The largest number of Assamese folk song’s are to
be placed under the Bihu-Banghosa group, all Spring and pastoral songs. Then
there are the ballads and nursery rhymes and a few other varieties. Here a few
specimens of marriage, small-pox, and philosophical song’s only will be given.
The Biyanams or marriage songs and the Ainams or
prayers connected with Sitala seem to have been composed by the women folk.
An Assamese marriage is a musical marriage. At
every stage of the celebration–from the early negotiations to the end, women
sing appropriate songs. The delicacy and refinement of a woman’s heart come out
in caressing tunes when the Namali or leader of the chorus has to
describe the beauty and grace of the bride, when the latter is bathed in sacred
water, when she sits among her companions, when the bridegroom is to be
greeted, when the sampradan is consummated. The Namatis genius is
revealed most when she has to give expression to the atmosphere of sadness that
prevails when the dear girl is to be taken away.
The idiom of the songs is racy to such an extent,
and the compositions depend for their texture so much on the homely background
of the family, that translation would seem to be a hard task. The one given
below shows how all embracing a sorrow the giving away of a daughter can be:
At the gate, under the betel palms, is the loom,
The shuttle clatters, the bangles clang, but not to
be heard is Aideo’s voice;
When a child the little girl asked her mother,
“What would you give as my dowry?”
“My daughter the youngest, you would take a gold dorpati,
also mahura-kathis.”
In the main house weep the neothani and the jatar,
for they hear the dear girl is going away,
The letais and serekis weep on the
ceiling, the mother weeps in the store-house,
In the assembly weeps the father, Oh, why should
they weep at all?
Aideo is a term of endearment for a young girl. The
dorpati, letai, etc., are different parts of the weaver’s
establishment. Every girl is supposed to know spinning and weaving. The present
song is an instance of the folk-imagination which strings in the same thread
the animate and the inanimate.
In some of these songs the sentiments and
descriptions cling to the names of Hara and Gauri, the ideal couple to the
Indian mind, and Sri Krishna and Rukmini, or even Rama and Sita, their stories
being popular. In some cases the idiom has the flavour of the Assamese
Vaishnavite puthis.
It happens sometimes that the women of the
bridegroom’s party make slighting remarks upon the bride in order to extol the
excellences of the groom. The bride’s companions do not take the insult lying
down and make proper retorts. The contest usually ends in good humour but not in
every case. These hits are known as Jora-nam or couple-song in upper Assam, and
Khijageet or teasing song in lower Assam (Cp. Hindi khijlana, to tease).
To give an illustration, it may be the bride’s party which starts the campaign:
O swarty fellow, salt and amalaki do you taste,
salt and amalakhi do you taste:
You did penance in some past life, a beauty like
(our) Sita to get!
Comes a more provoking retort:
See how they’re offering her–a sereki of
bambo strips,
Dark and bow-legged as she is!
We wonder if our golden-faced groom would take her
at all–she’s so
shabby and spirit-like!
The Amlakhi is the fruit Amla, much relished by
women along with salt. Yarn is kept wound round a sereki.
Mother small-pox is very much feared by Assamese
women and therefore flattered with all sorts of sweet names. She is called
Sitala, the Cool One, and Ai or Mother. Whenever a child catches measles or any
other variety of the rashes classed under small-pox, it is said to have had
‘flowers’ on it, and Ai is also said to have ‘appeared’ on it. Ainam or prayer
to propitiate Ai is women’s affair. The women gather together and sing to the
tune of claps.
Ai has seven sisters. In parts of Mysore the
small-pox goddess is known as Mariamma–usually the cholera goddess in South
India–and she is supposed to have seven sisters who are kinder than their more
powerful sister.
The Ainams reveal the same qualities of tenderness
and refinement as the Biyanams. Further, they are steeped in the sentiment of
reverence. Some of them take the character of lullabies. This is not
surprising, as the inspiration at their source is but the welfare of the child.
The song given below is a beautiful illustration of the figure of speech known
as Personification:
They are coming, Ai’s seven sisters, across the
seven mountains,
All bow their heads–the grass and creepers and
trees, for Ai is coming,
The golden butterfly round it circles on its two
silvern wings;
The Ais have come to visit the places, we beg our
life of them.
Unconsciously did we trespass into Ai’s garden,
unawares did we pick
the buds.
Forgive our crime this once, O Bhavani, we
prostrate at your feet;
The Ais come to poor houses: nothing do we have to
offer,
We shall rub their feet with our hair, lie down to
make fords of our bodies;
Ai has come, and her bondsmaid is weeping at her
feet,
Don’t you weep, O bondsmaid, for Ai is smiling.–We
shall sing Ai’s
glory.
The Assamese mother believes that if her child
survives an attack of measles or small-pox, it will have extra luck. The
Syntengs, dwelling in parts of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, go so far in this
belief that they even try to have the infection of their own accord.
These are hymns sung in the sittings of the secret
sects that thrive under the cover of the more overt practices of a section of
the people. The sittings are known as Purna-sewa or Bar-sewa in their extreme
forms and Bhitar-sakam or Bhakat-sewa in their milder aspects. The Bhakats or
devotees who take part in these practices are not avowed Vaishnavites. In
Purna-sewa they forsake caste distinctions and bring into use wine, women,
boar’s flesh and such things never allowed to Vaishnavites. They hold their
sittings usually at night. The Bhakats have some cryptic sayings in which they
hide their ideas and tenets from the layman’s curiosity.
These practices should be classed along with those
of the Bauls and Sahajiyas of Bengal. Such mysterious practices have been found
in different parts of the world since the days of the Eleusinia. In Russia in
the seventeenth century, the cult of the “living incarnation of God, Christ,
and the Holy Virgin” led to nightly sittings and promiscuous orgies (The
Russian Peasantry, Stepniak, 1905, pp. 436-440). In all these cults the
human body is over-emphasized and hence the extravagances.
In Northern India these left-wing sects have
flourished on the back-ground of later Buddhism. Without going into further
details, I shall try to present here one or two samples of the songs that I
collected from a Boragi or a mendicant near Nowgong in Central Assam. Songs of
this class are known as Deh-bicharar Geet, songs on the essence of the
body. The man who sang them to the tune of his Tokari–a mono-stringed
instrument–had to explain their meaning, for to the uninitiated listener like
me they were too cryptic. The one given below is of an easier variety:
Alas! what’s the use of my being a lovely Modar?
Why have I bloomed at all?
Neither to the Guru nor to the Bhakat am I of any
use,
But just lie covering the ground.
Oh, but I have bloomed, the lovely Modar,
I’ve budded too,
And have served the Guru and known the Bhakat
And up in heaven resided!
The sense of the song seems to be: The ordinary
person, however endowed with beauty and capability he (or she) is, is of no use
unless he gets initiated and serves his Guru and the fellow Bhakats. “With the
guidance of the Guru does one find the essence of the body,” sang a Bhakat who
came to beg at my place a few days ago.
The following quatrain is of the nature of a Phakara,
the cryptic sayings referred to above. It is advice given to the Dokani or
person who serves wine and other eatables at a Purna-sewa sitting:
Slay your Guru, your fellow Bhakats,
Slay your uterine brother,
Beat unto death the Hari-Bhakat that is with you,
For then only may you realize your Guru.
The Guru signifies the mind; the Bhakats the
senses; the Hari Bhakat one’s own body. The implication is that one has to shed
one’s ego in order to make his bhakti fruitful and to sever the ties of
this mundane existence.*
* The songs in the first two sections are from Sj. D. Neog’s Assamiya
Sahityar Filingani.