharing spiritual secrets, and always living in peaceful coexistence. The tales speak of magic herbs and potions to retain youth and sexual virility, of levitation, magic, alchemy, philosopher's stone and so on.

In the romances and tales, as may be expected, there's nothing approximating a coherent plot. They are merely a succession of episodes following one upon another in endless profusion, often in defiance of logic and verisimilitude. The characters are conceived in terms of black and white without any shade of grey. What, however, strikes a modern reader is their extraordinary lack of coyness in discussing sexual passion and the syncretic vision of community life they present.

Digby has sometimes edited the elaborate features of the tales, which are peripheral to their central plot. This makes for compactness and adds to their readability. In his scholarly note on the background of the tales, he traces their origins and subsequent incarnations, underlining the representational value of the first two tales, he says:

1,3m,3mAs in the case of ``Madhumalati and Madhukar'', in the text of ``The Flower of Bakawali'' there are many reflections of the time and milieu in which the story was written. The layout and edifices of Bakawali's garden, and of the copy of it built for Tajul Muluk reflect later Mughal architectural ideals, that reached their apogee in Shahjahan's reign in the middle of the 17th Century and continued to serve as a model to later patrons. The author Nihal Chand would have been familiar with the sights of the Mughal fort at Lahore and the Shalimar Garden a few miles outside the city. He may also have known the Red Fort at Delhi from his childhood, and have later visited the palaces of the Nawabs of Bengal at Murshidabad. (p.286.)

Through such details, the editor-translator often attempts to historicise the romances and tales and build up a context that gives more discerning readers and social historians important clues about the society and the ethos of the times, and thus enhance the reading pleasure. For the rest who may not be interested in the scholarly dimension, the tales offer unalloyed aesthetic enjoyment and an opportunity to escape into an enchanted world. The translations, though done at different periods of Digby's life, have an even quality of free-flowing lucidity that gives them the illusion of original compositions. One only wishes that the occasional typos had not marred the beauty of this impeccable volume.

Wonder-tales of South Asia, translated by Simon Digby, Orient Monographs, Jersey, 2000, p.303, price not stated.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Goethe's pact with the devil
Next     : Short and selective