Mystical Utterances of Sahaja: The Soul-Body Amalgam in Caryāgīti, Tukkhā and Bāul-Fakir Songs of Bengal

Presenter:

---

Abstract

My paper aims to study the Buddhist Caryāgīti (8th to 12th century), a collection of mystical songs of realization in Apabhraṃśa language attributed to the Buddhist Tantric mystic-saints, variously claimed as proto-Bengali, proto-Maithili, even proto- Hindi. I combine textual and anthropological methods in my studies of esoteric devotional traditions, through a diachronic analysis of the songs of the Caryāgīti, the songs of Tukkhā, and the Bāul-Fakir songs of Bengal influenced by the Buddhist Sahajayāna, Śaiva, Sākta, Vaiṣṇava and Sufi devotional traditions of north-eastern India. A unique part of my project is that through extensive fieldwork in rural regions of Bengal, I have been collecting Tukkhā songs, composed by the Rājvaṁśī community in the Rājvaṁśī lect, a living esoteric tradition. Most these songs have not been published or translated into English before.Through a comparative literary analysis, I have studied a number of common poetic metaphors and symbols in these songs. I discuss the importance of figurative language in relation to the rhetoric of religious imagination and how the emotional performance of mystical and poetic utterances could be addressed as a ‘transgression’ in their sociocultural and political context. I will be analyzing the complex structures of signification associated with mystic speech, while reflecting on the limits of language in the expression of the ‘ineffable’ through music.I will be exploring the Buddhist emotional states of Sahaja (innate bliss), Karunā(universal compassion) and Sunyatā (void) through the interiorization of the corporeal and the mental as a means to express an aesthetic and spiritual sublimation of the soul.