Chandrabati / Chandravati was a medieval poet, born around 1550 CE in Kishoreganj, Maimansingh now in Bangladesh. She is considered the first woman poet in her mother-tongue Bangla. Her legacy continues to be preserved, not just as academic interest, but woven into the fabric of women’s lives in rural Bengal even today through her verses.
Chandravati and Aatukuri Molla, first woman poet of Telugu literature and the author of the Telugu Ramayana, were among the writers who wrote the enduring Sanskrit epic Ramayana in regional languages to bring it closer to people.
Chandravati’s legacy
Chandravati wrote a woman-centric version of the Ramayana in the late 16th century, although left incomplete. Her Ramakatha is but one of the many that have been narrated and written in India and its neighbouring lands over centuries. The difference in her Ramayana is its unique female perspective. The work belongs to the genre of folk narrative, pala gaan or ballad which originated in the eastern districts of Bengal, presently Bangladesh. Folk narrative keeps to the basic story of the Ramayana but departs from it in the details. Chandravati has the distinction of expanding the scope of pala gaan from the narrow and domestic to universal concerns of tragedy that envelopes an entire society. Her narrative moves away from the masculine themes of war and Rama’s story to that of Sita’s, and the events that impinge her life. It is about how bereft the kingdom of Ayodhya, of which Sita is queen, feels on her accompanying Rama to exile and the implications to her world when doom befalls Lanka where she is imprisoned.
Chandravati's family
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| Chandravati's house in Mymensingh, Bangladesh |
Chandravati’s father Dvija Vamsidasa was well known for his scholarship, and as the author of Padmaapurana. Chandravati herself was a scholar of Bangla and Sanskrit. In an autobiography in her Ramayana, she mentioned her mother Sulochana and that they lived on the banks of the Phuleswari. Encouraged by her father she took up writing, and assisted him in his work Manasamangala. She also composed two verse narratives Malua Sundari and Dasyu Kenaram, the only other works that are known today with her signature line and that directly reflect her times. These texts are still part of Bangla curriculum in schools. Chandravati attributed all her competence and the family’s escape from poverty to the Goddess Manasa. At the start of her work, she mentioned her grandparents, her parents, the goddess Manasa and the river which was the lifeline of the village. Her dedication could not be more different from the norm, she made no mention of classical poets or the pantheon of Hindu gods.
Our knowledge of Chandravati’s life is from the only early account of it, written by Nayanchand Ghosh about a hundred years after her death.
Chandravati's personal life
Chandravati’s name is kept alive today at Kacharipara by the temple in which she worshipped and the Kabi Chandrabati Government Primary School near the temple.
It is believed that Chandravati was deeply in love with Jayananda who jilted her to convert and marry a Muslim girl. This drove her to seclusion and worship at a Shiva temple her father built for her.
The story of Chandravati and Jayananda goes like this. The couple met in a garden and fell in love. The families found the match very agreeable and a date for their marriage was fixed. However just days before the happy event, Jayananda met a beautiful Muslim girl on the river bank, converted to Islam and married her. This news came to Chandravati on the day of her marriage, shocking everybody not just because Jayananda jilted her but also because he abandoned his religion. Chandravati sought refuge in her temple, and encouraged by her father started to write the Ramayana to take her mind off her troubled life. Soon enough Jayananda realised his mistake and wrote to ask for her forgiveness. He knew his behaviour ensured there was no future for them but he wanted to see her one more time, and arrived at the temple. Chandravati was however in no mood to relent and resolutely kept the temple door shut. When all was silent outside she opened the door to go to the river, and discovered he had drowned.
An account of Chandrabati’s life was written about 100 years after her death by Nayanchand, supported by local versions. He says loss and betrayal are the two recurrent themes in her work.
Chandravati’s singular view of the Ramayana
Indian literature abounds in heroic tales - the hero who performs great deeds is the focus front and centre, and the masculine is applauded. But what of women’s reactions and understandings of these episodes? What do they assimilate, take away from these narratives? Chandravati is among the earliest writers who looked into these questions, and expressed Sita’s view of the events of the Ramayana.
Nabaneeta Dev Sen opines that Chandravati's Ramayana is not a devotional text but a secular one. The story is human drama and not divine mystery. It is a singular women's narrative from the female point of view. It is Sita's story from the beginning to the end.
Chandravati’s verse narrative is of less than 700 couplets. It includes episodes from various sources. She displays knowledge of classical texts and the other versions best known at the time in East Bengal - Valmiki’s in Sanskrit and Krttivasa’s in Bangla. She may have also been aware of them possibly by listening to narrations, which were very popular in Eastern India and adjoining areas, and has included them so that Sita’s world could be understood better. Yet, she does not set her work within any literary tradition. She narrates Sita's tale as she sees fit.
Chandravati’s choice of material sources was not whimsical, but purposeful. Tulsidas’s Ramayana has the tone of adoration for Rama, Valmiki’s was a hero’s tale. Chandravati’s forte is that she illustrates her particular understanding of the world around her. Her alterations reflect contemporary cultural, ethical and political attitudes, the important issues of 16th century eastern Bengal.
Changing perceptions of the Ramayana over time
It is through this prism that one must read Chandravati’s work. The Ramayana is one of the most revered epics of India and many parts of Asia. In spite of this, offering a wildly differing viewpoint than one generally accepted for centuries is an act of courage and that of a thinking mind. Chandravati’s theme is the human cost of conflict and the justice (or the lack of it) meted out by the strong to the weak.
The Ramayana began to be viewed differently from the 15th century onwards. From Rama being glorified as the conquering hero and the best of men, later works spoke of him as Vishnu. They also began to look at the victims in the epic rather than only the victor. This is especially true of rural retellings by song, drama and verse which still resonate with the audience there, especially women. The retellings elaborate upon subjects close to home such as domestic relationships and Sita’s situation. Of late folklorists, political activists and scholars have begun to study these alternative versions.
The political scenario and its impact
The prevalent state of medieval Bengal added in no small measure to Chandravati’s melancholy. Literacy was low in areas away from urban centres. The local royalty, the Afghan Karrani dynasty, was busy thwarting the Mughal emperor Akbar and could not administer the land. This led to local chiefs asserting their power. Utter lawlessness prevailed. Women’s social status was low and official oppression on religious grounds was widespread. This upheaval resulted in slowly hardening strict rules for women which curbed their daily lives and essential freedoms. The gloomy social conditions were reflected in many medieval ballads of the time.
However it was not always so. The golden period for Bangla literature and the arts is considered to extend until 1525, under Sultan Allauddin Hussain Shah, a just and tolerant king. Society survived upheavals after the death of Shah due to the Vaishnava movement and the personality of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534). A flowering of arts and culture began, and an outpouring of literary and philosphical works, folk ballads, poetry and music ensued. The impact was such that inspite of being largely unschooled, women had cultural knowledge and could quote from the scriptures, having been amidst various forms of the oral tradition, and perhaps other art forms. As Mandakranta Bose says in A Woman’s Ramayana, “Theirs was by no means an unsophisticated social culture.”
The work - Chandravati’s Ramayana
Chandravati stamps her individuality at the very outset. Her work is not dedicated to the king as is the custom at the time but to her ‘sakhijan’, her female companions.
She begins the story with the birth of Sita and then brings in Mandodari, Ravana’s wife. In Chandravati’s Ramayana the two are daughter and mother. The behaviour of their respective husbands is a cause for agony to these women, and it is a joyless existence. Chandravati’s Rama is not the ideal ruler but the jealous husband whom Chandravati chastises for exiling Sita. She says this one action will be his ruin. Chandravati’s Ramayana may have been rejected by the educated class in her day but she has achieved long-lasting fame. Her Ramayana is on many village women’s lips even today when they sing for occasions under the nose of patriarchy.
Her collaborators, centuries later
Any account of Chandravati and her work must also include the two men who collaborated to bring her work to the notice of the wider public centuries later - Dineshchandra Sen and Chandra Kumar De. Had it not been for De’s efforts and the encouragement he received from all quarters including Sen, Chandravati and her Ramayana would have remained unknown outside Bangla-speaking areas.
Chandravati and her Ramayana were famous even during her lifetime because her work was a part of the repertoire of village bards in rural Bengal. The change in the 20th century was that it came under scholarly review when Dineshchandra Sen began to collate the works of literature in rural Bengal. Sen collected 54 such ballads which offered a rich view of society.
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Cover Page of Eastern Bengal Ballads Mymensing
compiled by Dineschandra Sen
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Dineshchandra Sen (1866-1939) was a noted writer, educationist and researcher of Bangla folklore. He was the founding faculty member of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature, University of Calcutta. He published Chandravati’s works and also attributed other works to her, although he did not offer evidence.
Sen began a series of lectures in Calcutta University on The Bengali Ramayanas which was later printed as a book. He devoted an entire chapter to Chandravati and her Ramayana. His focus was not the epic itself but on how widely alternative Ramayanas, especially the Jaina versions, differed from Valmiki’s Ramayana.
The discovery of Chandravati’s work
A local magazine in Mymensing ‘Sourabha’ first published in April 1913 an article by Chandra Kumar De about a few ‘kabi’ songs of the area. Dineshchandra Sen began to regularly read De's articles and chanced upon an extract of an old ballad on the story of Chandravati and Jayachandra in one of them. From this extract Sen wrote about Chandravati in his ‘Bengali Ramayanas’. This account about the discovery of a medieval poetess and her distinguised poetry was read with great interest by several Europeans. Some of the episodes mentioned in Chandravati’s account were found not to be from Valmiki’s version but from local oral traditions as well as from Kashmiri, Javanese and Malay versions. Thus began questions on why there were deviations.
When Sen tried to trace Chandra Kumar De to get more details on Chandravati, he was told that De was almost completely uneducated ‘but possessed fine literary talents’. He was so poor that sometimes he was unable to afford a meal for days. Sen wrote to De offering medical help in Kolkata, so De managed the trip after selling his wife’s jewellery. He was depressed and sickly-looking due to a chronic illness. He was offered free housing and free treatment by well-wishers.
De was from Mymensing, the son of a poor landless farmer. After his parents died, De worked as rent-collector so he travelled extensively and was in direct contact with peasants from villages near his home. He heard Baramashi songs that were never written down but passed on orally through generations. These songs describe the joys and sorrows of women through the 12 months of the Bengali year. He learnt to read and write by his own efforts and set to work, transcribing these songs. He then contributed articles to Sourabha about the songs.
Sen encouraged him to concentrate on collecting Bangla songs, not Sanskrit ones, from his district. To do this, stray verses known to a few villagers had to be written down and strung together from all over the countryside, verses known only within families. This was an arduous task. De travelled through the marshes of the district, inspite of his precarious health, to meet people who were not always ready to share their family heritage of verses. Only De’s zeal for his mission saw him succeed. The result of this exercise was Chandravati’s incomplete Ramayana, among other works.
De sent the verses to the University of Calcutta and he was offered employment with a stipend that allowed him to continue collecting songs. He travelled to tens of villages in the districts of Sylhet and Mymensing, collecting portions of works that he then had to collate in proper order to publish. In a letter of 1921 De wrote,”It is a great inconvenience that one singer is scarcely found in this district who knows a whole poem. It is to be recovered from various persons living in widely distant places, so a long journey is required to get hold of one poem.” Sometimes, the villager he wanted to meet avoided him. Sometimes the kuchcha roads were unfit for any conveyance so he was forced to walk 55-65 kilometers a day. Still he persevered.
Sen translated the the verses into English and published 4 volumes of Eastern Bengal ballads in 1923. Some of the poems were published as Purbabanga-Geetika in 1926.
Recognition for Chandravati today
In recent years Chandravati’s importance in the history of Bengali literature is increasingly being recognised. It is surprising that fame reached Chandravati so slowly, especially since the poems have her name attached to them unlike several others in Sen’s book which are anonymous. Her Ramayana is available in both Bangla and English. A contemporary study of Chandravati’s Ramayana reveals that her continued popularity is largely due to her ability to talk about women’s lives through the medium of the epic.
Reference -
1. A Woman’s Ramayana - Chandravati’s Bengali Epic by Mandakranta Bose
2. Building a Digital Feminary - Nabaneeta Dev Sen
3. The Ballads of Bengal, Vol. 3 - Dineshchandra Sen. First published in 1923.
4. Eastern Bengal Ballads Mymensing Vol 1 Part 1- Dineshchandra Sen Rai Bahadur, 1923
5. Rewriting the Ramayana - Nabaneeta Dev Sen
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