Folk-Songs of Bengal

The folk-tale in my village, in the Punjab, touched the fringe of the traditional magic in old Bengal: the red and gold of childhood, I remember; awaited the story-teller with a growing interest: we actually wanted to see a person being transformed into a bee: it was the triumph of the woman of Bengal, or ‘Dhaka Bangala’ to use the original term, the story-teller declared, and once you are changed into a fly, you would no more be a free person, you would have to obey her all your life.

And after many years, in 1927, when I came to Bengal on a musical tour, I remembered the words of the story-teller. What wonder, I thought, if music was a part of the magic of the fairy-land. The voice of Santal Muse, too, came to my ears, as the dark but merry Santals passed in front of 'Panth-nivas' at Santiniketan. But I had decided first to take to Bengali folk-song.

I have acquired a working knowledge of the Bengali language during my sojourns in Bengal; every time the singing voice of Bengal has greeted me.

The hopes and dreams of the people, their smiles and tears, have all contributed to the folk-songs of Bengal; the tears, perhaps, are the leading factor in more cases. Many a generation has come and gone, but the folk-song has always been there. The language changes like the skin of a snake; certain pictures may be sloughed off; alterations and additions have always been there as in the birth and growth of folk-song all the world over. Religion and mythology have both given a stimulus to the song of the people; history, too, seems to have touched it. But the soil for its growth has always been the people’s life itself; the geographical conditions sometimes lend it a peculiar local colour.

A land of rivers, the river-side scene seems to be omnipresent in the folk-song of Bengal. There are rivers that flow from north to south; others flow from north-east to south-east; some flow from north-west to south-west; and still others that intervene from east to west, and, in some cases, from west to east. It is impossible to understand the position of riverside-scenes in the folk-song without actually seeing the rivers and streams themselves. And it is not necessary that the big names should appear; the little streams, little like the joys and sorrows of the people, appear again and again; the ‘Purni nadi,’ the ‘Khiraee nadi,’ the ‘Bhangla nadi,’ the ‘Churni nadi,’ the ‘Jalangi nadi,’ there may be hundred and one, or, perhaps, more. Some stream may be like the laughter of a village-girl; some like a shy bride; some like a sad widow; some like a sister calmly flowing towards her naughty brother. They flow, touching villages; fields greet them; boys and girls sing of them; again and again their waves inspire the village poet. The big rivers may be enraged so much as to wash away the country-side; the little streams are dearer for they are never so angry.

Nature becomes a member of the village life; her moods change. The trees and plants, in songs, are given human hearts; they speak with a human voice; they bear fruit as women bear children. Flowers smile shyly like brides. Birds near the village-streams sing and observe the play of village life. The little ‘Baukatha kao’ bird has its own note reminding us of the story of its previous human birth. The cattle add to the riverside landscape; the cow and the bullock–the time-old partners of the joys and sorrows of the peasant.

The lullaby, the ‘Chelle bhulano chhara’ or the ‘Ghoom parani chhara’ to be more accurate, is, perhaps, as old as the child itself, not in language but in spirit. The mother has always been there to sing:

Sleep, sleep, sleep–
O, even the leaves of the tree
are now asleep.

The leaf, too, sleeps at night: this is what the mother tells the child emphasising the need of sleep.

The lullaby is the same all the world over, the same mother, the same child, the same sleep. The mother in Greece sang in the same strain; Garnett’s Greek Folk-Poesy has it:

The lemon blossom slumber too,
The balsam on their stem.

The Bengali lullaby urges:

The market-place is asleep,
The road is asleep;
Sleep goes rolling about.

A similar thought may again be found in a Greek lullaby:

The wind is sleeping on the plains;
The sun upon the height.

The sleep is given a human role; she may be wearing anklets on her feet; every night she comes as a god-mother. The sisters of sleep’s mother and father, too, come in; thus sings the woman of Bengal:

The child sleeps not,
He looks with eyes half-opened;
O, I’ll love the sisters of sleep’s mother and father
If they bring slumber to my child’s eyes.

The Greek lullaby has almost the same setting:

O hushaby, thy mother sings,
Yet thou liest awake, my dearie,
and wide thine eyes are open still,
Though mother’s arms are weary
Come, dear sleep, take my boy.
Saint Mariana, lull to sleep;
Saint Sophia, bring slumber deep.¹

The sisters of sleep’s mother and father, in the lullaby of Bengal, may soon develop into Harish Thakur, some little household god:

Sleep passes before every door;
Bring sleep to my child’s eyes, O, Harish Thakur.

The song of sleep, in Bengal, still goes on:

The sleep of the market-place and the river-ghat
Wanders from one path to another.
I bought her for four cowries.
O, now come, sleep, to my jewel’s eyes.

Rabindranath Tagore, in his Lok Sahitya², has gone deep into this song to bring out a lovely picture of universal appeal: "Late at night, when the market-place and river-ghat are lone, Sleep feels companionless and goes out in search of man while it is utter dark; she consents to come to the village house-wife for four cowries–a very cheap rate indeed; but, had it been some other time, this little price would not have moved her at all."

One lullaby has a picture of the economic loss of the peasants of Bengal at the coming of the Marathas, the Bargees as they are called in the text, some time before the battle of Plassey (1757 A.D.):

The child has gone to sleep,
The street is all quiet,
Lo! here come the Bargees in our land;
The bulbuls have eaten up all the paddy ears,
Alas! how to pay the land-revenue?
The paddy is gone, the betel-leaves are gone,
What to do now? O, wait for some days more,
We have just sown potatoes.

As the child grows, the Chhara song, too, grows. Leaving aside the domain of sleep, it accompanies the child’s nascent imagination. The mother’s hand is there, but the child is expected to carry on the current independently. In some cases the child becomes the genius loci. The Chhara soon makes a world of pictures and dreams. Some seem to be in line and colour, some conspicuous in edginess, some may even be silhouette. Tapur, tupur, the rain falls: Nadia is under water: Shiv Thakur marries three brides in this weather: one bride cooks, one takes her lunch, the third one gets annoyed and leaves for her father’s: and the child knows not what to call the main figure in the theme. Tomorrow comes Yamuna’s marriage: lo! She leaves for her father-in-law’s via Kajitala. The Kaji flowers, hitherto unseen, come before us: the ringing sound of Sitaram’s bells fills the air; he takes rice and potatoes and goes to the Tripurni stream to quench his thirst: the girls are late plucking the Oor flowers: Har and Gauri leaving aside the realm of mythology mix with the peasantry, the child hurries to describe their field: Har Gaurir Mathe re Bhai Paka Paka Dhan (The paddy ears are ripening, brother, in the field of Har and Gauri). The child goes out for fishing and brings home to us a picture:

Full to its brim, the water of this stream ripples,
The sand on the bank, brother, slips under our feet;
Sun-scorched, our moon-like faces are to burst out in blood.

As in other parts of India, so in Bengal, the moon is the child’s maternal uncle. The mother calls the moon to come down and kiss her child. The moon would get the black cow’s milk with the child; in a plate of gold he would be served rice. Shachi, the mother of Lord Gouranga, calls her child ‘the moon of her home.’ The moon does not descend, and only smiles from afar. The child insists on getting the moon. The mother finds herself unable to help the child, and she explains her position:

O, where am I to find the moon, my jewel?
O, it is not made of earth that I may make one for you,
Nor is it the fruit of a tree that I could pluck one for you.

Here and there the child is depicted as a bridegroom; the sad bride speaks for herself:

My mother gave me fine bangles,
My lather gave me a Sari;
My brother gave me a heavy push and said:
Go to your father-in-law’s.’

Again she thinks of her mother’s tears:

O, my aunties, take my mother inside;
Lo! my palanquin trembles amain as she weeps.

"The Chhara songs are like the clouds," as Rabindranath Tagore has observed with a poet’s aesthetic genius, "both are equally changeful, multi-coloured and ever-floating; the clouds help the growth of the plants, and the Chhara songs have always fertilised the child’s mind."

Another off-shoot of the Chhara is connected with a series of ritualistic fasts, about one hundred in number, observed by the unmarried girls. The Meyeli Brata Chhara, as it is called, varies from place to place.

The Dash Puttal Brata, that falls every year in the month of Baisakh and is to be observed by a girl continuously for four years, has its own songs; the simple village-girls join to put their wish into words: "If I die and am born a girl again, I’ll get a husband like Rama." Every girl thus likens herself to Seeta.

The Magh Moral Brata, observed in the month of Magh, has a beautiful song. Moral means ‘headman.’ It is, perhaps, the Magh itself worshipped as the precursor of Falgun, the spring month. It goes on for full one month till the dawn of spring. Every day the girls sing in chorus:

This year the Magh is great,
The winter is at its pitch!
O we’ll open our song
When the sun, our maternal uncle,
Ascends the eastern fringe of the thatch.
Our skirts are full of flowers–
The red Java and the white Bhati;
The dew-wet beds of the Doob grass
Dew drops just pearls, lie here.
With the broken winnowing fan,
Filled with the remains of last night’s ashes, we sit
When the birds in the grove would chirp,
Basking in the sun we’ll be relieved from the chill.
Come on, elder sister, if you would see
The Dawn Queen going to her father-in-law’s;
Her neck decked with a wreath of flowers.
The veil drawn over the head.
With faces towards the east,
And waist upwards unclothed,
We all sit here to observe our dear ritual.
All full of paddy are our parents’ barns,
With the grace of the sun–our Surya Thakur.

It is a song with movement; apt to be the opening-scene of the fairy-play of the village-life. The Dawn Queen, the Usha Rani, like England’s May Queen, seems to be a sister of the vil1age-girls; she goes to her husband’s place as every girl goes when her turn comes. The description of the Dawn Queen is very simple and homely. The broken Winnowing-fan, filled with ashes, is a symbol of the unhearty send-off to the chill of winter. The Magh is dear to the girls, for its departure gives birth to the spring that brings new colour. The idea of the sun-worship, too, is there. The sun and the moon are brothers in folk-mythology; the sun, like the moon, is called maternal uncle in this song.

One brata is cal1ed Senjuti (lit. evening); a very dear and homely word, celebrated lately by Rabindranath Tagore as the name of one of his books. It is observed in the month of Agrahayan. One of its songs seems to remember the olden days when a highly glazed plate of silver or gold was used as a mirror:

In the palanquin I come,
in the palanquin I go,
and I gaze at my image
in the gold mirror.
The palanquin of my father’s house
goes to my father-in-law’s
Coming and going it takes ghee and honey.

The songs are full of a series of prayers. Every girl wishes to have a brother lovely as moon-beams. Shiva and the Sun-god are both invoked to make her lucky enough to marry a literate young man: the bridegroom should be a prince; elephants should beautify the gate of his palace, his stalls should be full of horses, he should also possess hundreds of cows: she should soon be blessed with a son; one child should be in her lap, and one more in her arms, she prays: her husband should love her wholeheartedly, and the idea of marrying a second wife should not strike him at all.

Some of the songs exhibit the village-girl’s hatred for a co-wife; here and there one may find a reference to the murder of a co-wife. There is an old fragment:

Mirror, O Mirror, may my husband not marry twice;
Squirrel, O Squirrel, peace be unto my husband,
Pray eat my co-wife’s head.
O you ask me, ‘What is this red colour that adorns my feet?
O it is my co-wife’s blood, I have murdered her.

Simple, homely drawings, called Alpana, are inevitable. The girls draw bracelets with a solution of powdered rice and pray for gold bracelets. They make kitchens, cow-sheds and dwelling places; everyone of them should get a brick-worked kitchen, a cow-shed and a dwelling place after she has married, they pray.

The Bhaduli Brata is very interesting; it falls in August. It is not easy to trace the origin of the goddess Bhaduli. The Alpana drawings, connected with this Brata, make an antique chart: (1) the seven seas (2) the thirteen rivers (3) the sandy sea-beach (4) rafts (5) sea-fowls (6) the palm trees. Dr. Dineshchandra Sen, in his Folk-Literature of Bengal, observes that the Bhaduli Brata originated "when the Bengalis were at the height of maritime activities." The drawings of the chart are worshipped by the girls; they are invoked for the safe return of their relations gone on voyage. The goddess Bhaduli is sometimes believed to be the mother-in-law of Indra. When the rivers are full with new water and the sky is covered with the dark heavy monsoon clouds, the village-girls of Bengal sing in chorus:

River, O River, tell me whither you go?
Give me the news of my father and brother before you pass by.
And tell me how fare my husband and father-in-law.
Sea, O Sea, peace be unto thee, pray grant me what I say,
My brother is out for trade, may he come today.
Raft, O Raft, thou dweller of the great sea,
Rescue my father and brother from every danger.
Sea-beach, O Sea-beach, recognize them with a smile as they pass by thee.
Keep watch on them, protect them, pray grant this boon to me.
Sea-fowls, ye Sea-fowls, answer my earnest query,
Pray tell me where you saw the ship that carries them on the sea.

To realise what songs mean to the marriage ceremony–the vividness of their appeal–one must survey the whole sweep of marriage-songs; every ritual has its own songs which are supposed to have an auspicious influence over the bride and the bridegroom.

The Shahnai pipe, connected with almost all celebrations is there; its notes, that create a peculiar pathos, serve as a ground music to many of the marriage-songs.

Gauri and Har are beau ideals of bride and bridegroom in most cases. Har, or Shiva, we may be sure, is also ridiculed for his being so much older than Gauri.

The drummer, along with the Shahnai-player, goes on. I remember a song addressed to the drummer; he is requested to make a rapid rhythm. The Shahnai-player makes a monotonous music; but perpetually it emerges afresh every time; one cannot but mark it with interest as one understands that it is entwined with the heart of the bride who is to bid good-bye to her parents’ village, where she spent all these years, to go to her father-in-law’s in the bridal palanquin. I remember a palanquin-song that introduced me to the pathetic strain that moves the bride as she leaves her old home for a new one:

"Cutting the mango tree, brother,
You have made a beautiful palanquin;
O, I won’t go away, brother, in this palanquin."
"Just take from me this vermilion, sister,"
For the parting of your hair;
Pray get into the palanquin and go."
"O, I won’t go away, brother, in this palanquin."

The songs, connected with the Durga Puja festival, are inimitable. Giriraj (Himalaya), his wife Menaka, his daughter Uma, and his son-in-law Shiva, the characters of these songs, are of purely mythical origin. But they do not lack in human traits. Menaka is just a woman of Bengal, we can recognize her in the countryside. Giriraj is reticent; his wife longs for her daughter throughout the year. Tradition has taught the people to invite their married daughters for this festival. Every girl comes to her mother like Uma, whose arrival at her parental house marks the first day of the festival. The Agomani (lit. welcome) songs are sung with great joy; most of these songs portray the pathetic condition of Menaka in Uma’s absence; she asks her husband to go to Kailasa, Shiva’s abode, to fetch Uma. In one song she is seen alarmed at the news of Shiva’s wish to sell Uma’s bridal clothes and ornaments to purchase intoxicating drugs for himself. Another song portrays her while telling her husband of how Uma came to her in her dream at night and how she soon fled away; it is no fault of hers, she says, she has truly inherited the stone-like heart of her father who is a mountain. "In the month of Ashwina (October-November) the whole atmosphere of Bengal rings with the Agomani songs, sung by the Bairagis, which describe the meeting of Uma with her mother; and there is no Bengali to whom they do not appeal most tenderly....The ‘shephalika’ flower falls to the ground in the season of these songs." ³

Slowly surging from within, Menaka’s song moves us:

O Giriraj, when wilt thou bring my Uma to me?
O tell me soon what I ask thee;
Why art thou so mute–no words?
I am simply dying in her absence.
Alas! my Uma is not with me.
She is, my only daughter–

None else to address me, calling

"Mother, O mother dear?"
Alas! how unfortunate am I;
My son-in-law is a faqir,
Uma, my daughter, is like a sucking girl, I feel,
With tears in her eyes she must be crying there.
Shiva has no father, nor mother,
O, who is there to bestow affection on Uma?
A golden creeper is she–that moon-faced Uma, my daughter.

Shiva comes to take Uma before the promised day. Menaka feels sad. The Vijoya, or the farewell, songs are saturated with tears. Menaka sheds tears like a common village-woman:

Ah me, Uma will have to go away today!
O, why did the ninth night of the moon
dawn into the day of the tenth moon?
The period of Uma’s stay with me is
the eighth and the ninth day of the moon;
Ah me, Shiva has come to take her

even prior to the tenth day of the moon!

"The first flower that blossomed on this earth was an invitation to the unborn song." ⁴ Flowers have had a profound attraction for man from time immemorial; again and again he has sung of them; religion recognized them much later, after the sanguine lover had compared his sweetheart’s face to a fresh dewy flower for the first time. The folk-song of Bengal is rightly proud of the lotus–the Padma. But who can say if the first folk-song of Bengal celebrated the lotus rather than the other flowers of the soil?

As in other parts of India, so in Bengal, the Barqmasi⁵, or the song of the twelve months of the year, has been a popular mode of expression.

"The sky of Bengal, clear and transparent in the early spring, foggy in winter, and full of clouds in summer, ever changing its aspects from month to month, cannot fail to strike a keen observer of nature with the clearly defined lines of its varied weather. The various seasons produce different results on the human system, on the paddy-fields, and on the variegated flowers and leaves of trees with which the villages abound. Life here changes, as it were, from month to month, and Nature picturesquely disports herself on the stage of this beautiful country through the twelve sub-divisions of the year."⁶ The heroine of the Baramasi songs is generally a deserted wife; she addresses the image of her heart’s lord, as presented by her memory, telling him her joys and sorrows in every month of the year. Needless to say that these songs have turned rather conventional in most cases.

Every occupation gives birth to certain original tunes. The boatman has his own song–the Bhatial. Bhata means ‘the down stream.’ The boatman, it seems, first originated this song while going along with the current of water when he was free from plying the oar. East Bengal is the home of the Bhatial songs. The songs, passed on as Bhatiali in the gramophone records now-a-days, are not always folk-songs; nor does their music correspond always to the original Bhatial tune.

The religious mendicant, called Baul, goes about from village to village singing the mystic songs to the accompaniment of his one-stringed instrument–the ektara. God to him is "the Man of the heart." The folk-song of Bengal can very well be proud of the Baul–the singer of mysticism. One should actually see the Baul and hear from his lips the rhythmic songs, most of which are extempore. "I can love God only in case He really needs me," he says with the assurance of a mystic. His voice is loud; and when his song reaches its pitch, he cannot but dance. Rabindranath Tagore, in one of his songs, has compared the roaring cloud to the Baul: Badal Baul Bajae Bajae Bajae re Ektara. I have always remembered a suggestive refrain of a Baul song: "Bol Man Amar Baba Kothae Gailo" (Mother, tell me whither has gone my father?); the child, in the next lines, tells the mother of how the people sometimes tell him that his father has burnt himself alive, and how on another occasion they tell him that he plunged into deep waters and never came out.⁷

The peasant has his own song; the solemn occasions of his life–the seed-time and the harvest–enrich his imagination.

The lament of the wounded doe is a favourite theme of the Indian folk-song. The wounded doe may symbolise the whole suffering peasantry; the words of the doe, addressed to the archer in a pathetic strain, represent a genuine piece of Bengali folk-poetry:

Lo! there grazes the doe and the archer seeks for game;
he hits her suddenly with his sharp arrow.
Thus speaks the poor innocent doe–
"What a deep wound, brother archer, thy arrow has given me!
I am but a forest-doe and owe to none;
But my delicious flesh and blood
Turn the whole world against me.
What a deep wound....
"My child remains unsuckled!
No more will I see his moon-like face!
No more shall please him by words of endearment!
What a deep wound….
"Mourn I shall not for my own death;
But what answer, brother archer,
Wilt thou render to the gods above?
What a deep wound....
"Whenever my child aflame with hunger
Will cry calling, ‘O mother, mother dear!’
That cry will surely strike at the hearts of the gods.
What a deep wound....
"O, my friends of the flock, tell ye my mate,
‘Nurse my child with love and care,
No more in life shall we see each other–
The archer’s shot ends all my hopes and dreams!
What a deep wound....
"Who is that smith, O who is that smith,
The maker of this deadly arrow?
Extinct be his family from this world!
What a deep wound...."

The longer ballads, too, are there. Sri Chandra Kumar De’s services were invaluable in gathering ballads from East Bengal; Dr. Dineshchandra Sen’s Eastern Bengal Ballads, published by the Calcutta University, are based on his collections. Romain Rolland’s note of appreciation of the Mymensingh Ballads is noteworthy:

"The subject it deals with touches all mankind; the differences with European stories are much more social than racial. The good aesthetic taste that is felt in most of these ballads is also one of the characteristics of popular imagination in many of our Western countries: "Womeder Wehmuth," as a beautiful song of Goethe’s, put into music by Beethoven, expresses it, ‘The pleasure of tears.’ It is true that with us French people, the people of Gaul, it reacts against this with our bold and boisterous joyful legends. Is there none of this kind of thing in Indian literature? ….From where have these great primitive epics come? It seems very likely that they have always come from some poetic genius whose invention has struck the popular imagination. But the question is, how much people deform his idea in putting it into the shape in which we find it? Which is the part of the collaboration of the multitude in this work of re-casting, which is continuous and spontaneous? Rarely has anyone had the opportunity to seize an epic, as one might say, on the lips of the people who have given birth to it, before writing had fixed it in some shape, as you and Mr. Chandra Kumar have succeeded in doing in this case."

The texts of these ballads, as Dr. Sen himself tells us in the Preface, were found strewn at random in a quite unconnected way.

Dr. Abanindranath Tagore’s Banglar Brata (1919), in Bengali, gives a study of the Brata songs and a number of Alpana designs. Mr. Mansuruddin’s Haramani, in Bengali, offers many Baul songs; Rabindranath Tagore, in a Foreword to this book, tells us how he himself had come across the Baul songs. Many songs are connected with the folk-dances. Mr. G. S. Dutt’s efforts to revive the folk-dances of Bengal have gone a long way; the Bratachari movement started by him has achieved an inter-provincial importance.

The village-poets, called Kaviwalahs, who once played a remarkable part in the history of Bengali literature and whose extempore competitions and satirical songs seemed to capture the imagination of even the people of the towns, have lost their office. Some of their songs, however, have added to the stock of folk-songs.

The realm of folk-songs in Bengal is wide like Bengal herself. All points are touched, from birth to death. Work and leisure have contributed separately. It is Bengal herself that talks to you in these songs in a simple homely tone. The folk-songs of Bengal may yield a full epic of village-life, with a story simple and enduring like the earth, and the characters which grow like the paddy of Bengal.

1 The Greek quotations are all from Garnett’s Greek Folk-Poesy.

2 Not yet translated into English.

3 Dr. Dineshchandra Sen: History of Bengali Language and Literature pp. 243-44.

4 Rabindranath Tagore: Fireflies,

5 In U. P. it is Baramasa, and Baramanha in the Punjab.

6 Dr. Sen: History of Bengali Language and Literature. p. 24.

7 Rabindranath Tagore’s Creative Unity gives a study of the Baul philosophy in a chapter called, ‘An Indian Folk-Religion’; Religion of Man includes an authoritative essay on the Bauls and their songs by Prof. Kshitimohan Sen as an Appendix.