Typesetting
In the Shrine of the Heart. Sants of Rajasthan from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
24 Mar 2023
Part I
[Map]
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Sants of Rajasthan
Around the fourteenth century, vernacular poetry of devotion to a formless, interior god became popular in North India. This devotion is bhakti, a term expressive of the direct relationship between god and man, a relationship of emotion (bhāva) and unconditional love (prema and similar terms). In this, bhakti becomes the end of religion, an eternal relationship of union, to the extent that it is even considered superior to liberation (mukti), for liberation would bring to an end any form of relationship between a subject and its object. This devotion to the formless god articulated in North Indian vernaculars spread over a vast expanse of land, from Maharashtra in the south, to Sindh, Panjab and Haryana in the north, and from Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to the plains of the Ganges in the east. The adherents of this type of devotion spoke of themselves as Sants, the ‘truly being’, that is, ontologically valid and thereby distinct from the fleeting world (for which saṃsār or prapañc are common terms).
In the Rajasthan of the sixteenth century, the sectarian organisation of Sant bhakti was well underway. Rajasthan is now the name of a state constituted in 1950. The term itself—Rājasthān or Rāethān—appears at the latest in the seventeenth century, when it meant the capital of the Guhilot principality, the precursor of Mewar. From the early eighteenth century it meant more explicitly a land of numerous Rajput principalities with interior cultural and linguistic distinctions.1 In the sixteenth century Rajasthan corresponded to the division of Ajmer in the Mughal Empire.2 In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the strongholds of the Sants lay in three subdivisions of this huge division, namely, Marwar, Nagaur, and Ajmer. Within the subdivision of Ajmer, the region of Shekhavati came to form a hub of Sant activities. At that time, Shekhavati was under the rule of the Kyāmkhānīs, Rajputs of Chauhan descent who had converted to Islam in the period of Emperor Firuz Shah Tughlaq. Shekhavati is named after Rāo Śekhā, the ancestor of the Śekhāvat clans. The Kyāmkhānīs ruled from Fatehpur, where the most important intellectual Sant centre of the period established itself at the beginning of the seventeenth century and among whose patrons they figured prominently.
Rajasthani culture shares features with other parts of North India and beyond, but its rather typical configurations suggest the idea of Rajasthan as a distinct region.3 The region was however culturally contiguous in all directions. Particularly with Gujarat it formed a densely woven continuum. The texts collected in this volume illustrate that the various strands of Rajasthani literature may represent different text sorts underlying different modes of transmission. Rather than forming fragments scattered over a region, these are intertwined, mutually responsive, and cross-fertilizing. Sant literature sprang from the soil of a shared regional literary culture, however much it exhibits its particular religious notions and a vocabulary of its own.
Sant gurus attracted followers from amongst whom emerged groups of sadhus. Renunciation was not uniform but took a variety of forms. We find a broad range, from celibate sadhus to householder devotees, who were sadhus by attitude rather than social status. Celibate sadhus, who rallied around a guru, however, were the major force shaping Santism by their teaching and literary production. For this they depended on the patronage of their lay following, and so the lay following provided the material basis for Santism to take shape. Around the turn of the seventeenth century, the two most important emerging Sant sects were the Dādūpanthīs and the Nirañjanīs.The Dādūpanth is the sect of Dādū, who started becoming known as a religious teacher in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The Nirañjanīs can be related to Sant Hardās of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, but their sectarian profile emerged only around the turn of the seventeenth century and in interaction with the Dādūpanth. Santism figures also in the Rāmānandī sect with its centre in Galta in the principality of Amber (also: Amer, now part of Jaipur). This sect provided an umbrella for both the aniconic Sant and the idol-worshipping bhakti. While Sant literature denounces idol worship, the reality of religious life in a shared habitat was less rigid. An example of this is the Nimbārka sect, with its Rajasthani headquarters in Salemabad near Kishangarh and, thereby, within the orbit of Sant activities. This sect cultivated a bhakti of interior devotion to the name of God, side by side with its particular idol-worshipping cult of Krishna and Radha.
The lifestyle of Sant sadhus was accommodated to the mobility typical of Rajasthan and neighbouring regions. The country is criss-crossed by trade routes, its economic and cultural arteries. These connected the ports on the shores of the Arabian Sea with the North Indian political heartland around Delhi and Agra. The routes took Indian traders far into the Safavid Empire, Central Asia and farther afield.4 In Rajasthan important trade routes ran from west to east through the salt producing centres of Lunkaransar, Didvana and Sambhar, routes that converge with places of origin or settlements of sadhus, which reveals their link with trading communities. The trade routes are lined by urban settlements and forts.5 Long-distance trade in grain and bulk goods lay in the hands of the Bañjārās. Ceaselessly plying the routes, these gave rise to a special genre of compositions common in Sant poetry, the Bañjārā songs (text no. 10). In the company of the caravans came troupes of mimes, jugglers, musicians, story-tellers, and—robbers.6 Couriers carrying diplomatic messages covered long distances in great speed, partly on roads serving as more direct communication channels than trade routes.7 Scholars were not deterred by the hardships of long-distance travel when seeking patrons and acquainting themselves with the latest intellectual trends. Governance itself took place on the move. Rulers and nobility travelled, if only to be seen, display and confirm their rank by their signs, flags, standards, caparisoned elephants and horses, and their retinue. The royal tent was a mobile palace. And so also did sadhus traverse the land. The rhythm of life was determined by the seasons. In the months of the rainy season, mobility slowed down. The country was, however, also prone to drought and famine, measured by the years of its duration and given names indicating the death toll it took.8 Therefore, life was patently vulnerable and water was the most critical factor in social organisation.9 Building stepwells and tanks was a meritorious act, which was remembered in inscriptions praising their patrons and the artisans who had constructed them.10 Nomadism and transhumance of herdsmen or of entire villages and their livestock was adapted to the vagaries of the climate. Families bonded also to build and sustain water bodies. Bride-giving and bride-taking villages was ordered in such a way that families related by marriage could fall back on their kinsmen in times of drought. War, too, was seasonal because the rainy season intercepted mobility. The military labour market drew men from Rajasthan to distant regions.11 Time and again the mercenary serving some lord abroad is mentioned in Sant literature, both as a social reality and a religious metaphor. The popular literary genre of songs relating to the seasons or the months and representing the lament of the lovelorn wife watching the road for the return of her husband reflects a cultural reality, though the romantic imagination manifest in these compositions hardly corresponds to the dire social reality.12 Survival on dangerous routes depended on trustworthy stable relays. Accordingly, information about the inhabited space, its geography, economy, and the socio-cultural norms that had to be reckoned with was essential. The culture was moored in the regional topography, and the knowledge of this was circulated by way of mouth, including story-telling and preaching. In the flow of all this, sadhus circulated as well.
Sant sadhus were semi-domesticated. They had ashrams in which their spiritual lineage was localized. Apart from the rainy season, however, they were peripatetic. They roved along a circuit, the halts on which were determined by the availability of local lay patronage. The circuits and the networks connecting sadhu lineages amongst each other and with their patrons were by and large inscribed in the pattern of the trade routes. During their sojourns, lay people fed the sadhus, gave them shelter, and made donations in money, kind, and land. Thanks to lay largess, sadhus could build permanent monastic settlements. These became the strongholds of their sects of which numerous have endured into this century. They represented sites for the circulation of goods. The sadhus were supposed to have no personal property beyond that by which their barest needs would be fulfilled, namely, a spare set of clothing and, for lettered sadhus, a portable volume of sacred texts. The head of a local settlement might be reputed for not accepting any donations which, however, corresponded to reality in a very limited sense only. Donations of commodities or money were accepted to be eventually circulated to the needy or spent on religious feasts and festivals. The sadhus were expected to attend in recompense to their patrons’ spiritual well-being. Religious festivals, communal feasts, congregational worship with singing, preaching by monks, and religious teaching featured in the continuous exchange between sadhus and their lay followers. Highpoints of this were the months of the rainy season, when gurus with their disciples could hope to be invited to reside with lay patrons whose houses would thereby become the site of the religious dispensation and for the patron family the cause of considerable enhancement of prestige. The complementarity governing all dealings between sadhus and laity is succinctly expressed in a popular distich, assigned to Dādū:13
Dādū, if you give food to the body, you get in return the peace of your mind,
If you feed a sadhu, you realize that your soul is identical with Rām.
The peripatetic life-style of ascetics has been a common feature of Indian religions, and likewise the feeding of visitors by religious institutions. In Rajasthan, Jain monks and nuns are the most prominent homeless religious wanderers, though in the late medieval and early modern period some of their branches settled down and their leaders, the bhaṭṭārakas, became powerful figures.14 As a rule, however, the Jain ascetics spend the rainy season staying in halls built, entertained and frequented by lay Jains during the ascetics’ seasonal sojourn. Sant rhetoric polemisizes against the Jains, though the model of these is reflected in Sant monastic organization itself. This, however, converges also partly with that of the Sufis, who had impacted India since the eleventh or twelfth century. At the centre of their groups figured a saintly authority who was the spiritual guide of his followers and inspired congregational worship. The needs of followers were attended to in hospices (jama’atkhāna, khānqah).15 During the Tughlaq period of the North Indian sultanate, roughly the fourteenth century, Sufi khānqahs had achieved considerable promotion thanks to sultanate patronage so that these institutions came to serve as prestigious models for religious groups outside the Sufi orders. Conversely, the khānqahs owed much to a similar arrangement providing for Hindus and known as the sadāvrat. In this process of constant give and take, the institution termed in Persian langar, a resting place providing shelter for Muslim mendicants and a refectory, was adopted both by the Sikhs of Panjab and the Sants of Rajasthan. Though the term langar is also familiar to them, yet, with the Sants communal feeding is usually called paṅkti, ‘feeding of guests seated in lines’.16
Sant Principles
Sant bhakti forms part of the broad spectrum of Vaishnava bhakti.17 In this branch of monotheistic religion, a form of Vishnu figures as the god with whom the devotee, the bhakta, entertains a direct emotional relationship. The god of Vaishnava bhakti appears in a good number of sects joined with his female consort, and is usually worshipped in iconic cults. Sant bhakti differs from this in rejecting the idea of a corporeal god and, therefore, iconic worship. Instead, it conceives of God as free of difference, that is, formless and all-pervasive, residing in the interior of and identical with the human self. The undifferentiated Self is identical with the self of all beings. Consequently, Sants take for granted the religiously underpinned hierarchy of castes and rules for the stations of life as purely social norms, but deny the religious aetiology of these. The Vaishnava principle of non-violence and, consequently, vegetarianism are also pillars of Sant religion.
Sant bhakti partakes of the yogic tradition. It couples Vaishnava yoga with the tantric-yogic tradition. As for written sources, Vaishnava yoga is the topic of a comprehensive discourse put in the mouth of the mythical sage Kapila in the third book of the Sanskrit Bhāgavatapurāṇa (7th century?).18 In this discourse yoga in the form of breath discipline and meditation, on the one hand, and bhakti, on the other, are related as means and end. Breath discipline leads to concentration of the mind on Krishna, whose features and attributes the devotee is taught to visualize within himself. The god thereby becomes interiorized. From this ensues the bliss of identity of the devotee and the god. This is the highest form of love. In a terse form this bhakti-yoga is expressed by Hardās in text no. 7, v. 6 with the rhetoric question, ‘How can the yogi live without love?’ The teaching of Kapila forms, as it were, the template of topics in Sant poetry. One of these is the pervasive memento mori topic, treated, for example, by Sundardās (text no. 80), and often moulded in the popular form of the four watches of the day or night, or the four ages of the world found in the Bañjārā songs.19 By reference to the Sanskrit Bhāgavatapurāṇa, or similar writings, it is not insinuated that the Sants digested these directly. In the region of Gujarat-Rajasthan flourished the tradition of narrators of religious stories who expounded these in spoken and sung recitals for religious instruction and entertainment. This type of performance was called harikathā, ‘story about Hari’, and its narrator was known as kathākar, ‘storyteller’, or vyās, who was a brahmanic specialist of the Bhāgavata tradition. These narrators drew from a popular tradition, but they also digested the written Bhāgavata tradition, be it in vernacular versions of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa itself or topically related texts. In the seventeenth century, numerous renderings of books of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa were notably made by the Sants themselves.20
The tantric-yogic tradition identifies the body with the cosmos. The body is limited and finite, while the cosmos is unlimited and infinite. Ontologically identical, they were divided during the process of creation. Division is transient, union is eternal. The aim of tantric practice is to rewind all diversity into its primeval undivided state. The tantric view therefore spans opposites that have to be merged, such as female and male, sun and moon, and so forth. Foremost among the dyads is that of the female creative power, personified as Shakti, and the male principle of pure being, personified as Shiva. Shakti is Shiva and vice versa, for their difference is transient. They manifested difference only to bring forth the diverse world. According to tantric imagination, the body—an esoteric body, not the anatomical body—is the repository of the female creative power. This needs to be reunited with Shiva, residing at or above the crest of the head. Shakti has to be aroused to the eternal heights of that place. Ascending, she passes a number of nodal points, called cakra. Each of these is presided over by a certain number of elements constituting the world, such as letters of the alphabet, deities, colours, winds (types of breath), and so forth. The ascending power takes all of these along to its goal. Here all phenomena lapse back into the formless infinite. The illustration below dates from the colonial period and captures a system that had by then gained popularity, though numerous other variants exist besides.
The Sants favour a yoga combining breath discipline and meditation. By breath discipline, the creative energy is driven upwards. The breath ventilates a great number of conduits, nāḍī. Three of these are the most important ones, Ilā, Piṅgalā, and Suṣumnā. These meet at a point between the eyebrows. The Suṣumnā is the conduit in which the creative power makes its ascent, assisted by the continuous ventilation in the Ilā and Piṅgalā. The Suṣumnā is therefore also identified with the woman hurrying to her beloved lord. In Sant poetry her image oscillates between the woman separated from her divine lover in the context of bridal mysticism and tantric Shakti.
When the yogi has attained his goal, liberation in union with Shakti-Shiva, he has reached the state of samādhi, in which he keeps breathing, though his bodily functions are extremely reduced. This is the state of absorption in pure consciousness without differentiation. Inhaling and exhaling are identified with the syllables so’ham, ‘I am that’. If one starts reciting from the second syllable, this becomes haṃsa, ‘gander’, signifying the self. Absorbed in samādhi, the practicioner is believed to fade into deathless eternity. This belief also gave rise to the custom of burying yogis in that state of deepest meditation.21 The term samādhi derives from a verbal root sam-ā-dhā-, ‘to put together’, that is, in an orderly fashion. This refers to collecting the various items located at the cakras and taking them along in the process of ascent to union, in which their distinction is annihilated. This idea also accounts for the coupling of yoga with sāṃkhya, basically an enumerative system of ordering the elements of creation and their derivatives.22
In tantric yoga, the process of liberation is a ritual to which the yogi dedicates himself and which he achieves by himself, though he requires the help of the guru. This kind of ritual is oftentimes identified with the horse sacrifice, the as good as obsolete Hindu royal ritual which bestows on the king paramount power. The tantric yogi is a king, too, but his kingdom is eternal. He is someone liberated while still alive. The Sants reinterpreted this according to the principle of bhakti, according to which liberation lies solely in the hands of the gracious interior god. This god is free of all difference and therefore without quality, identical with man’s own self, but in an act of practical differentiation required by intersubjective communication (bhakti) he is also addressed face to face.
Finally, the Sant veneration of the divine name is related to tantra. In tantra the sound, śabda, is the self-expression of the ultimate One. In its true form, this is unqualified and therefore beyond phonation. As creation unfolds, the undifferentiated sound first assumes the potential of phonation and eventually phonetic quality. Śabda thereby becomes name, that is, the countless designations of the gross phenomena. The name of God is accordingly the phonetic manifestation of the ultimate One. The practice of the recitation of the Name reflects the philosophy underlying it. The murmured recitation of the Name (jāp) turns into inaudible recitation (ajap jāp) and eventually fades into the One. In the process, the devotee experiences the sound in ways matching his progress. Sant poetry describes it often as the grumbling or roaring of the unstruck, purely interior sound, inaudible in physical terms. The experience of fearlessness, a synonym of eternal peace, is found identified with the reverberation of the inner sound at the stage of union with God (text 79, vv. 6,9 and the second but last unnumbered verse).
Alone or in the congregation of fellow-devotees, the Sant conducts worship to the formless interior god. This god is addressed by his name, more often than not Rām or Hari, but also by other divine names current in Vaishnavism. Only the recitation of his name comes close to capturing the divine essence. Worship of the innate god consists in praising his name, in glorifying his works in the interior and the exterior world, and in meditating. If a devotee is blessed with the self-revelation of the interior god, he is eligible to union with him. This state is called sahaj, ‘spontaneous, effortless, innate’, the spontaneous leap into the innate pristine union.
A number of topics of the inherited traditions features in Sant compositions. Human beings tragically mistake the transient false world as real. Instead of realizing the eternal One, they are caught in the maze of duality. Lost in this, they remain subject to the perpetual circle of birth and death. In order to obtain bhakti and recognize the truth, human beings have to acquire understanding. This understanding is transformative, enabling them to reject the false notions of duality. Accurate understanding is obscured by the willfulness of the mind (man). The mind is the power of conceptualizing, volition and concupiscence. Similar to other phenomena and powers determining human behaviour, it is double-faced. The deluded mind is the cause of ruin, whereas the disciplined mind, harnessed to the quest for bhakti, clears the way for proper insight. Proper insight paired with bhakti is the precondition for the exit from the cycle of existence into eternal peace. Beguiled by apparent differences, the mind breeds what is commonly listed as six arch-evils, namely, desire, anger, delusion, infatuation, hubris and egotism (kām, krodh, māyā, moh, mad, matsar). False perception results in the fear of death, while transformative knowledge grants fearlessness. Consequently, the bhakta has to reappraise in the light of the one and only truth all that he perceives and exerts an influence on him. The pattern of dyads of opposites, the same thing potentially pernicious and salutary, runs through Sant poetry. Although they conjure up the horror of the perpetual cycle of existence, Sants focus rather exclusively on human life as it is here and now. They speak in a mood suggesting great urgency, for only human beings are intelligent enough to unravel the truth. In the chain of ages upon ages of repeated birth and death, however, only extremely rarely may one get the chance to be born as a human being. Now or never must one try to obtain bhakti and transforming knowledge. The fear that the seeker may fail to avail himself of the single opportunity of being saved in his lifetime and instead succumb to the temptations of the world hovers over the Sants. This fear is also productive, for like bhakti it cannot be suspended even for a moment (text nos. 26, 31, 53). This notion was elaborated in bhakti literature at an early date.23 Fear is a boon, for it turns man away from the world. In comparison with this supreme fear all other fear diminishes; the bhakta may, for example, be admonished to always live in the fearful state of a goat whose shed is flanked by two lions (text no. 26). In Sant literature, this is reinforced by the Muslim foundational notion of the fear of God, especially as it is emphasized by the Sufis. Here, fear is counterbalanced by hope, and in Sufism with its ascetic elements, it may even outbalance hope.24
The personification of delusion is the woman, but she is at the same time connotated with the single-mindedly searching soul. She appears in fact in three roles, in all of which she is the complement of the male. This replicates the state of perpetual dependence stipulated by social norms from which she can only break free when she becomes a sati. The Sants, accordingly, portray her as the temptress who overpowers man, as the forsaken woman who longs for her eternal beloved, or as the sati liberating not only her husband, but also her parental and her in-laws’ families. As for the temptress, she bewitches man by diverting him from his search for the highest good. She robs him of his most precious possession, his semen, which is, according to the tantric foundations of Santism, destined to be transformed into bindu, the infinitesimal drop of the elixir of immortality. As giver of life she keeps the wheel of birth and death circling. Man in his delusion does not realize that the object of his desire is a disgusting leather bag of filth. This image reproduces common prejudices coupled with the self-protective misogyny of sadhus, who in their writings belaboured this also in a particular genre named ‘Dialogue between a householder and a sadhu’.25 Secondly and by contrast, woman enjoys a positive connotation when symbolizing the soul yearning for the self-revelation of the interior god (text nos. 38, 39). The devotee is the virahiṇī, the woman suffering whilst separated from her husband or beloved. This depicts the seeker’s perpetual quest, taking him to the brink of death. Death can only be averted by the virahiṇī’s union with her beloved. If this fails to take place, the virahiṇī is to be blamed for having capitulated in her struggle. Thirdly and finally, a woman’s apotheosis takes place when she becomes a sati.26 In the regional culture satis are venerated as equal to deified warrior heroes. How deeply rooted this veneration is, is illustrated by the following verses from a seventeenth-century poem which glorify the collective sati of four queens:27
Smeared with red powder, beautifully dressed,
Collyrium applied around their wagtail-eyes, adorned with strings of pearls,
The four queens had at that moment turned into young goddesses,
Their arms were decorated with tassled cords, heavy bracelets adorned their wrists,
Their waists were slim, they had deer-eyes, the tinkling of their anklets sounded like the cooing of cuckoos,
They had pān in their mouths,28 their bodies were perfumed and embellished with all the sixteen kinds of ornaments.29
While hand and kettle drums were beaten, they distributed as enormous gifts to the destitute
The studded golden jewellery they wore on their hands.
They worshipped Gaurī and Śaṅkar and numerous deities besides.
In this fashion, the four set out taking along the royal concubines.
.....
King Udaysiṃh (the successor of the king, whose body lay on the pyre) made all due arrangements at that place,
And gave order to his ministers, who acted according to the dharma of their lord,
Tent screens were erected all around so that the place was properly protected,
The crowd gazing at the ardour of the satis was cordoned off outside,
While the satis blessed the king: ‘Reign as firmly as the polar star,
Endowed with a long life, as the greatest king at the summit of the earth!’
There and then they bade farewell and ascended the pyre while reciting the name of Rām,
Meditating on their husband, they were liberated from infatuation with the world.
When all could see that they were on fire and blazing flames bathed their bodies,
All shouted ‘Victory! Victory!’ to the women united with their husband.
The satis, saviours of both their families, ascended the heavenly chariots and drove to the City of the Gods
To see amidst themselves the king standing at the door of heaven where they were united with him.
Sant authors share this veneration, but their praise is conditional, for they revaluate the sati rite in light of their faith. According to them, the actual female self-immolation is motivated by the worldly desire to garner personal and family prestige. Sants deny that a woman committing sati can save herself or others. According to their rhetoric, only the interior sati rite in the form of abdication of the world and total dedication to the innate god is valid. This revaluated sati represents the highest form of heroism, regardless of the devotee’s sex. The faltering sati breaking her vow is a trope also for a male seeker’s fickleness in bhakti.
Steadiness of mind coupled with bhakti leads to transforming knowledge. The seeker is unable to reach this state by himself. Without a proper guru he is bound to fail. His guru teaches him discrimination between the eternally valid and the transient, the distinction between true and false. Because of the ontological principle of undifferentiated unity, the human guru differs from the self, that is, the interior guru, only by his corporeality. The notion of guru thus comprises the one identical self in three aspects, namely, the human guru, the interior guru, and God. All the three aspects are inherent in the ‘true guru’, sat-guru. As the supreme position of the guru is notoriously exploited by fake gurus, it is incumbent on every devotee to test a candidate for guruship carefully.
The guru is depicted by his following as bearing the features of sanctity, of which there exist veritable aide-mémoire lists. His sanctity is underscored by the miracles he is supposed to perform. He is thus subjected to a hagiographical gaze, which sifts the guru’s actions for the divinity revealed in these. The hagiographical perspective need not just be a construction in distant hindsight, but prevails also among disciples who were actual eye-witnesses of a guru’s deeds.30 It conditions the perception of him as the true guru. The miracles a guru is perceived to perform connect him with previous saints known for the same or similar miracles. This follows the logic that a saint later in time represents the incarnation of the primeval as much as a previously living saint and that both give similar proof of this. As for Dādū, the miracles he performed resemble those performed by Kabīr, thereby testifying that the same divine being is at work at both times. There prevails a certain tension in the perception of miracles. The Sants criticize shows of magical tricks performed by self-appointed holy men. They share, however, the more general view that miracles form genuine testimonies of saintliness and that these are supremely apt to illicit material favour. Jān Kavi, the seventeenth-century panegyrist of the dynasty of the Kyāmkhānīs of Fatehpur, Hindus converted to Islam, has the Delhi Sultan say to the nobleman whom he advises to convert:31
Among Hindus there are no marvels; how, then, will they obtain favour?
While the somewhat stereotypical hagiographical perspective on the guru is powerful, nonetheless, certain individual characteristics of him are occasionally mentioned affectionately. In the case of Dādū, for example, this is his love for a particular sweetmeat. This is not quite random, for feeding constitutes a strong emotional bond, and so singling out a food habit reminds one of this. The guru’s death, too, seems to be an event at which the personal emotion of bereavement may be voiced. Two laments in this volume illustrate this, although literary conventions may also be at play in these (texts nos. 42, 45-46).32
Besides the guru, the community of devotees supports the individual devotee. Bhakti is therefore at once intimate and embedded in congregational practice. The community of devotees is called the satsaṅg, ‘the gathering of the good’ or ‘—righteous’, a term that refers both to community as a principle as well as an actual devotional congregation.
The Santism of Rajasthan cannot be correctly assessed in isolation from Islam, and particularly Sufism, well-established in the region. Dādū was of Muslim parentage, and he paid reverence to Kabīr, the Muslim weaver of Banaras, commonly figuring as the paragon of Santism, although the oeuvre attributed to him consists in part of poetry recreated or created altogether in Rajasthan. The Dādūpanthī constituency consisted of both Hindus and Muslims, a constellation that prevailed until the beginning of the eighteenth century when Muslims became sidelined in the sect due to Hindu political intervention.33 Into the twenty-first century, however, Muslims keep featuring as partisans of the Dādūpanth.
Four of the seven Rajasthani authors represented in this collection were of Muslim parentage. To characterize them by their ancestral religion does not provide a clue to their actual lifestyles, their ethnic roots in the subcontinent or outside, the cultural baggage with which their ancestors had come to the subcontinent, or of the modalities of their acculturation. Both Santism and Islam, a fortiori Sufism, represent faiths based on a negative theology, in which the absence of God triggers the devotee’s perpetual quest for him and pushes the devotee up the steep mystical path, a feature shared with the yogic tradition, which will be addressed presently. A number of Sufi poets were acknowledged by Sants as belonging to their ilk and consequently transmitted in Sant manuscripts.34 Sant authors either adapted Sufi poetry and circulated it with their signature, or are found engaging in a sophisticated manner with Sufi principles (text nos. 76, 77). None of the authors minimized the difference between Hindu and Muslim, but still they declared it irrelevant in the light of a faith which transcended all distinctions by being anchored in the undifferentiated One. The views of Sants and Sufis are so entangled that an attempt to disentangle them for mutual ‘influences’ would result in destroying the fabric of the shared regional culture.35 While one can point to instances of an author’s particular emphasis on a Muslim notion or motif, it is next to impossible to determine if this was household lore or particularly popular with Muslims. As for the practice of Sant vegetarianism, which one takes for a specific Vaishnava principle, it is especially noteworthy in the context of the Sants’ Muslim constituency. In being stalwart adherents of non-violence, they differ in no way from their co-religionists of Hindu parentage. We know but little about the background of Dādūpanthīs of Muslim origin, but this suggests that they were vegetarians not by individual choice, as it might have been prompted by joining a Sant following, but because they had been brought up in Muslim families who had been exposed to Sufi vegetarianism or owed their dietary rules to previous contact with Vaishnava vegetarianism.36 The author Rajab provides an aetiology of vegetarianism by inciting a hagiographical tradition which locates its origin in the life of the Prophet (text no. 51). While Muslims featured significantly in the Dādūpanth, this is not reported for the early Nirañjanī sect.
Popular Religion in the Mirror of Sant Poetry
The Sants condemn cults, behaviours and attitudes contravening their belief. They summarily dismiss all other creeds as lacking proper understanding of the only truth. For them, bhakti and transforming knowledge support each other and they alone can lead the seeker through the perils of transient life. Sants revel in parading the follies of folk cults, suspicion, magic, hollow erudition and hypocrisy, and in doing so elaborate on inherited clichés. The rehearsing of clichés and speaking about visible facts blend with each other. The Sants do not advance finely chiseled arguments, but denounce all established religions, which they lump together as ‘the six views’, using a term actually signifying six types of philosophical views. In their parlance, these form the totality of religions, with an emphasis on those with which they share the habitat.37 The following is limited to Sant criticism of the religious other only in so far as it is found articulated in the texts here published. In text 32, Bakhanāṃ provides a virtual catalogue of popular cults which goes some way in serving as a guideline through the customs castigated by the Sants. It is norteworthy that these were and are practised by Hindus and Muslims alike and are interpreted by these in multiple ways.38
First and foremost, the Sants see themselves as having disempowered the Goddess and her adherents.39 According to a Vaishnava narrative, the Goddess realizes her impotence and seeks initiation from a Vaishnava saint.40 This is far from reality, for the cult of the Goddess is ubiquitous. She is represented in countless shrines under many names, deathly fierce if enraged and motherly caring if propitiated by offerings. She is worshipped by virtually all, from villagers to kings, that is, Rajputs, who worship her in some of her many forms as their clan deity. She is the giver of royal power and protector of dynasties. She figures also in the cult of the powerful Cāraṇs, bards attached to Rajput clans, and accorded a rank not only at a par with Brahmans but also in a way superior to these, for Cāraṇs are ascribed protective power. The wives of Cāraṇs are believed to be living forms of the Goddess.41
The Goddess demands bloody sacrifices and alcohol. The priests sacrifice these to her, and afterwards consume what is thought to have been graciously accepted by her. Some of the variants of Goddess worship are named by Bakhanāṃ. One is Bījhāsaṇī, one of the ‘mothers’, harmful to her enemies and caring for her worshippers, but always irrascible. Not only is she decried as bogus, but also her adherents are demeaned as bartering for petty worldly gain. One of the festivals at which meat and liquor are offered to the Goddess is the cult of Śaṅkar-Rāṇī, celebrated by women late in winter, on the fourth day of the waning half of the lunar month of Māgh (January/February). Another festival is that of the smallpox goddess, celebrated on the eighth day of the dark half of the month Caitra (April/May), at the end of the Hindu religious year, which is auspiciously renewed on the new-moon day a week later. She protects or kills, particularly children, gives or withholds procreation and is therefore worshipped by women. Their wishes granted, they tie votive straps of cloth to trees near shrines of the goddess, a familiar sight in rural Rajasthan.
The fierce male tantric deity Bhairav is the guardian of villages and shrines of the Goddess, and the protector from affliction by evil spirits as well as attacks from malevolent female deities. He is also thought to inhabit cremation grounds, where the dog that accompanies him feasts on corpses.42 According to Bakhanāṃ, Bhairav worshippers are arch-hypocrites: They are embarrassed by the god’s demand of bloody sacrifices, and so fob him off with a goat’s ear.
In Bakhanāṃ’s song, a Bhairav shrine is also the site of possession, of which the medium is the bhopī.43 The spirit invoked in a rite of possession speaks through her with a gruesome voice. Cults of possession are, on the one hand, instruments of social control and can easily disturb the social existence of a member of the community, while, on the other hand, they may ease personal affliction. According to the Sant poet, possession is a trick and the bhopī, an imposter.
Bakhanāṃ concludes his list of superstitions with the cults of Gogā, Gusāṃīṃjī, and rituals featuring portable shrines.44 Gogā and Gusāṃīṃjī represent liminal religion straddling Islam and Hinduism so that their shrines and the myths surrounding those figures relate to both Muslims and Hindus. Gogā is a warrior hero represented as mounted on a horse. The Chauhan Rajputs, who have both Muslim and Hindu credentials, consider him to be their ancestor. Gogā is also connected with snake worship. Muslims venerate him as a pir, and for the Sikhs he is a saint. Exorcist healers of snake-bite (gāruḍ), miracle-workers and jugglers (jādūgar) are similarly paraded by Bakhanāṃ, but figure also as tropes for the guru or the amazing interior god.45
As for Gusāṃīṃjī, he unites in himself features of a Muslim pir and a Nāthyogī.
Portable shrines (kāvaṛ), usually featuring Rām, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇ of the Rāmāyaṇa, are the trademark of professional story-tellers, Bhāṭs. They carry these, slung on poles, on their shoulders.46 The Bhāṭ’s recital forms a ritual. Kāvaṛ is also a pole carried on the shoulder. At the ends of this pots filled with water are suspended. In the month of Śrāvaṇ in the rainy season, male pilgrims carry these to Shiva shrines. For Bakhanāṃ, promiscuous worship of those many cults for worldly benefits is like prostitution. Bakhanāṃ’s detailed diatribe is not unusual in Sant poetry, which reflects, albeit in stereotype, a great number of still vital cultural features of the region.
Another main target of Sant criticism is Vaishnava idol worship. Rajab, for example, derides the practitioners of exterior worship as heretics and fools. Thereby, he attacks pivotal values of Vaishnavism and folk religion alike. Sant poetry mentions the custom of wearing a figurine of one’s favourite deity made of stone, silver or even gold in a casket or other amulet container tied to the neck, to the forehead, or to the arm, and the worship of the śālagrāms, ammonites collected from rivers that symbolize god Vishnu.47 In Vaishnava shrines śālagrāms are copiously on display, say, at the feet of the main deity of a shrine. Unlike immovable icons, they can also be carried in procession and are considered the full equivalent of the main icon.
The preachers of idol-worshipping Vaishnavism were typically the performers of the aforementioned harikathā. Sants deride these not only for preaching false religion, but also for the innuendoes with which they pepper their recitals and thereby corrupt the youth:48
For a moment a Vaishnava vyās will go into singing the praise of Govinda,
But his mind is set on the wanton (kalola) tales of Krishna.
A song of Bhakhanāṃ in this collection represents a jibe against these story-tellers (text no. 41).
The religious garb, synonymous with the habit-bearers themselves, is dismissed as sham, and so are the supernatural powers (siddhi) the yogis claim. The display of these may impress the credulous, but they are insubstantial.
The Sants assess all alleged values against the supreme value, namely, communion with the interior god. Accordingly, they deny that a person’s station in life determines his access to salvation and his eligibility for the means towards achieving this. Caste hierarchy, pride in one’s social standing, the gender difference—all of these matter in the transient world, but this is anyway beyond remedy, totally insubstantial in the light of the only truth. The Sants’s mission is not social, but rather aims at overcoming the world through bhakti. Santism is, therefore, in principle not reformist in a social sense, though it may and has oftentimes been coupled with social reform and political goals. For gaining socio-political momentum, a group needs to bond together in pursuit of their demands, a trait largely missing in the period under review.
That Sant sadhus so vehemently malign the transient world only emphasizes that their lay followers are and will remain denizens of the world, and that only this enables the sadhus to opt out of the world. But for the dyad of sadhu and lay devotee, no Sant sect would have existed. Sant authors take this false world for granted, however zealous their attacks against it may be. For all its rhetoric, their call for leaving the world is but a summons to the devotees to revalidate the world in the light of bhakti. Thereby they confirm the dyad, with the sadhus inhabiting the counter-world and the lay followers firmly established in the world and privileged to serve the sadhus and fellow-devotees. Service (sevā), indeed, is the equivalent of bhakti, and servant (sevaka), the equivalent of the lay devotee (bhakta).
Sant Worship
The interior god of the Sants reveals himself in the word of the guru, the phonic representation of the interior unstruck sound (anāhata nāda), itself nothing but the cosmic sound (śabda) of the Supreme Self. Listening to the exterior and the interior word and being enraptured by it are expressed by the same word, surati (listening; rapture). The name of God is remembered and articulated in murmered prayer, which eventually fades into the unity of devotee and God. Sant sects developed different forms of communal worship. With all Sants aphorisms and lyrics like those represented in this volume feature in congregational worship, most extensively in night-long watches (jāgaraṇ). With the Sikhs and the Dādūpanthīs the scripture (vāṇī), containing the words of the gurus to whom the sects trace their origin as well as other compositions, is the object of private and congregational veneration. In every temple and in many houses of devout householders, the āratī, the twilight ritual with its accompanying hymns, is chanted. Preachers deliver homilies in the presence of the scripture. They hold it in front of them and thereby display the flow of authority from the cosmic sound of the Supreme Self descended into the speech of the guru and now instantiated by preaching. Similarly, the Nirañjanīs venerate the vāṇī.49 Though Nirañjanī vāṇīs share in a stock of texts, the contents of these was not formally canonized. Compared with Sikh and Dādūpanthī religious practice, that of the Nirañjanīs is less uniform because the sect remained more segmentary than the other two ones. The Nirañjanīs have in common, however, that the scripture in the version in which it was transmitted in a particular lineage of gurus and disciples is kept at the shrines commemorating the death of a guru (samādhi). The āratī is celebrated in the presence of this, but the courtly ritual surrounding the scripture among Sikhs and Dādūpanthīs is missing. Moreover, the practice of Vaishnava saguṇa worship is not categorically rejected, although theologically the essentially non-qualified character of the Supreme Self is affirmed. Generally speaking, the Nirañjanī literati engaged copiously with the Vaishnava bhakti tradition which is, for example, put in evidence by the programme they had launched since the seventeenth century of translating or adapting key Vaishnava texts from their Sanskrit originals into the vernacular literary language.
By its surrounding cult, the scripture virtually represents a verbal icon. Like this, it can also be taken out of its shrine for a procession, whereby it marks the landscape as a sacred space.
In reality, the principles of Sant worship appear in numerous amalgamations with local usages. In Dādūdvārās, in households in the niche where the vāṇī is kept, in temporary shrines as they are erected at the halt of religious processions or at religious fairs, one finds the image of Dādū next to the vāṇī.
The present state of affairs is that one finds the cult of the scripture coexisting with that of the deceased gurus, represented by the slabs with bas-reliefs of their footprints under a canopy, but also life-size statues of these. Characteristically, the deceased gurus have their commemorative sites under or by trees.
In ascetic yogic lineages, one will find emblems typical of these—tridents, the ascetic fire (dhuni), a pair of tongs—side by side with the scripture. In brief, while Sant rhetoric draws strict boundaries against other cults, these boundaries are permeable.
Sant Manuscripts
In Rajasthan Sant literature started appearing in manuscripts from the end of the sixteenth century. Among the Sikhs of Panjab, the non-Sikh Sants, called by them the bhagats, appear since the early 1570s.50 In Rajasthan the earliest Sant sectarian manuscript culture lay mainly in the hands of the Dādūpanth and the Nirañjanī sect.51 The oldest now available codex is a Dādūpanthī one of 1615, but its material was copied from earlier manuscripts.52 Both the Sikhs and the Dādūpanthīs, followed suit by the Nirañjanīs, transmitted works of the torch-bearers of Sant bhakti from regions other than Panjab or Rajasthan. The poetry of these travelled to the northwestern regions and was expended on because of the great fame of their authors. Consequently, much anonymous poetry was also assigned to them. The autochthonous Rajasthani Sants looked up to them and adapted their compositions and supplemented these according to their own literary tradition. Besides numerous others, these authors were also given a life by hagiographers from Rajasthan. In this way they were inculturated there. Quite typically, Sant manuscripts take the form of codices uniting numerous texts and following a particular sequence of authors. Dādūpanthī manuscripts give pride of place to Dādū’s works and range those of Kabīr, Nāmdev, Raidās, and Hardās next to these. Besides, such manuscripts comprise a great number of other Sant authors as well as other literature of the broad Vaishnava spectrum akin to Sant principles. These codices also transmit the Hindi works of the Nāth Siddhas, yogis who distanced themselves from the tantric-magic elements in haṭhayoga. They were apparently not organised as a distinct sect but were fused with the Sant constituencies.
Sant manuscripts are usually not illustrated. There is, however, a pattern of named citrabandha poetry, items of which are found in the works of Sundardās.53
Fortuitously, a number of early codices have colophons that allow for the reconstruction of the spiritual genealogy and the networks of scribes of which more will be said in Chapter 2. The scribes were sadhus, who compiled manuscripts for themselves, for private study and, more practically, as manuals for their devotional and homiletic practices. As the sects gained in influence, lay people of means also started commissioning manuscripts of Sant compositions. To fulfil such wider demand, professional scribes were hired as well. This development is, however, posterior to the time spanned by this volume.
Sant literature was and has remained both oral and written. In the past, composition was largely inspired by and relied heavily on formulaic and prosodically regulated building blocks typical of oral poetry. The very act of composition could easily take place in performance. Sadhus had grown up in that oral culture, and their training was formally reinforced as they competed with each other in memorizing and creating new poetry. Extending well into the twentieth century, a feature of this training was, for example, a composition game at which a person would recite the first line of a rhyming couplet and another was be asked to complete it. Another typical feature of Sant literature is represented by the innumerable exempla (dṛṣṭānt). Much like the Jains, the Sants compiled collections of these in great number.54 Rhetoric finesse in homiletics includes also the ability to come up with an appropriate exemplum.
Literary Form
Sant literature is most commonly in verse. Prose is typically reserved for commentaries. Sant compositions share prosodical patterns with other North Indian vernacular poetry of the period. Oral composition and transmission went hand in hand with the use of mnemonic devices. These are reflected in a host of formulaic patterns, quite often following enumerative principles running through a composition. These could take the form of an ascending or descending numerical sequence, or follow the seasons or months of the year, or the letters of the alphabet, or other principles.
A composition usually bears the signature of its real or alleged author, his ‘imprint’ or ‘seal’ (chāp). Anonymous compositions could be assigned to popular authors, and new compositions were made continuously, inspired by famous authors and given the names of these as signatures.55 One and the same composition is also found to be assigned to various authors. An anonymous composition could be appropriated by individual authors by merely prefixing their name. Replacement need not affect the metre, but the addition of a signature to a verse is often revealed by the respective line being hypermetrical. A good number of those hypermetrical verses are, for example, found among Bājīd’s arils.56 Scholarship has examined the attribution of compositions to various authors, scribal variants, changes in the sequence of stanzas in a song, or the omission of stanzas. Many of these features have to be understood in connection with the practice of singers, who differed amongst themselves in personal preference or by musical traditions.57
Literary Patterns
The three main sorts of texts of Sant literature are (1) independent verses, (2) songs, and (3) didactic treatises. For metres, see pp. 54–9.
(1) Independent Verses
The most common independent verse was the dohā or dūhā, with its numerous variants the most common metre of the sākhīs, ‘testimonies’ of truth, although more rarely also verses composed in other metres could funcion as sākhīs.58 Terse and explicit, these made long stories short and also provided triggers for homiletic elaboration. Bakhanāṃ, for example, was praised for the arrow-like pointedness of his sākhīs.59 Singers typically introduce their recital of songs by one or serveral distichs setting the theme of the performance. Another popular type of short independent verses is the aril (arilla 60). The last quarter of the aril forms a coda that may subvert the content of the preceding three verse quarters. Bājīd’s arils, some of which appear in this collection, were highly regarded so that numerous anonymous verses of this type were attributed to him. Great sophistication was deployed in the composition of kavits (kavitta 61) and savaiyās, in Sant and other poetry of the period. Rajab, for example, is praised for his kavits, and Sundardās, for his savaiyās, which earned him the title ‘crown of the poets’.62
(2) Songs
Songs are composed in a variety of metres, but in a song, rather than its prosodic qualities the poet-singer’s musical performance in a particular musical mode (rāg) is important. The metre was subordinated to the cyclic rhythmical structure of the rāg. Metre may cede to the beat (tāl) of the musical mode. The mood of this was sought to be recreated again and again by successive performers. In manuscripts and also in print, songs of an author are arranged by rāg chapters. This is reflected in Part 2 of this book, where the rāg of each song is recorded. Songs are typically sung in solo performance, and less often in a chorus. The type of song called āratī, however, is performed in a chorus to conclude a bhajan session or the morning and evening service, respectively.63
Although in performance musical aesthetics dominate, metre is still important as a mnemonic necessity. Songs were composed with a particular metre in the mind of the composer, for he had in his memory metrically organized formulaic building blocks. In homilies, portions of songs may be recited in the rhythm of the metre.
A song consists of a first stanza serving as a refrain (ṭek, sthāyī) and a sequence of further stanzas (antarā). The first line of the refrain may be shorter than the rest of the verse lines. This reflects that the song starts with a syncope somewhere in the middle of the rhythmic cycle (āvarta).
(3) Didactic Treatises
Didactic compositions are largely composed of building blocks consisting of independent verses. Didactic texts carried familiar messages, whose validity hardly required confirmation. They appealed to an audience by skilled usage of prosodic and stylistic devices rather than their forseeable moral teaching. Treatises were generally composed in common narrative metres (15 or 16 syllables to the verse line).64 The use of quite a variety of metres in one and the same text sets in with poets trained in the poetology taught in Sanskrit and Brajbhāṣā by rhetoricians of their day. Metrical variety was henceforth declared by such learned poets as enhancing the power of the religious message.65 In the manuscripts of didactic texts, the metres were usually identified. This usage has been retained in Part 2.
Stylistic Devices
Sant literature exhibits typical stylistic devices. These are mainly (1) ambiguous expressions and tropes, (2) structuring of compositions according to serial principles, for example, enumeration, and (3) an imagery inspired by the regional culture.
(1) Ambiguous Expressions
Ambiguous expressions, enigmas, riddles, paradoxes, and the like have formed poetic devices since the earliest strata of Indian ritualistic parlance. Such expressions were sometimes called brahman, which refers as well to the sacrificial formula putting into effect a ritual operation as to the supreme reality. They thereby point to that which the human mind cannot grasp.66 Ever since that ancient stage the propensity for this kind of expression has been profusely at work in gnomic literature, which was also used for teaching, including the teaching of sadhus.67 The knowledge thus acquired would set apart the initiated specialists from ordinary people so that the cultivation of that system of knowledge would also draw a boundary between virtuosi and commoners. The Nāth Siddhas and the Sants inherited those devices from the same tradition that also informed Buddhist tantric poetry.68 In making ample use of such devices, the Sants use a specialized ambiguous language, but this language is not, or no longer, secret. Their poetic versatility in this is demonstrated by paradoxical verses composed in a serial fashion.69 That the Sant knowledge system was not hermetic becomes evident at the very beginning of the seventeenth century, when exegetical compendia arranged as thematically organized glossaries started appearing. The development of Sant exegetical literature since the eighteenth century has been hardly explored, but it seems that since then the increasingly formal training of sadhus in ancillary classical disciplines led to increasingly scholastic commentaries. With the application of scholastic exegesis to poetry, the semantic ambiguity of this tends to be disambiguated. This bears the risk of dampening the listener’s or the reader’s creative response to poetry.
(2) Structuring According to Serial Principles
The serial principle corresponds to the concept of enlightenment as a progressive process. This may be captured in having the seeker pass through all the days of the lunar month, or through all the seasons or months of the year. The preference for numerals corresponds also to the mathematically detailed system of Indian cosmography. This was translated (and modified by medical and alchemical concepts) into the system of the tantric esoteric body. Numbers are essential to the tantric worldview, for the tantric process of perfection aims at winding back systematically all diversification into the one without another. This perspective resulted in treatises arranged numerically in the order of the stages of perfection and their concomitant sense perceptions. For adepts initiated into this specialized system, a numeral in isolation without reference to the signified object was hardly enigmatic. This is not to deny that the relation between a numeral and the signified object could well remain ambiguous or that a numeral from among the many numeral devices might occur as it were arbitrarily or just exaggerated to hypertrophical dimensions. The serial principle, however germane to a type of religion according to which the process of liberation is understood as an ascent to the supreme truth, is at the same time a device of oral literature and most appropriate to a culture continuously on the move in planned phases, be it along the trade routes crossing the region, be it by transhumance of cattle breeders in a drought-prone desert or semidesert, be it in search of a position in the military labour market, or be it along the circuits of sadhus. An example of this is the ‘poetry of the twelve months’ coupling with a variety of ballad themes.70
Table 1: Numeral signifiers and their significations as occurring in the texts collected in Chapter 3
Numeral signifier
Signification
1
the self in union with the Supreme Self
2
dyad, duality
3
(1)
the three strands or qualities (guṇa) of materiality (prakṛti), that is, clarity, activity and inertia (sattva, rajas, tamas)
(2)
three bitter tastes
(3)
the three main conduits (nāḍī) in the esoterical body, namely, Iḍā, Piṅgalā, and Suṣumnā
(4)
the three conduits identified with the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and Sarasvati
4
(1)
four watches (each of about three hours) of the day or night
(2)
four Vaishnava orders or sects with their alleged founders Rāmānuja, Śrī, Madhva, and Rudra
(3)
that which transcends materiality (see under 3)
5
(1)
five principles or elements (tattvas), to each of which belong five further categories; therefore everything consists of ‘the five plus twenty-five’
(2)
five senses; also called ‘the five hunters‘ chasing the soul-deer
6
(1)
(med.) six flavours (rasa), namely, sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and adstringent
(2)
six views; the term is taken from the six major systems of philosophy but serves as a cover term for the totality of religious views disenfranchised by the superior Sant faith
7
(med.) the components of the body, namely, blood, bile, flesh, fat, marrow, bones, semen
8
eight watches of the day and night (see also under 4)
9
(1)
pathways or doors, representing the nine orifices of the body
(2)
nine Nāths (conventionalized number)
10
(1)
tenth door, the exit from the microcosm of the body to the macrocosm which is located at the fontanelle
(2)
series from 1 to 10: sound experiences of the yogi indicative of progressive approach to union and eventual merging with the śabda
12
twelve months
14
fourteen sciences, that is, the totality of sciences
25
see under 5
33
or multiplication of 33 by thousands: the total number of gods
52
(1)
the number of letters in the alphabet
(2)
conventionalized total number, for example, ‘fifty-two heroes’, that is, ‘all heroes’
68
conventionalized total number of pilgrimage sites and the water flowing at these
84
(1)
conventionalized number of the perfected ones (siddha)
(2)
eighty-four times one hundred thousand instances of rebirth
88
totality of the mythical wise men (muni)
96
totality of heresies
900
threads of the warp, probably a metaphor for the conduits (nāḍī) in the esoterical body
(3) Imagery Inspired by the Regional Culture
As for the imagery derived from the regional culture, four spheres featuring in this collection are especially noteworthy, namely, trade, textile craft, warfare, and agriculture.
(1) Trade Metaphors
Sant literature is rich in trade metaphors. Typical for the north-western regions of the subcontinent were the Bañjārās, caravan traders plying vast swaths of land under taxing climatic conditions.71 This inspired the bañjārā genre of songs, which are also linguistically located in the north-west. These songs have been testified to since the earliest manuscripts of bhakti poetry.72 Bañjārā poems are four-partite, allegorically linking the four units of the night (pahar), each of which measure three hours, with the stages of life, that is, childhood, youth, married life, and old age. These are identified with the vigil (jāgaraṇ) performances, in which real time is seen in parallel with the four phases of life from birth to death. Such songs emphasize the urgency of making wise use of the span of one’s life in order to find liberation. Bañjārā life is portrayed as a perpetual roaming and drudgery without a pause for reflection, the prerequisite of bhakti and salvation (text no. 10). The compositions represent human life as caught in the circle of birth and death and the chance of salvation thoughtlessly forfeited for preoccupation with worldly matters. The Bañjārā is on the move, never to arrive at the goal destined for humans, the eternal rest in union of the self and the Self. On Bañjarās depended the transport of food produce and wholesale goods. Their four clans were headed by wealthy leaders (nāyak).73 In documents these are reported as conducting their trade with several thousand oxen and their service being acknowledged by rulers with gifts of robes of honour.74 Bañjārās are, however, nomads, wandering perpetually with their families and carrying their belongings on bullocks,75 so that they personify man’s homelessness in the world. At night-break, they set up their tents and wrap them up at daybreak which was likened by Sants to the impermanence of human life. Albeit rich, they occupied the space outside settled life. More often than not starting out as petty peddlers, these nomad traders might eventually make a fortune. To start with, they took loans from merchant-bankers to invest in oxen and spent their surplus earnings (pūñjī) to repay the former. The Bañjārā, thus, signifies man’s dependence, vulnerability and alienness both to others as well as to himself, and therefore, transience in every respect.
Other traders, basically settled but periodically mobile in pursuit of their trade, ranging from street hawkers to merchant-bankers operating in a wide business network, add to the stock of trade tropes and themes. Rajasthan was a hub for traders, some of whom made fortunes and financed the ruling class. In the seventeenth century, the Sants recruited sadhus from the merchant castes, thereby securing a powerful merchant caste patronage. This resulted in a symbiosis similar to that at the heart of the constitution of the Jains, strongly represented in the region. Jain culture impacted the Sants with regard to both literary forms and monastic organisation. At the time under review, the Jain merchants produced remarkable lay leaders who became protagonists of religious reform movements. These were active at centres of trade inhabited also by Sants and their patrons.76 These places will be introduced in Chapter 2. Merchants were thus both intellectually and economically powerful. Sants from merchant castes were proud of their origins, and they put this on display in their poetry, as exemplified by Sundardās.77 On a different note, the trade trope transports also the popular negative perception of traders and money-lenders, blamed for their greed and avarice combined with masochistic frugality, their hard-heartedness, or their fastidiousness.78
Although trade metaphors appear in the poetry of earlier Sants like Kabīr, it is in Sundardās’s works that we find them fully displayed. His poems mirror the lives of merchants who were his patrons and among whom he lived and preached. While taking his examples from the world of settled merchants, Sundardās transposes the aforementioned metaphor of the four watches of the night typical for the banjārā songs to a new context. He relates the biological stages of life from childhood to old age, to the growth of business. An ordinary kid is like a poor hawker (banyoṭā) living in the courtyard of other people and barely eking out a livelihood. When he starts contemplating the innate brahman he matures (text nos. 71–2). With contemplation as his only commodity he can run his trade on cash instead of credit. As he starts earning cash, a man obtains maturity, and proceeds to become a petty moneylender, a Boharā.79 The abundant grace of the Supreme is the capital (pūñjī) which grows in proportion with man’s increasing contemplation. Insight obtained by grace is a constant flow of cash coming to the merchant so that he can always keep a full stock (kirāṃnā) at his shop. As the Baniya’s fame grows in the market, his influence among the customers (gāhak) also grows. He becomes an even bigger merchant, a wholesaler or koṭhīvāl. Text nos. 71 and 73 portray this hierarchy.80 At the top stands the merchant-banker, the śāh. Text no. 73 concludes with an anticlimax: The true merchant banker is the indwelling Rām, here called Ramaiyyā, the benevolent lord, and not the greedy, unsympathetic Baniya. Sundardās emphasizes the impermanence of life by his word choice. For example, ‘market’ in his songs is a hāṭ, a market laid out for the day and lifted in the evening. Sundardās describes the stock of the greengrocers’ shop: grain, salt, bitter oil-cakes for cattle fodder, garlic, onions, cloves, and betel nut as well as medicine. These are contrasted with the trading of pearls and gemstones or saffron and musk that the aspiring merchant desires to sell (text no. 74). Out of all these commodities, Sundardās ranks highest the inquiry after the Supreme Self (brahma vicār), the only and uniquely beautiful substance (sundar vastu) worthy of exchange. If that kind of costly diamond is bought or stored in the ‘shop’, the merchants need not fear failure in business and sliding back into poverty. In those songs, the supportive network of the community and its sense of solidarity are also projected on the Supreme Self (śāh).81 The trader trope, thus, describes the social values of status and wealth with graphic precision but by the same token denounces these as hollow.
(2) Ergological Tropes: Spinning, Stitching, Weaving
Textile production provides a rich imagery for the relationship of man with the supreme, for the two form a unity represented as a fabric. The threads of the warp represent the elements of the human esoteric body. Into these man enters the weft of continuous meditation and murmured or silent recitation. The rhythm of weaving corresponds to the practice of breath discipline (prāṇāyāma). These tropes occur frequently, but they remain sometimes enigmatic, mainly because only isolated moments of ergological processes are alluded to or perhaps also because ergological facts appear as transformed for good into a religious jargon. This deserves at least a tentative elucidation of the complex tropes, while acknowledging that these cannot be fully explained by referring to ergological facts.
The spinning imagery may govern entire compositions.82 Spinning is the job of women so that respective metaphors may include the imagery of the foolish and the wise woman, the one maladroit, the other an expert spinner.83 In a song of Bakhanāṃ, the theme of which describes the bonding with the interior god, spinning occurs among other similes. These culminate to express that union with God can only be achieved by utmost concentration and self-sacrifice. Dying to the world opens the door to liberation. As the moth heads for the flame, and the deer is transfixed by the sound of the hunter’s whistle, the spinner cannot take her mind off her work.84
I will join and join and join,
I will never break but only join my love to Hari. (refrain)
The moth joins the fire. It will burn in it, and yet it does not turn away its body.
The deer hears the sound. Overcome by ardent yearning, it stops transfixed, though this will cost its body. (1)
A spinner turns the spinning wheel and the moment a thread breaks ties its ends together.
In this very fashion, Bakhanāṃ has joined himself to Hari and therefore broken with all else. (2)
Stitching can be readily associated with the Nāthyogīs, who wore patched robes and also stitched for themselves pouches or shoulder bags.85 Eighty-nine threads are, for example, mentioned by the Nāth Siddha Gorakhnāth. In one of his songs he uses the imagery of the patched robe of a Nāthyogī, saying:86
A robe of 360 patches, 21,600 threads,
72 conduits (nāḍī) in 89 needles, the greatest hero starts stitching with these.
The editor of the text, P.D. Barthval, comments on this by referring to familiar yogic notions. The body is said to have 360 bones; during one day and night a human being breathes 21,600 times, and the number 89 indicates a great quantity.87
The imagery of weaving is related to the country loom, the farther warp end of which is suspended from a point above, say, the branch of a tree. At its lower end sits the weaver, either on the bare ground or on a bench over a pit (sāla) in a work shed. The loom is, therefore, a metaphor for the joining of low and high. Characteristically, it occurs in compositions inspired by yoga. The yogic process aims at bringing the life-creating but perishable fluid, the semen, up to the highest cranial point where it is thought to be transformed into the imperishable elixir of immortality.
Automatically, one would perhaps think that weaver songs hark back to the Sant poet Kabīr, the Muslim weaver (julāhā) revered as a model by Sant poets. He may well have inspired Rajasthani weaver poems, but actually the weaver poems assigned to Kabīr are confined to Rajasthani manuscripts and therefore cannot be connected directly with the revered author from Banaras. In the Sant compositions from Rajasthan, the weaver appears typically as a member of the Kolī caste, reported to have eked out a wretched living.88
The warp represents the elements of the human body as conceived in tantric yoga. Its threads are the conduits through which the breath passes and gathers in the central conduit. Here it propels up to the cranial vault the creative power or the five elementary principles. Remembrance is the woof, and the recitation of the name of God is the rhythmically moving shuttle. The weaver’s unswerving concentration on warping and weaving represents the religious practitioner’s meditation. Though quite often only fragments of the ergological process are mentioned, these are usually rendered in a correct sequence, as would be expected in compositions addressing an audience for whom this was household knowledge. The similes function, however, not as factual descriptions but focus on yogic essentials. Dādū’s Kolī song in this collection (text no. 21) constitutes an example of the depiction of a fairly consecutive process. The scheme underlying this is:
Cleansing of the warp threads; applying starch and oil to give the warp firmness and smoothen the threads to ease the passing of the shuttle.
Insertion of the warp threads in the comb.
Winding the spool and inserting it into the shuttle; driving the shuttle.
Production of the cotton cloth while taking care to mend broken threads.
Appraisal of the produce as selling well in the market of the beyond.
Delivery of the cloth to the weaver’s master.
Denouement.
Other weaving songs are more intricate, including some of those attributed to Kabīr but also one of Hardās, hence of Rajasthani origin.89 The complexity of this Kolī song challenged commentators.
कोली करता की गति जाणैं।
जोग अठोतर नली नवासै, सूत समेटै ताणैं ॥ (टेक)
पांच परीता फेरि अपूठौ, दे खूंटी बिसतारै ।
बारबार चित धागै राखै, जीति सारि न हारै ॥१॥
ड्यौढ अढाई गिणि गिणि गांठै, तामैं तार न चूकै ।
बुणकर बस्त बिधाता पायौ, अटल बर्रबरि धूकै ॥२॥
इंद्र गजी ले आतुर चाढै, सूनी साल न छाडै ।
तब हरदास कहावै कोली, मांगि मजूरी लाडै ॥३॥
The weaver knows the ways of the Creator,
Yoga (or: union) of the hundred and eight with eighty-nine (bobbin lengths in the) shuttle. He collects the threads while warping. (refrain)
The five he rolls back from behind. He sets the pegs and spreads out (the warp).
Again and again he checks the threads; he won’t lose the game piece once won. (1)
Counting repeatedly one and a half, two and a half, he ties; in so doing, the threads do not run out.
The weaver has obtained the real thing (or: the cloth) representing the Creator, immovable, identical with him he bows to him. (2)
He is eager to offer the cotton cloth made of his senses, he never leaves his loom empty.
Hardās, someone is called a weaver if he rejoices in working on demand. (3)
The composition shows a propensity for numbers—enigmatic for a modern reader but probably not for a listener of the sixteenth century—which resembles the tantric parlance displayed by the Nāth Siddhas. In Hardās’s song, the weaver prepares a warp of the hundred and eight and the eighty-nine conduits in his body. A hundred and eight can perhaps be related to the murmured prayers counted by that many beads of the rosary. A citation of the trope of eighty-nine, as used by Gorakhnāth, has been mentioned above. According to Hardās’s song, warping demands utmost concentration to avoid the confusion or dropping of threads. The yogic practitioner is engaged in ‘winding back’ diversification into the real one. This is the process of weaving the immaculate fabric, which is the union of the self and the Self. The five principal elements are wound back. This corresponds to the winding of the warp on the back roller of the loom. It seems that in stanza 1 the author refers to pegs (khūṃṭhī) between which the woof is stretched. Pegs operating as twisting handles at both ends of the cloth-beam prevent it from slipping and help in progressively winding up the woof.90 At the end of the stanza, Hardās slips into the imagery of the game, which forms a popular trope.91 The game-piece won by the weaver is the rarely obtained human existence. A variant reading spells this out more directly: ‘life once obtained he won’t lose’.92 Stanza 2 seems to be still concerned with warping, for Hardās speaks of making knots (gāṃṭhai). The verb is also used for attaching oneself emotionally to something or someone. The repeated units of one and a half and two and a half, counted all the while by the weaver, are interpreted by commentators as the four stages of consciousness. This does not, however, explain the fractioned measurement of the units. One might think of the breath rhythm of inhaling, pausing, exhaling, pausing, and so forth. Interestingly, the fabric woven by the Kolī is a coarse cotton cloth, the same type of cloth also mentioned in Dādū’s Kolī song (text no. 21).
An anonymous commentary on the song, first appearing in a manuscript of VS 1821, almost ignores the ergological aspects of the song and offers an interpretation which is paraphrased here:93
Refrain: Eight [more than a hundred] (aṭhotara): Five principal elements (tattva), three qualities (guṇa), these are tied to Nārāyaṇa. Eighty-nine (nalī navāsai): He (the practitioner) keeps the nine doors stable. Threads (sūta): deep concentration, mystical awareness (surati). Collects (sameṭai): He makes them stable in the heart while warping. He thereby guards the Lord in himself.
Stanza 1: Five rollers (pāṃca parītā): five senses. From the world he turnsback the pegs (khūṃṭī). This means acquiring knowledge. Spreads (bistārai): the protection of Govinda. He does not allow the thread of his deep concentration to break. Game-piece (sārī): the body (sarīra).
Stanza 2: One and a half, two and a half (ḍyoḍha aḍhāī): the four states of consciousness. He ties them with Govinda. ‘Four’ [indicates] four inner faculties (catuṣṭa aṃtahakaraṇa). Weaver (buṇakara): the embodied soul (jīva).
Stanza 3: Senses (iṃdra): the self. Cotton cloth (gajī): reflecting on his body (guṇatā sīra). Eagerly offers (ātura hvai cāḍhai): while weaving, he makes himself the same as Govinda. Loom, weaver’s workshop (sālā): in the body he remains stable. Then he is called a weaver (taba kolī kārīgara kahāvai). Work (maṃjūrī): vision (darsana). Rejoices (lāḍai): rejoices (the commentator uses a synonym).
This commentary suggests that by the second half of the eighteenth century exegetes disambiguously related the various elements of the craft imagery to religious notions.
The last genuinely Rajasthani example of a Kolī song is by Rajab:94
रे सुन कोली प्राण हमारा, तू करिले काम संवारा।
करगहि बैठि गजी बुणि लीजे, बढ़ता भला तुम्हारा ॥टेक।।
नौ सौ पूरि निरंतर ताणां, भाव भक्ति करि भेवो ।
मांडी महर तेल तत्त्व निर्मल, प्रेम छांट दे लेवो ॥ १ ॥
बैठि विचार सुनि फणी फहम की, सर्व सूत भरि लीजे ।
मन चित लाय कृत्य करि कोली, तार न टूटण दीजे ॥२॥
बाणें बाहि वस्तु वित ऊंचा, ज्यों उस हाट विकावै ।
लेऊ राम महा अति चौकसी, और न नीड़ै आवै ॥३॥
ऐसी समझि बुणी रे बुणकर, फेरि उल्टी नहीं आवै ।
रजब रहै राम घर रेजा, दर्श दाति वित पावै ॥४॥
Listen, my weaver-soul, focus on your work,
Sit at the loom and weave the cotton cloth, and you will keep your job in good order. (refrain)
While warping uninterruptedly the nine hundred threads, smoothen them with the water of emotional bhakti.
Apply on them the starch of compassion and the oil of the pure real thing, sprinkle love on it. (1)
Sit and listen mindfully to the shuttle of gnosis, let it run through all the threads.
Weaver, do your job absorbed in mind and thought, do not allow the thread to break. (2)
If you keep weaving, the item will become a precious good (piece) selling well in the yonder market.
Speak the name of Rām with utmost watchfulness, let nothing interfere with this. (3)
Weaver, if you weave with such an understanding, you will not come back!
The precious fabric of Rām’s house, says Rajab, will endure: The wealth you will obtain is the gift of vision. (4)
(3) Warfare
Tropes of siege and war express the seeker’s struggle with his restive mind and the demands of his physical body, which needs to be subdued to the esoteric body. There is a specific genre of compositions, sometimes of epic length, called yog-saṃgrām, ‘battle of yoga’, and this is also the topic of numerous lyrics and independent verses. The devotee focusing his mind on the eternal is described as a fighter holding on to a rope while besieging the fortress of the body. For tropes of siege and war in this volume, see for example text nos. 37, 60, and 79.
Heroism is a stance running through Rajasthani literature. This has been captured insightfully by Janet Kamphorst:95
The battle-death of a warrior…, who is thought to give up his life selflessly, in order to serve others, is commonly presented in terms of ascetic renunciation of life. Both a warrior and renouncer were thought to relinquish life. The warrior’s renunciation comes about by dying in battle while a renouncer is believed to die to the world in a spiritual sense. A warrior’s asceticism rather differs from what is thought of as ‘standard’ Brahminical views rendering ascetic renunciation a final choice upon which one cannot go back. Martial ideals of ascetic warriorhood were part of pastoral-nomadic survival strategies, which is to say that warrior ascetics generally survived by combining family life, agricultural subsistence and cattle herding (or raiding) with military service.
Sequences of expressive sounds formed part of stylistic devices of Cāraṇ poetry, for their recital was meant to inculcate in the audience an appetite for war. Formidably impressive even on the printed page, these devices were brought out fully by staccato performance. Such sequences of hoarse or rough sounds were or could be formed into meaningful words, but belligerence incited by sound was considered more important. After all, fast staccato recitation would not have allowed for adequate grammatical understanding. An example of the adoption of this device in Sant poetry is found in text no. 79, vv. 35 and 36. More relevant details will follow soon when discussing compositions drawing expressly on Cāraṇ poetry.96
(4) Agriculture
Tropes of agriculture are closely connected with martial ones for the cultural reasons brought out in the above-quoted words of Kamphorst. The Sants equate their utmost concentration on the inner self with heroism and farming, for both of these require single-minded dedication and attentiveness. The Sants capture the eradication of worldliness by the imagiery of farming. The religious practitioner is like a farmer uprooting straws and weeds while tilling the field (text no. 7, vv. 8, 11). To harvest plentifully, he has to sow the seeds at the right moment of the beginning of the rainy season. In the same way a warrior sows the seed of fame, namely, his blood, in the field, which represents both the woman and the battlefield. For the Sants, progress on the spiritual path requires watchfulness comparable to that of a farmer guarding his field at night. Ploughing and levelling are equivalents of subduing the mind. The Rajasthani poet Prithvīrāj Raṭhauṛ exploits such metaphors in his classic sixteenth-century poem, Krisan rukmaṇī rī veli. In this he juxtaposes the metaphor of waging a fierce war with tilling the field by Krishna’s brother Balarām who fights with his plough.97 Prithvīrāj’s poem follows the style which was perfected by the Cāraṇs. The following example from Cāraṇ poetry reveals some of the equivalences with Sant poetry.98
Lālsiṃh Rāṭhaur in an Agricultural Allegory:
The hero’s fame falls as the seed on the Rajput field, he has fertilized it by burning the enemies’ hearts,
A mighty ploughman ploughing, he has started his violent farming. (1)
Pulling out the roots is the battle, the powerful king ploughs under the dust of pride,
The hero levels the clods representing the enemy, with the leveling plank he makes the uneven even. (2)
He pulls out the weeds with their roots, he urges forward the horse pulling the plough,
He distributes the farmhands’ rations to his troops helping him with his furious weeding. (3)
The troops sit in lines for feeding; Lālā, the descendant of Dūlā, is a generous farmer.
Zealously he breaks off the heads from their stems, he is a formidable farmer. Hail, hail to him! (4)
Who can match the grandson of Pahāṛsīṃ who receives the whole earth as his reward?
The nobility delight in learning about the Rajput style of agriculture of the Rāṭhaurs. (5)
The ideals of Sant, warrior, and farmer come together in the Persian term langar mentioned in the Rajasthani original of the verse above. Commensality practices were central to the warriors to uphold clan solidarity and kinship. Similarly it was part of the constant give and take custom of the Sants and their lay patrons. The practice of langar continues in the farming societies of Rajasthan until today, where it is called goṭh, the feast of the farmers with their neighbours and helpers after the harvest.
Performance
Preachers drew on the Sant tradition, including their own compositions for their performance. From early on these came to be collected in anthologies. When praising Rajab, the poet and compiler of the anthology Sarbaṅgī,99 the hagiographer Rāghavdās (also Rāghodās) pointed out the merits of Rajab not only as an anthologist but also as a preacher. As an anthologist, Rāghavdās says, he focused on compositions expressing the supreme value of the Sants, the ultimate reality. This can be appreciated by a modern reader of the anthology. As an independent poet, Rajab is praised not only for the type of compositions enumerated by Rāghavdās but also for being a mine of anecdotes, by which he would exemplify those compositions in his homilies:100
In the Sarbaṅgī he told of the ultimate reality and collected the poetry of all.
Of his distichs (sākhī), songs, and kavittas 101, none comes without an example.
All the anecdotes (prasaṅg) in the world stand reverentially at his disposal.
The homiletic talent of Rajab and, for that matter, the oral homiletic tradition practised in the seventeenth century elude us. The name of Rajab’s Sarbaṅgī means ‘Comprising all limbs (alternatively: all themes as they are arranged chapterwise)’. Thematically organized anthologies served as manuals used by preachers to prepare and deliver homilies.102 They would fit topical verses into the context, preferentially, of the events of Dādū’s life. These anecdotes were called prasaṅg, ‘context’, and preaching based on this, the prasaṅg-kathā. In this way, the sacred utterances came alive by contextualization. They were authenticated by mentioning place and time of an event in the saint’s life and were proffered as valid answers to problems arising in specific situations. Thereby they were brought into the experiential orbit of a preacher’s audience. Among the forces shaping this orbit was the regional story telling tradition which comprised more than religiously edifying tales. Examples (dṛṣṭānt) from the broader tradition of proverbs and stories transported the cultural value system in an entertaining fashion. A talented preacher drew amply from the treasure trove of the regional popular stories and legends. Sant authors also compiled collections of anecdotes which they further elaborated by examples. There are countless examples of enormous thematic variety, and these were also put together in collections to serve a preacher’s needs.103
Suffice it to give two illustrations. The first one comes from an anthology coupling anecdotes of Dādū’s life with examples. It was authored by Campārām (d. 1843) in the 1820s. He relied on the tradition of his own lineage of sadhus which can be traced back to about three hundred years from now. His work is organized according to the contents of the works of Dādū, which were all but canonized shortly after Dādū’s death. In an earlier paragraph, we quoted a distich expressive of the complementary roles of sadhus and laity.104 Campārām selected this very distich to open his homiletic guide through the Dādūvāṇī’s sākhī chapter entitled ‘Chapter on the sadhu’:105
Dādū, if you give food to the body, you receive peace of mind,
If you feed a sadhu, you realize that your soul is identical with Rām.
Campārām takes off from this by adding an example:
Dhannā gave the Sants food, thereby satisfying them.
Though seeds had been missing, his field bore fruit, and he also found God.
The example represents in a nutshell the summary of the story of Dhanā (also Dhannā) as he also appears in the hagiography composed by Anantdās around 1600.106 The difference lies in the elaboration of Dhanā’s vita which receives a specific position in the Dādūpanthī topography. The editor of Campārām’s anthology was Sv. Narayandas. This sadhu-scholar hailed from a prestigious lineage of the Dādūpanthī Nāgās107 in whose sophisticated scholarly tradition he had been groomed. He was no doubt the most widely read, most erudite, and the most productive of Dādūpanthī scholars in the twentieth century. His scholarly approach was based on matchless first-hand knowledge of Dādūpanthī manuscript sources and the traditional hagiographical knowledge system which he combined seamlessly with his vast knowledge of the history of his sect. He was familiar with the tradition of Campārām because this had been transmitted to the sadhus whose homilies Narayandas had imbibed as homiletic models during his own monastic training. His commentary of the anecdotes and examples is, therefore, informed by the pattern of this ongoing tradition. He comments on the above-quoted example:
Dhannā was a Jāṭ of village Dhuã in the Tonk District. One day he was on his way to sow his field. His cart was loaded with wheat. On the road he met Sants, who had been going without food. Therefore, Dhannā gave the Sants all the seed for food, and because he was afraid of his family, he tilled empty furrows in the field. However, because he had given the wheat to the Sants, Dhannā’s field yielded a richer harvest than any of the neighbouring fields, and he also found God identical with his soul.
The story would amuse people, for Jāṭs are known for their skill as cultivators. Accordingly, Dhannā was clearly a misfit. The unlikely story rang true, though, for had the incident not happened close by, in a village in Tonk District? This goes to prove that the simple-minded is the elect of God. Go ahead, do as Dhannā did!
The other illustration comes from a manual for preachers authored by Sv. Narayandas himself. This appears as an appendix to his edition of Campārām’s work.108 The structure of it is based on the consecutive stations of Dādū’s life. These are depicted in hagiography and familiar to every Dādūpanthī, also because the sectarian festive cycle includes visits to those places. The text is thereby chronologically and topographically organized. For the various events in the Master’s life, that is the prasaṅgs, Narayandas provided copiously elaborated exempla. We have chosen the following sample passage which refers to pads of Dādū included in the present volume. It is taken from the narrative of the last few months of Dādū’s life. It sets in at the stage when Dādū had a premonition of his impending demise and retired to Naraina, the town where land had been given to him and his young sect for the construction of a monastic settlement. This settlement was to become the main seat of the Dādūpanth. Here Dādū is reported to have given the quintessence of his teachings and made dispositions regarding the future of his sect. The site of that settlement is close to the magnificent Tripoliya Gate of Naraina. The relevant chapter of Narayandas’s manual is therefore entitled ‘Nārāyaṇā tripoliyā prasaṅg’. The passage refers to the days preceding Dādū’s death when visitors thronged in to catch sight of him and partake of his spiritual legacy:109
On the fifth day, the lord of Naraina, Nārāyaṇsingh, along with his brothers Bhojrāj and Bhīmrāj, came to Dādū at Tripoliya. They made obeisance to him and sat down. Then Bhīmrāj asked: ‘Svami, let me experience the true form of the Supreme Self!’ Dādūjī recited pad no. 243,110 ‘My mind is weary of speaking’ (text no. 16). On hearing this, Bhīmrāj was very satisfied. Then Bhojrāj said: ‘Svami, you have called the Supreme Self indescribable, but the learned engage in describing the Supreme Self all the time. In order to allay Bhojrāj’s doubt, Dādūjī recited pad no. 245, ‘No one can grasp the Ungraspable’ (text no. 17). As he heard this song, Bhojrāj and all present in the gathering bowed their heads in acceptance, then took their leave and went to the palace. On the sixth day, the lord of Naraina, Nārāyaṇsingh, accompanied by his minister Kapūrcand and others, came to Tripoliya, paid obeisance and sat down. Kapūrcand asked: ‘Svami, what is the real form of the Supreme Self?’ Upon this Dādūjī recited pad no. 244, ‘I’ve asked what my beloved might be like’ (text no. 18)…
Hearing this song, all present in the gathering were amazed, then took their leave and went to the palace.
If you meet a sadhu, you meet Hari, the root of all happiness and bliss,
Dādū says, Rām pervades a gathering of sadhus.111
Then he recited pad no. 199, ‘Rare are the supreme lovers’ (text no. 14). When in the past Sants came to Naraina, they recited the last-mentioned sākhī and pad.
The sample narrative is carefully graded. Dādū recites three pads, the first addressing the youngest of the brothers, the second the middle, and the last one forming the climax by being addressed to the head of his patron’s family. This was Nārāyaṇsingh Khaṅgārot, the Kachvaha Rajput landlord of Naraina, who had given Dādū the land on which to lay out his settlement. Thereby, the anecdote fits the last days of Dādū in to an authentic historical frame. After this, the chapter goes on with more pads and sākhīs to conclude with the last sākhīs articulated by Dādū before he passed away.112 Put in the context of Dādū’s passing, the songs and sākhīs become portentous. By their net content and phrasing, however, they are neither novel nor unique, neither in Dādū’s oeuvre nor in the compositions of other Sant authors. They receive their aura by being related to a particular event in Dādū’s life. Interestingly, the three songs quoted in the passage are consecutive in the Dādū-vāṇi. In his edition, Sv. Narayandas took them to form a cluster of songs entitled ‘Amazement’ (hairān). This triad of songs is taken to reveal the awesome true form of the Supreme Self.113 In taking these as a cluster, the author followed the redaction that came to supplement the basic redaction of Dādū’s works containing two parts, one of thematic chapters of distichs, and the other with songs grouped under their respective rāgs. This supplementary redaction, named the aṅgabandhu recension, introduced thematic paragraphs throughout the vāṇī, that is, including the songs, and may have been already made in the first generation of the sect.114 This reveals that in the quoted passage Sv. Narayandas did not make an arbitrary selection but followed a long-established sectarian tradition.
Sant compositions were, thus, transmitted orally and in manuscripts. Some Sant oeuvres started being canonized at an early date, such as the Sikh Ādigranth and the Dādūvāṇī. But this did not close the parallel oral transmission and continued production of poetry assigned to individual authors, nor did the rise of the printed book. Therefore, textual criticism developed for the historical study of written literature does not form a suitable instrument for determining the auctorial authenticity of a composition. Rather, authenticity is constructed in an ongoing process of performance, which relies on structures of transmission of which only fragments have been retrieved so far. When, as in the above-quoted passage, compositions with no conclusive auctorial marker at all, apart from the exchangeable signature assigned to them, are set in the context of the dying Master’s legacy, they attain authenticity. Sant compositions therefore require performance to retain the rank of religious testimony. It is through performance that they sink into the heart of the audience. In a purely individual performance, such as singing a pad or reciting a sequence of sākhīs, the individual performer also instantiates the numerous performances of the relevant compositions that he may have attended and that form part of his own store of affective knowledge. Without performance and performance remembered, devotees cannot relate to those compositions. But for real or remembered performance they are dead letter.
As for the little-studied structure of transmission, there are a number of testimonies, all of which point to patterns of performance. Maybe from the seventeenth century, the Dādūpanthī tradition features a thematic substructure below the distribution of aphorisms by thematic chapters and the lyrics, by rāgs. This was applied to the oeuvre of Dādū as well as to the works, and results in smaller clusters of compositions addressing a particular topic. As has been mentioned, this is the substructure observed in the aforequoted passage from the manual of Sv. Narayandas. Individual sadhus would create for themselves repertoires of poetry which they would recite or weave into their homilies in congregational performance. Singers were and still are renowned for their performance of particular lyrics or, more generally, rāgs. One of the features of that redactional substructure is that certain clusters of compositions are understood to form dialogues between guru and disciple.115 The logic of this need not be revealed at the text surface but is based on a common practice and understanding. As far as texts in this collection are concerned, one can trace in the works of Bakhanāṃ preserved in manuscripts since 1730, a system of endorsing the author’s message by either a sākhī of his own or of Dādū. An example of this is text no. 36, which has a prelude sākhī:
Bakhanāṃ has learnt that the Veda is a jungle and love poetry a lake,
Fish getting drunk on milk will die.
In the case of Bakhanāṃ, this arrangement in the form of a topical prelude sākhī and a lyric may have been made by redactors. However, it certainly reflects common usage. Dādū’s amanuensis Mohandās Daftarī, for example, wrote a didactic text named Brahma-līlā-granth, which has 43 couplets twice intersected by sākhīs of Dādū.116 In this text he emphasizes again and again that his teaching is owed to the enlightenment he received from Dādū. By inserting the Master’s sākhīs, Mohandās authenticates his own teaching.
Sant Reflections on Aesthetics
Bakhanāṃ, speech is only good if the name of Rām is in it,
Explaining, listening, speaking without Rām is worthless.
Beautiful teeth, the nine tastes and the sixteen kinds of ornaments lack lustre if the mouth is not beautiful,
Similarly there is no beauty where the name of Rām is missing.117
These verses transmitted as Bakhanāṃ’s would have been endorsed unanimously by all Sants. They consider the art of poetry as a handmaiden in the articulation of faith. Sants loved posing as ignorant of poetic refinement which was a device to emphasize their blissful lowliness. While they composed in fact excellent poetry, it is true that they started articulating their thoughts about the role of literary aesthetics only around the mid-seventeenth century. Such reflection sets in with Sundardās, but its beginning lies in the first decade of the century, when the education of the same Sundardās was made a project by his elder mentors in the Dādūpanth. Because they envisaged for him an education firmly based on the current philosophical and literary theories in both Sanskrit and the vernaculars, they sent him for studies to Banaras. This was the time when vernacular poetic theory had attained great heights by about half a century. The poet and literary theorist Keśavdās (fl. sixteenth century), a poet at the court of Orcha, was the most renowned representative of this development.118 Theory-based vernacular poetry was called rīti (convention, manner). The Sants were, of course, cognizant of its success, and promptly denounced it as decorative glitter deflecting from the real message they wished to transmit. The elegantly simple Sant poetry in the prosodic forms cultivated also in the rīti style shows both their proficiency in this and their self-consciously kept distance from it. They rejected the twistedness of rīti which would have hopelessly obscured their teachings. Sant poetry came to share with rīti an emphasis on grammatical and metrical correctness, but it held its own in trying to convey as clearly as possible a religious message. For clarity’s sake, Sants drew also from the deep well of popular tradition, proverbs or metaphors from daily life. By 1660, we find Rāghavdās acknowledging and specifying in his hagiography the literary merit of particular Sants.119 This hagiographer belonged to a lineage in the Dādūpanth, cultivating the ethos and aesthetic sensibility of the courtly Rajput milieu and betrays the aesthetic perspective of this. One of his lineage’s forebears was a descendant of the Kachvahas of Amber, patrons of a galaxy of Sanskrit and vernacular poets, foremost among whom was Bihārīlāl (seventeenth century). The cousins of the Dādupanthīs, the Nirañjanīs, expressly stated that the vernacular literary language had to be grammatically and metrically refined to give power to the religious message. This principle made itself felt in the intellectual life of a community of sadhus that emerged in the beginning of the seventeenth century in Fatehpur, Sikar District.120 Sundardās would join this after the completion of his studies. Here, sadhus proficient in Sanskrit and champions of the vernacular literary language pursued projects of translation of Sanskrit religious texts into the vernacular. In 1635 Caturdās, the disciple of Santdās and like his teacher one of the sadhus of the Fatehpur ashram, concluded his translation of the eleventh book of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. This book attained wide circulation. Towards the end of his work he explained that the translator’s mission was a religious one, namely, the dissemination of religious messages to common people:121
As Vyāsa spoke about [the deeds of Krishna] in Sanskrit, the meaning of this did not become clear.
Pandits may understand this, but others never will.
Therefore, out of compassion he [Santdās] commisioned this task to me, his servant.
I kept the benefit of all in mind, and with all my heart spread it in the vernacular language.
It is thereby evident that the aesthetic reflections in the work of Sundardās had their seed in a long-standing engagement with the current literary developments on the part of seventeenth-century Sant intellectuals.
Two of our authors, Rajab and Sundardās, are among the early Sants who crafted their poetry in the genres and prosodic forms that were popular among the poets who flourished in the courtly settings. The Nirañjanī Sants followed suit, though a little later than the disciples of Dādū. Rajab exercized great mastery over the quatrain forms (kavit and savaiyā), the favourite of the rīti poets, while Sundardās affirmed that Sant poetry must satisfy the standard of learned rhetorics. He borrowed from earlier traditions of rīti poetry and Sanskrit ornate poetry (kāvya) to cater to the needs of a new and decidedly non-courtly audience. Sant literature (bāṇī or sant-bāṇī, ‘sayings of the Sants’) is often understood to contrast with rīti poetry. While the early Sants hardly addressed aesthetic issues, Sundardās clearly did and set new standards for Sant poetry by engaging with the classical and the current courtly poetic discourses. He emphasizes the importance of ornate poetry well equipped with poetic figures and metres. He dismisses flawed poetry lacking proper metre or correct rhyme, or sung badly (text no. 67):
Speak only if you know how to speak, otherwise keep your mouth closed and stay silent.
Compose poetry just if you know how to do so, with rhyme, metre and meaning that can’t be matched.
Sing only if you’ve a fine singing voice, so that listening to it enraptures the heart.
Poetic speech that’s meaningless, with broken rhyme or metre—this, says Sundar, should never be voiced!
With Sundardās the need of refined poetic craft gets firmly established in the Sant tradition. His thirteen octaves—sets of eight or more verses—show his philosophical expertise in Vedānta, Sufism and bhakti as well as his multilingual talent. These octaves follow a Brajbhāṣā pattern, having registers of Marvari, Purabi (eastern Hindi), Panjabi, Rekhta, Persian and Sanskrit. Some of these octaves came to feature in the liturgy of the Dādūpanth. Sundardās’s poem ‘Roaming the Regions’ (Deśāṭan), a flourish of savaiyās, is a fictitious guide to the regions. Sundardās did indeed travel from the west as far as Banaras and back, but the ironical picture of the regions he draws relies on the conventions followed in Rajasthani poetry by inspiration from more ancient models.122 Most of the time, these conventions are deployed to allow Marwar to shine brightly among the surrounding boorish regions. Sundardās’s shorter works include philosophical poetry on the fifty-two letters of the Nāgarī alphabet (bāvnī) and riddles on literary conventions, while others allude to lexicographical practice. Acrostic didactic poems such as the bāvnī were composed by the Jains and Sants prior to the seventeenth-century. Sundardās’s bāvnī, however, relates more to the prevailing literary trends of Brajbhāṣā courtly poetry, as he applied the rhetorical techniques of alliteration and pun in this didactic poem. Sundardās was among the poets of early modern Hindi who used many proverbs of various north Indian dialects and philosophical maxims of Sanskrit for didactic purposes. He not only presented himself as learned in the classical tradition of Sanskrit but also as conversant with the newly emerging Brajbhāṣā courtly poetry whose authors competed with each other in feats of ex tempore compositions. Sundardās is the earliest Sant who composed complex pictorial poetry on theological topics, such as the following citrabandha. In this type of graphic representation of poetry, the words are arranged in spirals, trees, etc. Citrabandha poetry forms part of the art of memory.123 Citrabandhas support instruction and were used in the education of Jain ascetics.124 Sundardās must have been familiar with this model, but he may have been actually prompted to introduce it into Sant writing when exploring new ways of writing during his poetic training in Banaras. Using this device, the poet describes the phenomenal world using the metaphor of a tree that is made of five elements each with their particular properties. In eleven of such citrabandhas, many of which are illustrated in the above-mentioned manuscript, Sundardās not only presents Sant principles but also literary conventions and tropes, thereby proving that these were used for instructional purposes.
Composing sophisticated didactic poetry enabled Sundardās to educate devotees through his preaching. He treated the traditional topics of poetics, such as prosody, with remarkable humour and, in this way, made these appealing also to a non-scholarly audience. He adopted discourses of traditional poetics with the aim to set standards of of flawless aesthetically rewarding Sant poetry. According to him, verse written in faulty metres hobbles along like a lame man and agitates poets and connoisseurs (text no. 69):
Reading poetry flawless from head to toe is really very nice.
If someone reads verses without enough limbs, though, poets take to flight.
If syllables are too many or missing, poetry limps like a lame man.
With too few or many morae, it staggers like a drunkard.
If the rhymes don’t match, it’s like a crooked person with only one eye; it’s like a blind man when it’s meaningless.
Says Sundar: The life of a poem’s the praise of Hari; without the praise of Hari it’s dead.
The comparison of faults in poetry with bodily deficiencies goes back to Sanskrit poetics and is continued in Brajbhāṣā rīti poetics, closer in time and language to Sundardās.125 By the time of Sundardās the rīti poet Keśavdās’s texts were already current in literary circles. As an innovation in comparison with earlier poetics, Keśavdās had already categorized the many poets in a threefold hierarchy from worst over middling to best according to the subject of their compositions. His placement of the poets ‘who are engrossed in the taste of Hari’ (hari-ras-līn) as the best of all gained influence in the emerging discourse on aesthetics.126 Sundardās shared this sentiment when defining the motive of poetry, which, in his words, should tally with Sant principles (text no. 61):127
Literature can be composed in many ways, like building an elegant dwelling,
But what is the use of a temple, says Sundar, if that houses no sacred image?
Despite Sundardās’s emphasis on the significance of aesthetics, the above-quoted couplet makes it clear that ‘singing the virtues of Hari’ (harijas) is the life force of a poem. Only by virtue of this can it endure. In this way Sundardās brought Sant poetry in line withs traditional poetics and at the same time affirmed Sant values. He however diverged from rīti poets with respect to the female principle, both as a topic of poetry and an allegory of poetic speech. Personifying poetry as a woman and thereby charging it with erotics was a long-established tradition inherited from Sanskrit literature and a preoccupation of courtly rīti poetry. Sundardās rejected erotics as an element of religious poetry but retained woman purged of this as an allegory of good speech (text no. 66):
One kind of poetic speech is like a woman with beautiful clothes and pretty adornments: she’s described as lustrously shining.
Another type’s like a woman whose clothes are torn and tattered; listening to her poetic speech is repellent.
The third type is simply dead, like a woman smothered by too many ornaments: although she may appeal to some, Sants stay away from her.
Three types of poetic speech exist in the world, says Sundar, but distinguishing one from another needs cleverness and skill.
Threefold classifications of poetry were common in Sanskrit,128 but Sundardās associated three types of poetic speech with dominant rhetorical trends articulated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sundardās’s diction is crucial to his pun because he referred specifically to a woman’s ornaments (śṛṅgār). The word śṛṅgār is multivalent: on the one hand, it is synonymous with bhūṣaṇ (ornament), on the other hand, it means ‘erotic sentiment’ and has its place in erotically laden courtly literature as well as in the Krishna bhakti. On this account, Sundardās warned his audience—in his words, the Sant community—against the negative effects of erotic poetry. His intertextual references and careful diction attest to both his familiarity with the court poetry of his time as well as his ability to use those very same categories to caution against the temptations coming with the courtly poetic language. Being aware of the literary culture that existed beyond the borders of Sant literature in his own time, Sundardās criticized some of the major genres and works of rīti literature (text no. 68):
Rasikapriyā, Rasmañjarī, Śriṅgār: informed by these books’ ideas, clever writers show women in ways that please the senses.
Shown in ways pleasing the senses, a woman appeals to lecherous men.
Praising a woman’s body from head to toe gives rise to the strongest desires.
Like a patient making his illness worse by eating heavy sweets,
Such are those lecherous people, says Sundar, engaging with Rasikapriyā.
Sundardās used a pun (śleṣa) on the words rasikpriyā (the connoisseur’s beloved) in the first and last lines and on rasmañjarī (bouquet of emotion), śriṅgār (erotic sentiment) and viṣaiṁ (topics, senses, desires) in the first and the third line. Each of these words generally relates to heroines and aesthetics in ornate poetry (kāvya). The first three words are also titles of rhetoric manuals of rīti, namely, Keśavdās’s Rasikpriyā (1591), Bhānudatta’s Sanskrit treatise Rasamañjarī on the characteristics of the heroine (nāyikā-bheda) composed in the 1500s, and the Sundar-śriṅgār (1631), composed by the Mughal emperor Shahjahan’s court poet Sundar Kavirāy, and, finally, the Rasmañjarī of Nanddās (fl. 16th century). Bhānudatta’s Sanskrit treatise had inspired Nanddās, who was one of the eight great poets associated with the bhakti sect of Vallabhācārya. Sundardās’s well-informed criticism did not go unnoticed by the later generation of devotional poets. However, the poetic device of pun that Sundardās used in words like śriṅgār was simplified later when the Nirañjanī poet-saints in Rajasthan, the Jain intellectuals based in Agra, as well as the nineteenth-century Svāminārāyaṇī devotional poets of Gujarat expressed their disapproval of the themes of courtly poetry for their respective audiences.129
Prosody
Manuscripts never mention metres for pads and sākhīs, but they always do for didactic texts, i.e. granths. The names of metres highlighted by the scribes in red ink emphasize the esteem for composing in a variety of metres and facilitate their correct use in performance. Some of the didactic texts exhibit indeed a rich variety of metres.
An independent strophe is a unit self-comprised with respect to grammar, syntax and meaning. This is called muktak, ‘free’.130 Strings of strophes, of which not all are necessarily self-comprised, appear in the songs (pad) and didactic texts (granth, updeś). A simple strophe consists of 4 quarters (pād), conveniently named a, b, c, and d. Strophes are organized in two lines with an end-rhyme (b-d). Quite often, there is also an internal rhyme (a-b; c-d). There are also half-strophes, consisting of two pāds, as well as composite metres exceeding four pāds.
The smallest prosodical unit is the mora (mātrā), that is, a short vowel (V), or a consonant (C) followed by a short vowel (CV). A short syllable is called ‘light’, laghu. All other syllables are long and called ‘heavy’, guru. In the following, short syllables are marked ᴗ, and long syllables –. In some metres, the end of the quarter can be either short or long (anceps). The consonant combination -nh-, mh-, or the -hy- in a perfective participle can be treated as short or long. Moreover, there is some prosodic licence by which long vowels can count as short.
In numerous metres, the metrical units are grouped by three syllables. These clusters are called ‘group’, gaṇ. A laghu or guru syllable at the end of a pād forms a gaṇ in its own right. The gaṇs bear individual names. Thereby gaṇ-based metres can be defined by just saying that the verse has so and so many gaṇs of this or that type. This is not mere mental acrobatics but derives from the fact that those metres were coupled with musical forms. In aesthetic theory, gaṇs are also related to particular deities. For example, the mythical serpent, piṅgal, is the deity of the na-gaṇ which has three short morae and is considered auspicious to start a composition with.131 The Sant authors may have expected the connoisseurs to be familiar with this. Sundardās’s didactic text Jñān samudra, written in multiple metres, in conformity with Sanskrit literature starts with a na-gaṇ. The structure of the various gaṇs is memorized by the mnemonic formula ya-mā-tā-rā-ja-bhā-na-sa-la-gam.
Table 2: Groups of morae (gaṇ)
gaṇ
mnemonic syllables
prosodical form
ya-gaṇ
ya-mā-tā
ᴗ – –
ma-gaṇ
mā-tā-rā
– – –
ta-gaṇ
tā-rā-ja
– – ᴗ
ra-gaṇ
rā-ja-bhā
– ᴗ –
ja-gaṇ
ja-bhā-na
ᴗ – ᴗ
bha-gaṇ
bhā-na-sa
– ᴗ ᴗ
na-gaṇ
na-sa-la
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
sa-gaṇ
sa-la-gam
ᴗ ᴗ –
la
ga
Distinctive of many metres are caesuras within the pād. The end of a pād is marked by the sign ।, and the verse is concluded by ॥. A caesura is called yati, represented here by a comma. Moreover, there are additional verse-internal boundaries across which groups of morae cannot fuse. In prosodical scanning, these are marked by +.
Metres based on the number of morae are called ‘verses regulated by the number of their morae’, mātrik chand. Metres based on the number of syllables are called ‘verses regulated by the number of their syllables’, vārṇik chand.
Verses are furthermore classified as sam, identical (a=b=c=d), ardhasam, semi-identical (a=c, b=d), and viṣam, ‘uneven’, that is, composite. Viṣam metres represent combinations of simple verses.
1. Metres of the Independent Strophes of the Collection
Dohā
Mora-based metre, ardhasam; a=c: 13 mātrās; b=d: 11 mātrās. Each of the two verse lines measures 6+4+3/6+4+1.
Quarters a and c must not start with ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ nor end in – ᴗ; the rhyming quarters b and d end in – ᴗ.
Variants of the dohā are common. There is also a metre representing a reverse dohā, the sorṭhā, with the sequence of 11+13=24 mātrās and the rhyme between pāds a and b.
Example of a dohā:
मन
मोटा
मन
पातला,
मन
पाणी
मन
लाइ।
ᴗ ᴗ
– –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ
– –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ।
जैसी
आवै
मन
महैं,
मन
तैसा
ह्वै
जाइ॥
– –
– –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ
– –
– ᴗ॥
(text no. 29.1)
Aril
There are several variations of this mora-based metre. The arils presented here are all by Bājīd, who mostly uses the following variant:132
Mora-based metre, sam; 21 mātrās with a caesura after the tenth or eleventh mātrā, the last three syllables of a pād are – ᴗ –.
In arils, the last pād usually sets in with an off-mātrā (off-beat) parihāṃ, an exclamation either denouncing or affirming what was said in the preceding pāds. This reminds one of round-dance patterns according to which, at the turning point into the opposite direction, the movement is briefly suspended, accompanied by an exclamation.
Example:
भूल्यौ
माया
मोह,
मौत
नहि
सूझई,
सुत
दारा
धन
धांम
आपनौ
बूझई।
– –
– –
– ᴗ,
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ
– –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ,
– ᴗ –
– ᴗ – ।
हरि
कौ नाव
अग्यांन
हिरदै
आनई,
परिहां
दीवा
सा बुझि
जाइ
भिया
यहु
मांनई॥
ᴗ ᴗ
– – ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ,
ᴗ ᴗ –
– ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ –
– –
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ,
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –॥
(text no. 83.6)
Savaiyā (mora-based)
Mora-based metre, 16/15 = 31 mātrās, ending in – ᴗ.
Example:
बैल
उलटि
नायक
कौं
लाद्यौ,
बस्तु
मांहि
भरि
गौंनि
अपार।
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– –,
– ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ।
भली
भांति
कौ
सौदा
कियौ,
आइ
दिसंतर
या
संसार॥
ᴗ –
– ᴗ
– –
ᴗ – ,
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ
– – ᴗ॥
नाइकनी
पुनि
हरषत
डोलै,
मोहि
मिल्यौ
नीकौ
भरतार।
– ᴗ ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– –,
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
– –
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ।
पूंजी
जाइ
साह
कौं
सौंपी,
सुन्दर
सर
तैं
उतर्या
भार॥
– –
– ᴗ
– ᴗ
– –,
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –
– ᴗ॥
(text no. 64)
Kavit
Syllable-based metre, 16/15 = 31 syllables, pād ends in –.
Example:
बोलिये
तौ
तब
जब
बोलिबे
की
सुधि
होइ,
न तौ
मुष
मौंन
करि
चुप
होइ
रहिये॥
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ,
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –॥
जोरिये
तब
जब
जोरिबौ
जांनि
परै,
तुक
छंद
अरथ
अनूप
जामैं
लहिये॥
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –
– ᴗ
ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ
– –
ᴗ ᴗ –॥
गाइये
तब
जब
गाइबे
कौ
कंठ
होइ,
श्रवण
के
सुनत
ही
मन
जाइ
गहिये॥
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –
– ᴗ
– ᴗ,
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –॥
तुक
भंग
छंद
भंग
अरथ
मिले
कछु,
सुन्दर
कहत
ऐसी
बांनी
नहिं
कहिये॥
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
– ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ,
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– –
– –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –॥
(text no. 67)
Chappay
Composite metre with many variants according to the distribution of morae.
Mora-based metre, viṣam, 1 rolā plus 1 ullāl strophe:
11/13 = 24 mātrās (4 pāds)
15/13 = 28 mātrās (4 pāds)
Example:
नष
शिष
शुद्ध
कवित्त
पढ़त
अति
नीकौ
लग्गै।
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ,
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– –
– –।
अंग
हीन
जो
पढ़ै,
सुनत
कविजन
उठि
भग्गै॥
– ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– –॥
अक्षर
घटि
बढ़ि
होइ,
षुड़ावत
नर
ज्यौं
चल्लै।
ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ,
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– –।
मात
घटै
बढ़ि
कोइ,
मनौ
मतवारौ
हल्लै॥
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ,
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ – –
– –॥
औढेर
कांण
सो
तुक
अमिल,
अर्थहीन
अंधो
यथा ।
– – ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ,
– ᴗ – ᴗ
– –
ᴗ –।
कहि
सुन्दर
हरिजस
जीव है,
हरिजस
बिन
मृत कहि
तथा॥
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –,
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –॥
(text no. 69)
Kuṇḍaliyā
Composite mora-based metre, viṣam, 6 pāds consisting of 1 dohā and 1 rolā and a total of 144 mātrās.
Example:
रसिक
प्रिया
रस
मंजरी
औ(र)*
सिंगारहि
जांनि ।
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –
– (ᴗ)
– – ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ।
चतुराई
करि
बहुत
बिधि
विषैं
बनाई
आंनि॥
ᴗ ᴗ – –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ – –
– ᴗ॥
बिषैं
बनाई
आंनि
लगत
विषयिन
कौं
प्यारी ।
ᴗ –
ᴗ – –
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– –।
जागै
मदन
प्रचण्ड
सराहैं
नष
शिष
नारी॥
– –
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ – –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– –॥
ज्यौं
रोगी
मिष्ठान
षाइ
रोगहि
बिस्तारै ।
– –
– – ᴗ
– ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– – –।
सुन्दर
यह
गति
होइ
जुतौ
रसिक
प्रिया
धारै॥
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –
– – ॥
* The spelling must be taken to represent au, an established phonetic variant.
(text no. 68)
2. Metres in the Didactic Texts of the Collection
For the dohā, see above (p. 55).
Caupāī
Mora-based metre, sam; 16 mātrās, no ja-gaṇ or ta-gaṇ at the end. A variant of caupāī is caupaī, sam; 15 mātrās, ends in – ᴗ.
Example:
पूरण
ब्रह्म
निरंजन
राया ।
तिनि यहु
नष
शिष
साज
बनाया॥
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ
– –,
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – –॥
ता
कहुं
भूलि
गये
बिभचारी।
अइया
मनुषहुं
बूझि
तुम्हारी॥
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ – –,
ᴗ –
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ –॥
(text no. 80.1)
Chand (= Harigītikā)
Mora-based metre, sam; rhyme a-c, b-d; 16/12 = 28 mātrās, ends in ᴗ –. 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th mātrā always ᴗ.
Example:
दुरवेश
दर
की
षबर
जानै,
दूर
दिल
की
काफिरी।
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– –,
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ –।
दर
दरदबन्द
षरा
दरूनैं,
उसी
बीच
मुसाफिरी॥
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ – –,
ᴗ –
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ –॥
है
बेतमा
इसमाइ
हर्द्दम,
पाक
दिल
दर
हाल
है।
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ,
– ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
–।
यौं
कहत
सुन्दर
कब्ज
दुन्दर,
अजब
ऐसा
ष्याल
है॥
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ,
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– –
– ᴗ
–॥
(text no. 76.2)
Indav
Syllable-based metre, sam; 23 syllables of the pattern 7 bha-gaṇs (– ᴗ ᴗ) plus a final –.
Example:
मौज
करी
गुरुदेव
दया
करि
शब्द
सुनाइ
कह्यौ
हरि
नेरौ।
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– –।
ज्यौं रवि
कैं
प्रगट्ये
निशि
जात सु
दूरि
कियौ
भ्रम
भांनि
अंधेरौ॥
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – –॥
काइक
बाइक
मानस
हू
करि है
गुरुदेव
हि
बंदन
मेरौ।
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– –।
सुन्दरदास
कहै
कर
जोरि जु
दादू दयाल
कौ हूं
नित
चेरौ॥
– ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– –॥
(text no. 62)
Kirīṭ savaiyā
Syllable-based metre, sam; 24 syllables of the pattern 8 bha-gaṇs (– ᴗ ᴗ).
Example:
लोग
मलीन
षरे
चरकीन
दया
करि
हीन लै
जीव
संघारत।
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ।
ब्राह्मण
क्षत्रिय
वैश्य रु
सूदर
चारुहि
वर्ण के
मंछ
बघारत॥
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ॥
कारो है
अंग
सिंदूर
की मांग
सु संषनि
रांड
बुरे
दृग
फारत।
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ।
ताहितें
जांनि
कही
जन
सुन्दर
पूरब
देस न
संत
पधारत॥
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ॥
(text no. 81, v. 1)
Cāmar (= Gītak)
Described in metrical treatises as a mora-based metre, sam; gaṇ-sequence ra-ja-ra-ja-ra, but in this collection appearing to be a metre of 26 mātrās, 4 pāds, ending in – ᴗ.
Example:
औवलि
कदम
उस्ताद
के
मैं
गहे
दोऊ
दस्त।
– ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
– – ᴗ
ᴗ –
– –
– ᴗ।
उनि
मिहर
मुझ
पर
करी
ऐसा
ह्वै गया
मैं
मस्त॥
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ –
– –
– ᴗ –
– ᴗ॥
जब
सुषुन
करि
मुझ कौं
कह्या
तू
बन्दिगी
करि
षूब।
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ ᴗ –
ᴗ –
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ।
इस
राह
सीधा
जाइगा
तब
मिलैगा
महबूब॥
ᴗ ᴗ
– ᴗ
– –
– ᴗ –
ᴗ ᴗ
ᴗ – –
ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ॥
(text no. 77.1)
Gazal
Mora-based metre of no more than 28 mātrās and usually with a caesura after the fourteenth mātrā. The even pāds end in – ᴗ. In Rajasthan gazals were prominent among Jain monks. These, and the one by Sundardās published in this volume, differ from the Persian and Urdu ghazal in form and content. Sundardās’s gazal is unique for its topic of bhakti-yoga, which differs from the Jain gazals. The latter are city-gazals describing an urban locale, religious and courtly spaces. These gazals follow a fixed form. A Rajasthani gazal starts with dohās, followed by the gazal-verses and is concluded by kalaś stanzas. Kalaś is a crest or pinnacle, also a water-pot used to welcome guests or to offer water to deities. Jain gazals served as invitations to monks to spend their four-months-retreat (caturmās) in a city—i.e. the city in whose praise a gazal has been written. One distinctive feature of the Rajasthani gazal is the emphatic ‘ka’ at the end of each pād. In terms of the mora-structure of a pād, this syllable does not count in the odd pāds.
(text no. 79)
Part I
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Sants of Rajasthan
Sant Principles
Popular Religion in the Mirror of Sant Poetry
Sant Worship
Sant Manuscripts
Literary Form
Literary Patterns
Stylistic Devices
Performance
Sant Reflections on Aesthetics
Prosody