Sarala Das, the fifteenth-century
poet, is acknowledged as the “aadi kavi” of Odia literature. “Aadi
kavi” is like a title. It literally means “the first poet”. But here, it
must not be taken in that sense. It means the first major poet. He is the
creator of the rich tradition of Odia puranic literature. He composed three
puranas, and his “Mahabharata”, popularly called “Sarala Mahabharata”,
is the most renowned of them. Hailed as a truly remarkable work, it is a creative
retelling of Vyasa’s “Mahabharata”, often referred to as “Vyasa
Mahabharata”. It is the first retelling of all eighteen Parvas of Vyasa
Mahabharata in any language. And this is the first retelling of the
great Sanskrit classic by a person
who does not belong to a high caste.
Incidentally, Sarala Das is
credited with composing the first Shakti purana in Odia: “Chandi Purana”.
In my opinion, the first Shakti purana in Odia is his “Mahabharata”. It
is composed with the “Saraswati bhava” of goddess Sarala (Shakti), which is harmony. Goddess Sarala, the
inspiration behind the poet Sarala’s compositions, has a Saraswati aspect
(knowledge and harmony) and a Durga (destructive) aspect.
Many are interested in Sarala
Das, the person. No surprise, because although he is the aadi kavi, very little
is known about his life. Friends who know my interest in Sarala Mahabharata,
have asked me whether he knew Sanskrit. There is a controversy about where he
was born and in which century. It is commonly held that he was born in the
fifteenth century in a village called Kanakapura near Jhankad in Jagatsinghpur district.
The eminent Odia writer and scholar, Gopinath Mohanty, disagreed. He argued
that the poet belonged to the tenth century and that his birthplace was Kania,
near Kakatpur in Puri district. Sometimes I have been asked what my view is. I
tell them that I have not studied the controversy and have no interest in the matter.
So, I go with the popular view.
I have always told those who have
asked me about Sarala Das, the person, that the biography of an author is of
interest to me only if it helps me to understand his ( her/their) work. But on
a rethink, I realized that it is a pedantic response and that the hearer would
not be unjustified to think that I was being dismissive, arrogant, and rude.
Besides, personal interests apart, there is no good justification for one’s
indifference towards the creator but interest in his creations.
So, I decided to mend my ways and
be more reasonable and respectful about the questions about Sarala Das, the
poet. I looked up whatever I could lay my hands on this subject. The most
useful of those was Krishna Chandra Panigrahi’s book “Sarala Das”, published by
Sahitya Akademi in 1975. The problem is that there is very little information
about him outside of his own works. But one cannot go just by that, because
one’s statements about oneself are, to a considerable extent, determined by the
value system prevalent at that time. These days, self-promotion is socially
acceptable, except when it reduces to bragging. But bragging by the powerful
has to be accepted. This has been so all along. But in Sarala’s time,
self-promotion by an ordinary person was, in all probability, unacceptable. So,
what Sarala says about himself may not be the truth. But, as mentioned above,
there is no strong independent evidence available, as of now, to determine to
what extent Sarala’s observations about himself are reliable.
Sarala was born in the mid-fifteenth
century into a farming family, and his name at birth was Siddheswara Parida. His
family was not poor, but nowhere near rich. He was called a “paika (foot
soldier)”; so, he must have learned some warfare. His father’s name was
Yasovanta and his elder brother’s, Parasurama. Sarala says he was uneducated. He
had no formal education. There is no evidence that he went to school. He could
be said to be half-educated at best. Much of what he knew, he had learned on
his own. It is difficult to believe that he did not know Sanskrit, unless one
accepts his assertion that goddess Sarala was the real author of his works. Sarala
says that he was a cultivator by profession and that he was a “sudra (low
caste)”. In those days, “sudra” might have meant “non-brahmins” (and perhaps “non-kshatriyas”).
He depended on his paddy fields
for his living. In his Chandi Purana, he says that he used to plough his
paddy fields even in his old age. In “Drona Parva” in his Mahabharata,
he says that he had children and grandchildren. To differentiate himself from
the bhahmin “munis”, he seems to have called himself a Sudra muni. In those
days, the word “muni” probably meant a “sage” or a “composer of religious
texts”. So, he was a “sudra muni” in the latter interpretation of the word. He
says that it was the goddess Sarala, not any human being, who conferred on him
the title of “sudra muni”. He dedicated his writings to the goddess. In his Mahabharata,
he says that the goddess Sarala was the creator of that work and that he was
the scribe. It is said that this was his strategy to protect himself from the
hostility of brahmins. It is not quite convincing, in our opinion, because he
made himself open to being attacked for making the claim indirectly that the
goddess specially favoured him.
There is no evidence to show that
he had received any royal favour. Kalicharan Pattnaik, the well-known
twentieth-century literary artist, who has also contributed much to the
development of the theatre in Odisha, says in his dramatic presentation of
Sarala’s life, in his play “Sarala Das”, that the great poet had
received recognition from King Kapilendra Deba. But this is creative writing,
where fiction is presented as fact and in the absence of proper evidence, it
cannot be taken as fact. There is no evidence at all that Sarala became rich at
a later stage of his life, which would have been the case if he had received
royal recognition.
There is hardly any reliable
information about the circumstances of his death. Sarala was not cremated, but
buried, like a muni, in the “sage” sense of the term. It is possible that in
his village, he was taken, towards the
end of his life, as a sage-like person. Or, he might have taken samadhi
voluntarily.
It may appear surprising that so
little is known about Sarala Das, despite his being regarded as the aadi kavi
of Odia literature and as an important symbol of Odia identity. For one thing,
he did not have followers, unlike Jagannath Das and other saint-poets (bhakta
poets), who were together called the “Panchasakhas” of Odia literature. No “matha
( Hindu monastery)” or institution perpetuates him. He performed no miracles, and no miraculous
happening was associated with him. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Sarala
did not have followers. This shows that he lived like an ordinary man and had
not become a guru (a religious preacher). Today, very few public institutions
in Odisha are named after him. Except recently, there does not seem to have
been any strong demands made to the State urging it to take some affirmative
action to honour him. As the senior linguist and academic Biswamohan Pradhan
observed (personal communication), the spelling of the aadi kavi’s name
has not been standardized.
Probably after his death, people
made copies of his Mahabharata on palm leaves, and later, palm-leaf
copies were made of these copies. The greatest tribute to his masterpiece, in
my opinion, was Jagannath Das’s Mahabharata, which is a commendable creative
work. Jagannath Das is revered as the author of Srimad Bhagabata, the
celebrated sacred text. Now, let us refer to his Mahabharata as “Jagannath
Das Mahabharata”. Barely six decades separate Sarala Das and Jagannath Das.
Some assert that Jagannath Das is not the author of this work. Someone else
composed it and used his name as its author. We do not know for certain whether
this assertion has any merit. We require a thorough and detailed linguistic
analysis of this composition to respond meaningfully to this assertion. For the
present, let us grant, for the sake of argument, that the authorship issue is
real. But one thing is certain: it was composed during the puranic age. Broadly
speaking, this work can be described as a retelling of Sarala Mahabharata
in the well-known “nabakshari” form of Srimad Bhagabata. Now,
isn’t it a huge tribute to the work that it inspired a retelling of it?
Sarala Das was not alive to see
this beautiful thing happening to his truly remarkable work.
