Fabulous Females and Peerless Pirs: Tales of Mad Adventure in Old Bengal

282 Pages·2004·1.78 MB·English

by  Tony K. Stewart

Fabulous Females and
Peerless Pirs:
Tales of Mad Adventure
in Old Bengal
Tony K. Stewart
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Fabulous Females and Peerless Pı¯rs

Fabulous Females
and Peerless Pı¯rs
Tales of Mad Adventure
in Old Bengal
TRANSLATED BY
Tony K. Stewart
1
2004
1
Oxford NewYork
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Copyright(cid:1)2004byOxfordUniversityPress,Inc.
PublishedbyOxfordUniversityPress,Inc.
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OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,
storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,
electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,orotherwise,
withoutthepriorpermissionofOxfordUniversityPress.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Fabulousfemalesandpeerlessp¯ırs:talesofmadadventureinold
bengal/translatedbyTonyK.Stewart.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
TranslatedfromBengali.
ISBN0-19-516529-2;0-19-516530-6(pbk.)
1. Shortstories,Bengali—TranslationsintoEnglish. 2. Bengal
(India)—Sociallifeandcustoms. 3. Bangladesh—Sociallifeand
customs. 4. Religiouspluralism. I. Stewart,TonyK.,1954–
PK1716.5.Faa 2003
891.4'430108—dc21 2003000165
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
onacid-freepaper
for Joan R.
whose story,
if it isn’t already here,
should be
This page intentionally left blank
PREFACE
T
hisisabookIneversetouttowrite,butafteryearsofworkinginthisliterature
I found the need to do so. It began as curiosity about the figure of Satya Pı¯r,
whoseemedtobeasyncretisticfigure,anoddmixtureofHinduandMuslim,pack-
agedintalesthatwerenoteasilyclassifiedaccordingtoanystandardgenresIknew.
These seemingly insignificant tales turned out to be anything but—in intellectual
content,instyleandrange,ingeographicdistribution,andinnumber—eventhough,
when pressed, few scholars seemed to know anything about them. I have located
more than 750 handwritten manuscripts and more than 160 printed works by at
least one hundred different authors, writing mainly in Bangla (Bengali), but even
some in Sanskrit—texts that were composed in every region within Bengal. It was
in the long period of wrestling with Asim Roy’s important characterization of syn-
cretism in this and related literatures of precolonial Islam that I rejected his classi-
ficationnearlycompletelyandformulatedanalternativemodeltoconceptualizethis
figure—and I thank Asim dearly for that stimulation.1 Satya Pı¯r is a generic holy
manandassuchisalocusofpowertowhomanyonecanturnwhentheyhavethe
need. It is the orientation of this practical use—not some ideologicalstandardthat
measuresaccordingtopristineandexclusivecategoriesofHinduandMuslim—that
dictateshowheisdepictedandunderstood.TheeighttalesIhavechosentotranslate
bear this out as well as any, for they defy classification along sectarian lines—for
reasons I have outlined in the introduction—and exercise a kind of situation crea-
tivitythatinvitesthereaderorlistenertograpplewithmorallyambiguoussituations
apartfromthedictatesofsomereligiousinjunction.
The origins of this book are a little obscure, but date backto materialsonSatya
Pı¯r that I began to gather somewhat casually in 1978–79 while in search of repre-
sentative reading materials when I was studying Bengali in Calcutta (now Kolkata)
in the intensive language program run by the AmericanInstituteofIndianStudies.
When I returned to Kolkata in1981–82 to do dissertationresearchon thetopicof
Gaudfiı¯ya Vaisfinfiava hagiography, under the auspices of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral
Dissertation Research Abroad program run by the U.S. Department of Education,I
discovered many more references to Satya Pı¯r and Satya Na¯ra¯yanfia and their con-
nectionstothatVaisfinfiavaworld.ThebookstallsofCollegeStreetwereverygenerous
instartingtofillmyshelveswiththispopularliterature;mygoodfriendandcolleague
Robert Evans helped me in that endeavor to collect materials in Kolkata, and sub-
sequentlyprovidedcopiesofprintmaterialsfromhisextensiveprivatecollectionof
Vaisfinfiavaandpopularliterature.WhenIreturnedtotheUniversityofChicago,Re-
gensteinLibraryyieldedanothersmallcacheofprintedmaterials(towhichIadded),
andIthankbothMaureenPattersonandJamesNyefortheirhelpinlocatingthese.
In1989,duringahighlysuccessfulbutall-too-shortfishingexpeditiontotheOrien-
tal and India Office Collections (OIOC) of the British Library located in the old
building on Blackfriars I discovered a trove. I returned in 1991, courtesy of the
National Endowment for the Humanities “travel to collections” grant to mine the
OIOC’s vast holdings, picking up copies and references to numerous nineteenth-
century editions, as well as a few mold spores from the same period that continue
to plague me every time I enter their collections. Then Deputy Director Graham
Shaw was very generous with his time and staff, and Bengali bibliographer Dipali
Ghoshwentoutofherwaytoraidthestacksandintroducemetothesecrethand-
written“bluecards”ofuncatalogedmaterialsthatyieldedthreeofthestoriesinthis
collection.
Until that point, most of my research on Satya Pı¯r had been as invisible as the
literature itself, but in 1991–92, I was awarded a fellowshipby the Fulbright-Hays
FacultyReseachAbroadprogramspecificallytoinvestigatethemanuscriptliterature
of Satya Pı¯r in Bangladesh. At the same time I was granted a fellowship from the
American Institute of Bangladesh Studies for a dovetailed project on Satya Pı¯r that
focused more on print materials. That dual support enabled me to extend my stay
inDhaka,where I workedlargelyinthemanuscriptcollectionofDhakaUniversity
Library, and the libraries of the Asiatic SocietyofBangladeshandtheBanglaAcad-
emy. Unfortunately, because of the political unrest during that year, which culmi-
nated in December when the Babri Masjid was razed in Ayodhya, India, work was
oftencutshort.DhakaUniversityitselfwasclosedformorethanonehundreddays
that year, with sixteen student political assassinations on campus; and scheduled
tripstoKumilla,Rajshahi,andRangpurwerevariouslycanceled.Butintellectuallife
in Dhaka does not stop because of politics and strikes, so I benefited from long
relaxed evenings with the late Professor M.R. Tarafdar, Dhaka University, whose
knowledge of Bengali history was without peer—and whose study on the Awadhi
romance literatures as they traveled to Bengal helped me perhaps more than any
otherto see the importanceofthatsourceofinspirationtothesetales.Manyhours
were spent with other scholars whose ideas and resources contributed directly,in-
cluding Dhaka University professors Anisuzzaman and the late AhmadSharif,and,
toward the end of that stay, A.K.M. Zakariah, who shared a unique manuscript of
thetextofBadfiasatyapı¯rosandhya¯vatı¯kanfiya¯rpunthi,previouslyknowntomeonly
inprintedform—amanuscriptnotfoundinanypubliccollection.Attheurgingof
Professor Tarafdar, Professor Shah Jahan Miya of the Bengali Department, Dhaka
University, worked with mein1992to transcribefivepreviouslyunnoticedmanu-
viii Preface
scripts of Satya Pı¯r; two of those tales are included in the current volume, and it is
ourhopethattheeditedBengalitextswillsoon,althoughbelatedly,bepublished.
In 1992 I gave my first public presentation of these materials to a combined
meetingoftheItihasParisad,Dhaka,andtheDepartmentofIslamicCivilizationand
History,DhakaUniversity.IofferedamoreextendedsurveytotheCarolinaSeminar
on Comparative Islamic Societies in 1994, and two workshops at the Universityof
Pennsylvania,onein1995,andtheother,asubstantiallyexpandedandrevisedform,
in1997.In1995CarlW.Ernst,UniversityofNorthCarolina–ChapelHill,andIran
a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers
under the title “Rethinking Religious Boundaries in South Asia,” where a very ap-
preciativegrouplaughedtheirwaythroughlengthysynopsesofmanyofthetalesin
this volume, with special scepticism being directed at the thirteen-cubit cucumber
intheBa¯gha¯mbarapa¯la¯ (translatedhereas“TheDisconsolateYogı¯WhoTurnedthe
Merchant’s Wife into a Dog”), a translation to which I steadfastly hold. Out of that
groupIamespeciallygratefultosuggestionsbyRobinC.Rinehart,LafayetteCollege,
and Lakhi Sabaratnam, Davidson College. Since that time patient audiences have
contributed substantially at the American Historical Association annual meeting
(1996—inthemiddleofaverydistractingsnowstorm),twiceattheTriangleSouth
Asia Consortium’s colloquium (1996, 1998), and at the Conference on Religionin
SouthIndia(1999).IwasslatedtodeliverasurveyoftheliteraturetotheRockefeller
Residency Instituteforthe Study ofSouth AsianIslam at DukeUniversityin1996,
butwasfoiledbyyetanotherlingeringrespiratoryinfectionengenderedattheBritish
Librarysometwomonthsearlier,butthatarticlewassubsequentlypublishedinthe
volumeBeyondTurkandHindu:RethinkingReligiousIdentitiesinIslamicateSouthAsia,
edited by David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence. The College of Humanitiesand
Social Sciences, North Carolina State University, partiallysubsidizedseveralsubse-
quent trips to Dhaka (2000, 2002) and London (2000, 2001), where I tidied up
somelooseends.
Along the way I bored many a colleague and friend with talk of these tales and
insistent requests to read them and respond. Most willing and always ableto press
thelimitsofmyknowledgewasDavidGilmartin,NorthCarolinaStateUniversity,a
colleagueofinestimablevalue.ThelateEdwardC.Dimock,Jr.,oftheUniversityof
Chicagodiscussedwithme,amongmanyotherissuesrelatedtoBengalicultureand
literature, how to present these tales in a way that would make them accessible to
English-speakingaudiences—andItrustthatthosewhoknewhimwilldetectsome
of his presence in the wit and humor of these translations. Bruce B. Lawrence and
Katherine P. Ewing, both of Duke University, Carl W. Ernst of the University of
NorthCarolina-ChapelHill,DavidLuddenandGuyWelbon,bothoftheUniversity
ofPennsylvania,DickEatonoftheUniversityofArizona,FranPritchettofColumbia
University,BarbaraMetcalfoftheUniversityofCalifornia-Davis,andRalphW.Nich-
Preface ix