Landmarks in Oriya Literature

By Dr. MAYADHAR MANSINHA, M.A., Ph.D.
(Concluded from the last issue)

In the second or medieval period which extends down to modern times, the contrast between what had been produced before and what follows is as between the daylight and the light from coloured electric bulbs. Gone are the days of naivete and unpolished vitality, of interest in the charm of Nature and the problems of man, and the unrestricted enterprises in diction. The nation being subjugated and ruled by foreigners and subjected to continuous famines and internecine wars, Saraswati now leaves the cottages of free citizens and courts the patronage of small feudal chiefs, who, having lost all opportunities of independent action now took up literature as a pastime like hunting and harem. Versification tended to be more and more artificial; and the more twisted, the more incomprehensible and lexicographical the verse greater was the credit for the poet. There are, of course, exceptions, as always there are in any period, and it is these exceptions in which the natural human emotions have been given vent to in simple, direct and alliterative musical lines. Throughout this period with all major and minor, the natural tendency was however to tack the toy of poetical art to the wings of music. That has been the saving grace of this period and has indeed helped the survival of pieces in the memory of the race which should have long been buried deep in oblivion for the very weight of their pedantries and artificialities. As matters stand at present, we may meet anywhere in Orissa people singing songs or reciting poems, in the singsong way, of which they know not the meaning or care to know. The reciters and singers willingly themselves in the tide of rhythmical sounds under which sense gets overwhelmed.

The poet who dominates this period and in whom all the vices and virtues of the age are typified is Upendra Bhanja, who, having been deprived of the throne of his little principality in Ganjam District through family feuds, spent the life of an exile in a neighbouring State, and like Tagore, not having any serious preoccupations, produced like the latter an enormous amount of poetry. Schooled by court pedants, Upendra seems to have been impressed in youth with the verbal jugglery in decadent Sanskrit poetry which it became his life-long passion to recreate in Oriya. He has left behind a small amount of lyrics and poems in the natural language of poetry expressing the instinctive reactions in the human heart to the charms of Nature and the fair sex, which suggests what the poet was actually capable of. But that sort of achievement must have been thought puerile by the dry-as-dusts of the royal courts, and unbecoming of his erudition and aristocratic birth, and so his major efforts were devoted to the successive creation of Kavyas, each more difficult to understand than the previous one, because of the artificialities of versification and diction. He composed the entire Ramayana, using a new metre for each canto, and all through this wonderful epic not only do the first lines begin with the letter ‘Ba’ but the number of stanzas in each canto is a figure that begins with that letter, and the name of the book ‘Baidehisha Bilas’ is an alliteration of ‘Ba’s, and the epic had also to be completed in twelve months or ‘Bara-mas’ in keeping with the verbal symmetry. He wrote descriptions of seasons in verses of which if you take away the first letter it may describe the summer, and if you take away the second it will mean the rains, and so on. All things considered, Upendra reached the very acme of craftsmanship in word jugglery. He may have no parallel in this respect in any other literature. He used all the metres, simple and complex, that were then prevalent in the language with consummate skill and invented some. None also can excel him in creating that dreamland of youthful romance describing the voluptuous sex-love. The extraordinary power of painting erotic sex-love being combined with an extraordinary power of verbal jugglery in him, Upendra has exercised a spell over the masses and classes in Orissa which is not warranted by his achievements in genuine poetry. His followers and imitators in the language are not only numerous, but their line continues even today.

But when we keep Upendra and his bizzare standards of artificialities out of the picture, we come across the fountains of true poetry in a large number of places in this period also. Great among the numerous poets of the period are Abhimanyu Samanta Sinhar, Dinakrushna Das, and Kavisurya Baladeva, who, in spite of attempts at tentacled diction, lexicographic cleverness and conventional techniques, have left behind a store of poetry thrilling with tasteful alliteration and beautiful music which still keep the masses in Orissa enthralled. The craze Sanskritisation of Oriya had gone so far in this period that Kavisurya Baladeva wrote his famous ‘Kishore Chandrananda Champu’ half in Sanskrit, half in Oriya. All the same, this ‘Champu’ is a super-excellent musical drama in our literature. Its theme is the tryst of Radha and Krishna, and the drama is gradually developed through successive songs beginning with the letter ‘Ka’ and ending in the letter ‘Kshya’. The first letter in all the lines of each song is the same with which the song begins. In spite of these restrictions, Baladeva created unique songs in our literature, whose tunes are held now as standards of Orissan music by Ostads. Coupled with musical excellence is the clever and bold characterisation of Radha, the heroine, and Lalita, the go-between, far more masterly and realistic than what we meet in Jayadeva’s ‘GitaGovinda’ dealing with the same subject.

Unique not only in this period, but in all our literature, and fit to be counted among the very few that exist in all Indian literatures in the same category, and standing all by himself, is Brajanath Badajena, the poet of ‘Samara Taranga’ or ‘Waves of War’. The poet belonged to Dhenkanal State and perhaps participated in action against Mahratta invasions of his native State. The Mahrattas were repulsed and the poet took up this contemporary topical subject for writing a stirring war-poem. He has given minute descriptions of militaristic details; there is an address to the cowardly and the hesitant in the vigorous and uncouth phraseology of a soldier. The cantos are written in various heroic metres, and where Oriya has proved inadequate, the poet has freely used Hindustani and Marathi.

Towards the end of the 18th century we find, however, a healthy reaction against the artificialities of this age. Sick of the unnecessary trappings the Muse was trying to appear again in simpler and more natural habiliments. The harbingers and symbols of this reaction were two poets of very great stature–one epic and the other lyrical. Both were poet-saints, their memories and memorials being as much worshipped as loved. With both of them their poetic theme was the story the gospel of Krishna. While in Bhaktacharan’s ‘Mathura Mangal’, the beautiful epic episode, we taste the quintessence of the Jnana and Bhakti-Yoga in delicate and direct poetry, in Gopal Krishna’s innumerable little lyrical gems we get the depths of pure, etherealised and yet sensuous love as between man and God, and man and woman. As a writer of Vaishnavite songs and lyrics, Gopal Krishna belongs to the same class as Vidyapati andChandidas. He is the single great blessing of the Chaitanya cult in Orissa.

By the time Gopal Krishna passed away, English education had already spread in the country, although he himself lived and died quite unaffected by anything western. Quite unknown to this last great medieval poet, however, the dawn of the modern period had set in and new notes were already heard from newly arrived birds. It is a pity that the old and the new never met.

The progress of the various Indian languages in the British period is almost alike. There is no gainsaying that the contact with the extraordinarily free arid variedly rich English literature gave a veritable new birth to the Indian languages. Poetry found new genres for expression, prose was practically born, dramas and novels depicting life as it is were written, magazines and periodicals appeared as vehicles of current thought. This new literature has, however, to depend on a book-buying public or aristocratic patrons. Formerly book production cost almost nothing except the poet’s or a scribe’s labour. But now it meant capital investment for the producer and for the consumer, who in olden days got it almost free through recitals at the temples and village assemblies and ‘jatras’ and musical performances at rich men’s courtyards. All this disappeared, with the advent of the printing press, into the holy precincts of the Goddess Saraswati. Literature has become costly, has been commercialised with the ground of a rich, leisured middle-class as its mainstay. Such a ground existed in Bengal in its perfection. And that explains to a very large degree the phenomenal growth of Bengali literature in the British period and, to a lesser extent, of that of those regional languages which centred round other big modern cities like Madras and Bombay.

But this splendid renaissance, which inundated India’s linguistic fields with the flood-waters of western thought, and the new prosperity of the British rule with its mechanical civilisation, came to Orissa only in small channels dug with the despairing labours of a few devoted worshippers of Saraswati. All through the British rule the land remained dismembered between different Provinces. There were attempts by our more powerful neighbours to wipe off the map the moribund Oriya and to establish the conquest of their own languages in its place. Orissa’s middle-class had almost been wiped out by this time through the new tenancy laws introduced by the British, and through the exploitation of intermediary officers from other Provinces who came in as camp followers of the British army. The spark of freedom and battle against tyranny that was still alive in the peasant militia of the land had its last glorious flicker in the Paik Rebellion of 1818, after which the wings of the martial Oriya race were ruthlessly clipped, and the entire race was disarmed, demilitarised and dehumanised.

But when the darkness appeared to be the thickest, the morning stars appeared on the horizon. Radhanath, Fakirmohan, and Madhusudan have not only saved the Oriya language from extermination, but have left it healthier and more beautiful in new garments. It was the new literature produced by these three men of genius, with a small army of imitators, that kept alive among the Oriya intelligentia in all the scattered slices of Oriya-speaking tracts, the impulse to be united under one Government, while in the cottages of the toiling masses from Calcutta to Vizagapatam and from Puri to Bastar the old lamps still burned.

Of the three mentioned above, Fakirmohan Senapati, the great novelist, was the born leader of the team, true to his name ‘Senapati’. He may be taken as one of the most outstanding literary figures of modern India. Born poor, and sickly throughout life, he could not have more than primary education, but against this humble ground his achievements are nothing short of amazing. In his worldly lifehe rose from a schoolmaster to be the Dewan of big States and was on friendly terms with learned British civilians like Mr. John Beams, the great grammarian, and Mr. Ravenshaw, the then Commissioner of the Orissa Division, owing to his upright conduct and erudition in Oriya, Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit. In the literary world his success is still more astonishing. Single handed he translated the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, wrote books on history and mathematics, wrote satires and innumerable poems and lyrics, wrote the first and some of the best short stories in Oriya, wrote major novels which are still unsurpassed in the language and, are sure to rank among the topmost of the kind in any language in India, and wrote also an epic on Lord Buddha. It was a great blessing in disguise that this genius was not coloured by western education. He came out of the masses and, in spite of profound scholarship in many languages, continued to think and write in terms of the masses. In fact he may be taken as India’s first great proletariat author. In his novels he used only the language spoken by the toiling millions in the urban and rural areas of Orissa. Had he not used that idiom, and with such marvellous consummation it would still have remained contemptible and unfit to be used as a literary vehicle. But now it is the noble ambition of all fiction-artists in Orissa to emulate Fakirmohan, at least to make the style as approximate to that of Fakirmohan as possible. But in the mastery of colloquial idiom, the expression that always breathes the perfume of the soil, the village, the paddy fields and the peasant’s hut, Fakirmohan is still our marvel and despair. We do not find his like even in Bengali. The affinity can be perceived only in that other marvel of language – ‘Ramakrishna Kathamrita’.

Like his style and phraseology, Fakirmohan’s characters also came direct from life, from the soil of urban and rural Orissa. Till now these uncouth, unlettered folk in filthy habiliments were beyond the pale of literature. But Fakirmohan just took these ragamuffins and created undying characters out of them. Taking 1921 as the starting line of Indian revolution, we may say that Orissa of the fifty years preceding that date lives for ever in Fakirmohan’s pages.

Radhanath, the second of the Trio, brought poetry from the mythological world of Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata to the tangible but as yet untouched world of Orissan history. He wrote metrical romances in the style of Scott and Byron. His characters are semi-historical, with an atmosphere of magic chance and divine agency. The only sure element in his poetry is the ground against which he placed his heroes and heroines,–the beauteous natural scenery of Orissa. As Ancient India’s topography has been immortalised in the lines of Kalidasa, so has Orissa’s been in those of Radhanath. For the first time in our literature, Radhanath revealed to us the beauties of our lakes, rivers, forests and mountains. The finest achievement of high-priest of Nature is his invocative poem on the Chilka lake, which, just for Radhanath’s enchanting poetry, has become a favourite object of visit from all parts of Orissa.

Radhanath, besides introducing this local colour in our literature, introduced also a revolutionary change in diction. He freed the Muse of all artificialities of the medieval times and wrote again in simple yet sonorous, alliterative yet precise words. Radhanath wielded and still wields a profound spell over his readers, mainly through the charms of diction. One may read his poetry over and over again without the least satiation.

The third member of this famous Trio was Madhusudan Rao, a profoundly religious man, a zealous Brahmo, a thorough puritan and a great educationist. He was Radhanath’s student, and later his greatest friend. In him we perceive the reappearance of that mystic stream in Orissa which has been perpetually flowing as an undercurrent in society, and has always been manifested in the language alongside of, or incorporated with, the secular literature. This profound undercurrent can easily be traced from the Buddhist lyrics of Bauddha Gan O Dohan’ of the 8th century to its outburst in the writings of Jagannath Das and his associates in the 16th. It is manifest again in the Buddhistic Bhajans of the blind Kandh poet Bhima Bhoi in the 18th century. It appeared again in the modern Brahmo garb in the hymns and lyrics of Madhusudan. Whatever has Madhusudan written breathes purity and noble ideals. He has written immensely but there is not a speck of vulgarity anywhere. He perceived God everywhere in man and in Nature, even in outcastes and prostitutes, and poured out his divine hunger in exquisite hymns and lyrics which would be precious treasures in any language. His hymns are sung and recited in every school in Orissa. His poems like ‘Morning Glory in the Himalayas’ or ‘The Divine Descent in the Soul of a Saint’, are matchless in the dignity of diction, the ethereal atmosphere, and in the rapture of the human soul in the realisation of God through the marvels of Nature.

These three heroes had each a host of followers and imitators, at least two of whom were endowed with true poetic genius. Of these two Gangadhar Meher, the weaver-poet of Sambalpur, has become deservedly popular in the country, perhaps more popular than his masters. He combines in his style the elegance and precision of Sanskrit with the musical metres of the medieval Oriya poetry, and beats his masters and contemporaries in clarity of vision and subtlety of expression. He was in the true line of Orissa’s poets and artists, plying the paternal loom with one hand for his livelihood and the pen with the other to give expression to his divine urge. But poor weaver that he was, he produced poetry which is as exquisite as the famous textiles of Sambalpur, and the nation is to be congratulated for hanging Portraits of this weaver in company of the greatest dead in the land.

The other poet, Sri Nanda Kishore Bal, struck altogether a new and original note in the language. Discarding heroes and princes and the world of mythology and history, he took the humble village for his theme. For the first time in our literature the village institutions, like the village school, the village barber, the village cemetery, the village temple, the village market and also the village minstrel acquired deathlessness through poetic art. For the first time also, Nanda Kishore utilised the folk songs of Orissa as the basis of modernised lyrics and wrote the first children’s verses in our language. His ‘Pallichitra’ or ‘the picture of the village’ will remain for ever exquisite for its unique artistry as well as for the nostalgic attractions for the old village that is fast dying out in the country. A future Goldsmith of Orissa may have plenty of materials to write ‘The Deserted Village’ as a contrast to Nanda Kishore’s ‘Pallichitra’.

But the man who, after this Trio, has wielded the greatest literary influence in the country, and that too unwittingly, is Pandit Gopabandhu Das of hallowed memory, the greatest humanitarian, the greatest orator, the greatest politico-social leader and educationist that Orissa has produced in modern times. Pandit Gopabandhu had a heart of butter which melted at the very sight of human misery. In verse, prose and oratory, he swayed the masses and classes of Orissa as never before or since. I have myself seen vast crowds weep like children at the magic touch of his oratory. He started his career as a poet, but, due to his preoccupations in humanitarian and political activities, it was not possible for him to stick to literature. But on occasions when he had some leisure, as when he was in jail, or when he was over-powered by emotion, he sought relief by pouring out his heart in poetry which, bereft of all poetic embellishments, throbs with the tears of a golden soul and touches the readers’ hearts like the words from a lover to a lover. For the political and social uplift of the masses in Orissa. Gopabandhu edited a monthly magazine and a weekly through whose columns flowed his sonorous, rhythmic, easy-flowing prose which, with an inimitable blend of the classical elegance and colloquial expressiveness, was a new revelation of the possibilities of prose in Oriya and a thing to enjoy, while being educated. Gopabandhu’s weekly ‘Samaj’ is now the widest read daily paper in Orissa and wields an enormous influence in the country.

By this time we come upon the border line of our national revolution led by Mahatma Gandhi. Gopabandhu was not a mere political leader; he was the greatest national institution in Orissa. In him the entire race in all its national aspects found adequate expression. At Satyabadi, near Puri, Gopabandhu established his own Vihar in beautiful sylvan surroundings. There he gathered round him some of the finest intellectuals in the country, who, with the highest university degrees against their names, were prepared to serve as schoolmasters on a mere living wage. This was possible because of Gopabandhu’s genius and personality. Inspired by Gopabandhu, almost all the intellectuals like Pandit Nilakantha Das, Pandit Godavaris Misra, Pandit Lingaraja Misra, and Pandit Krupasindhu Misra who gathered at Satyabadi, devoted themselves to literature as a means of raising the masses. They produced histories, dramas, ballads, lyrics and epics ringing with patriotic fervour and high idealism. But alas, this cultural University of Orissa was only short-lived. This was swamped by the tidal waves of the Mahatma’s Non-co-operation movement. Gopabandhu and his band of poets and scholars now had to prepare themselves for the spinning wheel and the British jail.

With the Gopabandhu group out of the picture, there is a sudden break in the continuity of tradition. Now a group of college students, imbued with the ideas and styles of Rabindranath who then dominated the Indian literary firmament, ushered in a new kind of poetry in Oriya literature. The leader of this group was Annadasankar Ray, who, as a civilian, lives now in Bengal and has earned great fame there as a litterateur. Of this group, the poems of Annadasankar and Baikunthanath Patnaik, and some stories and one novel of Sri Kalindi Charan Panigrahi, have been accepted by critics as valuable additions to the store-house of the language.

Closely following this group came the Socialists led by Sachi Routray. Now that the whole world has become one family, literature is tending more and more to be international. Easy access to world literatures, through the medium of English, makes the newest literary experiments in other parts of the world quickly reflected in the least known languages of the globe. So, the so-called socialistic poetry is written in imitation of ultra-modern English poets in free verse in Oriya also, although the conditions in the land do not fully warrant these outbursts. Like most of the modern English verse, some of this is difficult of comprehension by even intellectuals.

But it is rash also to pass judgments on living poets and current literature. Time is the best judge of the arts. In English literature, likes and dislikes of readers and critics change like the English weather. It is better, therefore, that I draw the curtain. In a short sketch like this of a literature that is seven hundred years old, it is not possible to do justice to all. I have, therefore, only confined myself to the undercurrents in my literature from the beginning to the present day; the mutual reactions of people and literature, each to the other; the broad circumstances in, and the ground against which, my literature has grown.

While in Europe, from the very beginning, translation from one language to another has become the universal practice, here in India, living in closest proximity, linguistic units remain in complete darkness about one another. Oriyas and Telugus have lived from time immemorial side by side, but how many Oriyas have heard even the names of the major poets in Telugu, let alone their achievements? It is now high time for every Indian University to make arrangements for the study of at least two important Indian languages other than that of the State where it exists, and encourage and conduct continuous translations of the best in all other Indian literatures as well as from the literatures of the world.