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The Esoteric Beliefs of the Bauls of Bengal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

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Extract

Among their fellow Bengalis, the Bauls, who constitute a religious sect, are esteemed because their iconoclasm, disregard of caste, and merger of Hindu and Islamic traditions gives them an enviable freedom to confront life as individuals outside the prevailing social and religious confines. They are loved, too, because they do not preach but rather woo with charming poems set to irresistible tunes that may compel them to dance.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1974

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References

1 See bāṁlār bāul (Calcutta,. 1954)Google Scholar; English trans. Lila Ray, The Bauls of Bengal, reprinted from Visvabharati Quarterly, n.d.

2 ibid., (Eng.) p. 55.

3 See Obscure Religious Cults (Calcutta, 1969)Google Scholar.

4 “Rabindranath Tagore¯The Greatest of the Bauls of Bengal,” this journal, Nov. '59 (XIX, no. 1).

5 In bāṁlār bāul o bāul gān (Calcutta, 1971)Google Scholar.

6 Lālan-gītikā, ed. Dāś, Motilāl and , Pīyūṣkānti Mahāpātra (Calcutta, 1958)Google Scholar.

7 Four years later, in the revised edition of his Obscure Religion Cults (1962), Dasgupta, after hesistatingly crediting Bhattacarya's attempts to “establish that the distinctive feature of the religion of the Bauls is represented by the doctrines and practices of a secret cult involving sexo-yogic relations,” goes on to qualify the significance of those attempts: “But it seems that out of their doctrines and practices their search for the ‘unknown bird’ that mysteriously comes in and goes out of this cage of the human body emerged as the most striking feature. This life-long search for the ‘unknown bird’ got itself mingled with the Vaisnavite and Sūfī-istic devotional approach to the divinity;” having discussed Vaiṣṇava and Buddhist Sahajiyāvād earlier in the book, Dasgupta decides that, “We shall not, therefore, in the present context, deal with Bäul songs referring to such secret practices; we, on the other hand, shall restrict our study to the Bāul songs that celebrate the ‘Man of the Heart’ and speak of the mystic love these Bāuls cherish for this ‘Man of the Heart’.” (all quotes pp. 161–2). Dasgupta himself says in the Lālan-gītikā preface that the secret sadhana discussed by Bhattacarya underlies the concepts of the ‘unknown bird’ and the ‘Man of the Heart’, yet in not revising his chapter on the Bāuls according to this view, he gives the impression that it is not significant in comparison to the Sūfī/Vaiṣṇava devotional basis for the Bāuls' songs.

8 See introduction to Ray's translation of K. Sen's monograph. This is a translation of an excerpt from Tagore's introduction to hārāmaṇi: loksa;ṅgīt saṅgraha, ed. Uddīn, Mahammad Mansur (Calcutta, 1942)Google Scholar.

9 In bāul (Calcutta, 1905), p. 9Google Scholar.

10 Songs #519, p. 915 and #518, pp. 914–15 in Bhattacarya, op cit. Khir is a milk-based sweet.

11 This song has been recorded for Nonesuch in album H72035 entitled “Indian Street Songs” by Lakshman Das Baul. The translation given here is slightly revised.

12 Author's collection.

13 Translation after Sukumar Sen's in “Old Bengali Texts: Caryāgīti-Vajragīti-Prahelika”, in reprint of Vol. III of Indian Linguistics published jointly by Centre of Advanced Study in Linguistics and the Linguistic Society of India (Poona, 1965), p. 110, #36.

14 See for example, Snellgrove, David L., The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study, London Oriental Series, Vol. 6 Part I, Introduction and Translation (London, 1959), p. 99Google Scholar where the term catuḥsama, a potion of four ingredients is explained as a sandhyabhasa term for faeces; kasturika, musk, is urine; sihlaka, frankincense, is blood; karpura, camphor, is semen. And then on p. 101: “There we eat meat and drink wine in great quantity … we take the fourfold preparation and musk and frankincense and camphor. … ”

15 PP. 57–8.

16 Author's collection.

17 Compare the statement of Melville T. Kennedy found on p. 215 of his The Chaitanya Movement; A Study of the Vaisnavism of Bengal (Calcutta, 1925)Google Scholar: “Procreation is looked upon as evil, leading to rebirth. By means of a revolting drink, compounded of the excreta of the cow, they seek the so-called power of Kṛṣṇa, i.e., sex-union without issue.” This revolting drink is perhaps related to the “four moons” discussed above.

18 Author's collection.