Parvathy Baul sings songs of liberation

The year 1916 was an important one for the Bengali language.

- Bibek Bhattacharya

The Bangiya Sahitya Parishat published a volume of poetry and songs called Hajar Bacharer Purana Bangla Bhasay Bauddho Gaan o Doha (One Thousand Year Old Buddhist Songs and Couplets in the Bengali Language).Translated and edited by the scholar and president of the Asiatic Society, Haraprasad Shastri, based on palm-leaf manuscripts he had obtained in Nepal, the publication effectively deepened the history of literature in the Bengali language from around the 15th-16th centuries to 12th century CE.

110 years later, the Baul preacher, singer and performer Parvathy Baul is seeking to do something equally historic reclaim for the Baul community its historical roots in the Buddhist tantric “Sahajiya” tradition of medieval Bengal, by performing some of the songs collected in Shastri’s book. "I wanted to find the historical antecedents of Baul gaan (song). These songs establish the fact that Baul didn’t just start from the 17th or 18th or 19th centuries. There were Baul a thousand years ago. And if we make these songs a part of our repertoire, then the Baul themselves will be able to claim their history," says Parvathy.

She will be performing 15 of the 50 songs of the Charyapada (as the collection is called, pronounced “charja-pada”) on 12 March at the GD Birla Sabhaghar in Kolkata. For these, she will be collaborating with the dhrupad exponent Ustad Bahauddin Dagar, who will be accompanying her on the rudra veena.

For Parvathy, collaborating with Bahauddin was a conscious choice, and the two have been working together on and off on composing the charyagiti (as the songs in the Charyapada are called) for the past 10 years. The original melodies of the songs are now lost, so Parvathy had to rely on her intuition, and the songs’ structural similarity to the long Bengali tradition of “sadhu-gaan”—songs of spiritual realisation sung by adepts. But she felt she needed something more.