Needle at the Bottom of the Sea, five Bengali romances from the 17th to 19th centuries in English translation, reflect on the folkloric world of the Sunderbans “where tigers talk, rocks float and waters part, and faeries carry a sleeping Sufi holy man into the bedroom of a Hindu princess with whom the god of fate, Bidhata, has ordained his marriage.” Named after the local “Sundari” tree, the Sunderbans, locally known as atharobhati or the land of the eighteen tides, is the planet’s largest delta, formed by the merging of large rivers: the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna in the Bay of Bengal region of India and Bangladesh.
The beauty of its mangrove forest is evidence of nature’s bounty and ecological variety. At the same time, it is a zone fraught with danger, where humans vie with such inimical forces of nature as cyclones, floods, man-eating tigers and crocodiles. Over the centuries, large sections of the forest have been cleared to build up community settlements called abadi (from Bengali word abad meaning “cultivated”). Wood-cutting and honey-gathering are the traditional occupations of the local people about which there are mentions in the kathas or stories included in this volume.
The first story, Krsnaram Das’s “The Ray Mangal ” is about Daksin Ray, a Hindu god born from the boon of Lord Shiva. Worshiped as the lord of the Sunderbans, Ray demands human sacrifice, but restores the life of the victim once appeased. His confrontation with Bada Khan Gaji, the Muslim saint-cum-warrior, ends with the intervention of Satya Pir, a Sufi saint who convinces the two rivals to bond as brothers for the welfare of the Sunderbans residents. Translator and editor Tony K Stewart observes, “The somewhat unexpected resolution subtly implies that Hindu and Muslim communities both have standing in Bengal and must learn to co-exist”.
The second story by Abdul Ohab is about Bada Khan Gaji’s establishment as a Sufi saint and his marriage with Champavati, the Hindu princess. Julhas and Kalu are Gaji’s brothers; while Julhas is lost at the beginning of the story and reunites with the family at the end, Kalu, the half-brother, accompanies Gaji in his travels. Both Kalu and Gaji renounce the comforts of their father’s palace to lead the austere life of a Sufi saint. This story not only reflects on the complications of Hindu-Muslim co-existence, but also interrogates the ideals of a Sufi saint, which Stewart explains as follows: Kalu, embodies the Sufi’s ascetic renunciation, which favours divine love; while Gaji, also a Sufi, but married, seems to argue it is possible to enjoy both”. “Viraha” or “separation in love”, a recurrent theme in several Hindu religious narratives, dominates the love story of Gaji and Champavati.
The third story, Mohammad Khater’s “The Bonbibi Jahura Nama”. glorifies the protective matron Bonbibi (“Bon”=forest, “bibi”=lady), the female Sufi saint, who came to the Sunderbans from Persia along with her brother Sajangali. The first part of the story deals with their birth and their training as Sufi saints in Madina. The second part describes Bonbibi’s battle with Narayani, Daksin Ray’s mother, in which she wins and takes control of atharobhati. It also describes her compassion for Dukhe, a young boy, whom she saves from the demonic clutches of Daksin Ray. Amitav Ghosh re-tells Bonbibi’s narrative in his The Hungry Tide and Junglenama.
The fourth story, Kavi Vallabh’s “Wayward Wives and their Magical Flying Tree”, illustrates the ideal world of Satya Pir, a Muslim saint who is considered the incarnation of two Hindu gods, Shiva and Narayan (Vishnu). On being pleased with the devotion of the wives of two merchants, he offers them a magical flying tree which would carry them to their lost husbands. The wives are distracted and go elsewhere, however, Satya Pir guides the virtuous merchants to find their way back home. The fifth story, Saiyad Sultan’s “Curbing the Hubris of Moses”, is the earliest Bangla rendition of the Quranic tale of Khoyaj Khijir. Khijir, a mentor of all Sufi saints in Islamic literature, is a prominent figure in the Bengali tales discussed above.
These stories reflect the confluence of both Hindu and Islamic religious traditions. In the oral storytelling tradition of mangal kavya (Bengali semi-epic poems that date back to the 14th century), these kathas describe the feats and the miracles of locally popular Hindu deities and Muslim saints. While mangal kavya is a Hindu literary tradition, nama is a Persian literary form that chronicles the events in the lives of the Muslim rulers. The use of nama in the Bengali narrative of Bonbibi , is indeed evidence of cultural syncretism. The hagiographic tales of Satya Pir and Khoyaj Khijir largely secularise the Bengali language. The Bengali word “satya” has its origin in Sanskrit; it means “truth”. Satya Narayan is a divine entity whose blessings enrich the quality of living. In Kavi Vallabh’s work, both the names—Satya Narayan and Satya Pir—refer to the same figure. This is an example of communal harmony that was expected to permeate society. Stewart, however, observes that with the passage of time as political tension intensified and began to divide the two communities the option of a Hindu name and a Muslim name functioned as a strategy to avoid conflicts between them.
The purpose of these narratives was to spread the glory of the quasi-divine figures, who in turn were keen on upgrading their status as Vedic deities among the masses. In The Ray Mangal Krsnaram Das, states that the god Daksin Ray threatened to kill him and his family members if he did not write his story properly. Hailed as the lord of the southern regions, Ray appeared to Krsnaram in his dreams and ordered him to write his “auspicious tale” in the theatrical style of Panchali, a narrative folk song in Bengali culture. As he wanted Krsnaram’s composition to be an unparalleled work in mangal kavya tradition, he says that the god himself enlightened him with the history of his birth and urged him to write about his compassion for his followers. Raymani insisted Krsnaram include in his mangal kavya the story of his follower Devdatta, a merchant, whose life he saved by slaying the king of Surath. Later, he revived the king when the latter’s wife worshipped him with “solemn hymn of praise.”
The human characters in these stories hail from both the communities and they represent different socio-economic groups such as kings, queens, merchants, mendicants, salt-workers, wood-cutters, honey gatherers etc. They worship the Hindu deities and the Sufi pirs, and seek their protection in adversity. Those that meekly pay their obeisance to the above-mentioned quasi-divine figures are rewarded, whereas, the non-believers are taught a lesson of humility. Besides exhibiting their miraculous and magical powers, the romances eulogize their superhuman valour. The detailed description of their great might in the battlefield and the mighty intervention of gods and goddesses into their struggles endow an epical magnitude to these folk kathas.
In Abdul Ohab’s narrative, Hindu goddesses like Gauri, Manasa (Padmavati) and Ganga come to Gaji’s aid when the latter is attacked by Champavati’s father, the Hindu king of Brahman Nagar. The king refused to marry his daughter to Gaji, a jaban (“foreigner”), and had sought the help of Daksin Ray. It is not only the humans and the deities who participated in the scuffle but also the iconic animals of the Sunderbans—the tigers and the crocodiles. On winning the battle, Gaji converted the Hindu king to Islam and married Champavati. Although this is a wonderful story of miracle and magic, threats of religious conversion and patriarchal autocracy are inherent in it. After marriage, Gaji used his magical power to metamorphose Champavati first into a yellow flower and later into a tree. She could come back to her original form only when Gaji wished to do so. The title of the anthology representing an impossibility and a challenge is taken from this story. With the help of the pir Khoyaj Khijir, Gaji could accomplish the herculean task of finding out a needle from the bottom of the sea, and this achievement established him as a pir in the eyes of his kinsmen.
Needle at the Bottom of the Sea allows access to local stories of quotidian struggles of common people and their belief system. The kathas in this anthology are useful for locating the time and space in South Asian history that led to the incorporation of Islamic cultural strands into the socio-literary corpus of Bengali. The translation of these tales entailed meticulous research. Stewart has carefully collected, collated and compared the different versions of the stories. His elaborate note preceding each story describes in detail their print history and reception. For example, Mohammed Khater’s Bonbibi jahura nama, the popular version, was published three years after the publication of its earliest attested text composed by Bayanuddin in 1877. Also, he refers to Jatindra Mohan Bhattacharjee’s Catalogus Catalogorum of Bengali Manuscripts, to affirm that there was no handwritten manuscript of Khater’s work and that Khater had directly submitted it for printing in 1880.
The volume consists of unabridged translations of the Bengali texts. The translator discusses the difficulties in the transliteration of Bengali words into English as the orthography does not follow pronunciation in most cases. Differences are also apparent in the Bangla version of words such as “Allah” and “faqir”, elucidated by the translator in the Introduction. Overall, this is a work of great scholarship, which will interest literary historians as well as avid readers having interest in traditional South Asian romances.