Phakir Lalan Sai: Des kal evam silpa.

• Author: Salomon, Carol

By SAKTINATH JHA. Calcutta: SAMBAD, 1995. Pp. [9] + 359. Rs 150.

Fakir Lalan Sai (d. 1890), better known as Lalan Fakir, is celebrated throughout Bengal as the best of the Baul poets. The first part of the book under review is an edition of his songs based on a manuscript that has recently come to light. The second part is divided into an introduction and four untitled chapters.(1)

Previous scholars, such as Upendranath Bhattcarya, emphasized the overall similarity of the beliefs and practices of the Bauls. In the introduction to the second part of the book, Jha argues that their differences should not be glossed over. First, there is no single sampraday called Baul. Rather, the Bauls are a loose aggregate (samabay) of different Hindu and Muslim groups (gosthi) and subgroups (upagosthi) which, however, are not divided strictly along sectarian lines. Thus, it is not uncommon for a Hindu guru to have Muslim disciples and vice versa. The Bauls even include individuals who defy classification and do not fit into any particular group. Second, while Bauls practice the same basic woman-centered sadhana, there are also significant variations in the specific practices that need to be considered. To make the matter more complicated, not all practitioners of the sadhana consider themselves Bauls. The introduction also includes a discussion about whether it is accurate to call Lalan a Baul, since he never refers to himself by the term. Jha concludes that Lalan was indeed a Baul. Two of the reasons he gives for reaching this conclusion are that Lalan's disciple Duddu Sa identified his own group as darbeshi Baul, and more important, that the Bauls consider him to be their best poet and use his songs to explain their own beliefs and practices.

In chapter one of part two Jha discusses the manuscript, its history and importance, and gives an overview of research on Lalan. He also describes the popularization of the Bauls by Harinath Majumdar, who was known as a sakher (amateur) Baul and who was a prolific composer of Baul songs, as well as a friend of Lalan; by the writer Mukundadas, who idealized the Bauls in his plays and wrote Baul-like patriotic songs; and by Rabindranath Tagore, among others. In chapter two he places Lalan's songs in the social, cultural, historical and economic contexts in which they were composed, and gleans from them details about Lalan's life and times. Jha also describes Lalan's path (pantha), emphasizing that he did not pass his mantle to any particular disciple, nor did his disciples form a sampraday around him or write hagiographies that made him into a superhuman being. As Jha explains, the reason this happened is that the Bauls place emphasis on what is present (bartaman) and what they can directly see and experience. Chapter three is a detailed study of Lalan's poetry, and chapter four discusses the interpretation of the songs for their esoteric significance relating to sadhana, and some of the difficulties involved in doing so. For example, Jha notes that not only may a word be explained differently by different Baul groups, but its meaning may also depend on whether the practitioner is at the first (sthul), second (prabarta), third (sadhak), or fourth (siddha) stage of sadhana. The chapter also contains a discussion of some metaphors used by Lalan, such as the "bee" symbolizing the male, the male organ, or the male's tongue, and the "two-mouthed snake" signifying the female, with the two mouths representing her vagina and mouth. It ends with an explanation of the number symbolism in Lalan's songs.

As recorded by a number of scholars, Lalan-panthi fakirs have long charged that the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore took Lalan's asal khata, the original notebook of his songs, from his akhra in Cheuriya in present-day Kushtia District, Bangladesh, and never returned it. They further claimed that these songs helped Tagore write Gitanjali, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1913. It was well known that Tagore had possessed two undated notebooks with a total of 285 songs by Lalan (Rabindra Bhavan MS 138 A 1 and 2), but they were generally believed to have been written down by Bamacaran. Bhattacarya, a clerk who was in Tagore's employ at his family's estate in Shilaidah, located only a few miles from Cheuriya, which fell within the purview of the Tagore family's zamindari.

Sanatkumar Mitra was the first to cast doubts on this theory. In his book Lalan Phakir: Kabi o kabya (1386 B.S. ["Bengali Era"]), which includes an edition of the notebooks, he argues that there is some factual basis to the fakirs' complaints. According to Mitra, the...