8. The Making Of Regional Cultures (our past 2)

Chapter 8

The Making of Regional Cultures

India is a vast country. Its rich traditions, cultures, languages, food, clothes, poetry, dances, music and paintings also tend to associate with each region.These traditions and cultures are intermix. The some traditions appear specific to some reasons. Other seems to be similar across regions and sometimes older practices take a new form in other regions.

Southern Region

The Cheras and the development of Malayalam

Inscription composed in Malayalam

The Chera Kingdom of Mahodayapuram was established in the ninth century in the south-western part of the penninsula, part of present day Kerala. It was likely that Malayalam was spoken in this area.The rulers introduced the Malayalam language and scripts in their inscriptions.This is one of the earliest example of the use of regional language in official records in the subcontinent. At the same time, the Cheras  also drew upon Sanskritic traditions.Pictures of Kerala, which is traced to this period, borrowed stories from the Sanskrit epics.The first literary works in Malayalam, dated to about the twelfth century are directly indebted to Sanskrit. A fourteenth century text, the Lilatilakam dealing with grammar and poetics, was composed in Manipravalam, literally “diamonds and corals”refering to the two languages, Sanskrit and the regional language.

Rulers and religious traditions

The Jagannath cult

The best example of this process is the cult of Jagannath. Literally, Lord of the world, the name for Vishnu at Puri, Orissa. To date the local tribal people make the wooden images of deity, which suggests that the deity was originally a local God, who was later identified with Vishnu.In the twelfth century, one of the most important rulers of the Ganga dynasty, Anantavarman decided to erect a temple forPurushotthama Jagannath at Puri.In 1230, kingAnangabhima III dedicated his Kingdom to the deity and proclaimed himself as the deputy of the God. As the temple gained importance as acentre of pilgrimag its authority in social and political matters also increased.Those who conquered Orissa, such as the Mughals, the  Marathas and the English East India Company, attempted to gain control over the temple.They felt that this would make their rule acceptable to the local people.

Traditions of heroism

Rajputs

In the 19 century, the region that constitute most of present day Rajasthan was called Rajputana by the British. There were several groups who identify themselves as Rajput in many areas of northern and central India.

Rajputs are often recognised as contributing to the distinctive culture of Rajasthan. From about the eighth century, most of the present day state of Rajasthan was ruled by various Rajput families.Prithviraj was one such ruler.Rajput rulers cherished the ideal of hero who fought  valiantly, often choosing death on the battlefield rather than face defeat.Stories about Rajput heroes were recorded in poems and songs which were recited by specially trained minstrels.Ordinary people were also attracted by these stories, which often depicted dramatic situations, and a range of strong emotions, loyalty, friendship, love, will or anger, etc.Women are also depicted as following their heroic husband in both life and death. There are stories about the practice of Sati or theimmolation of widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands.So those who followed the heroic ideal often had to pay for it with their lives.

Cultures

Classical dances

Beyond regional frontiersthe Story of Kathak

The term Kathak is derived from katha, a word used in Sanskrit and other languages for story.The Kathaks were originally a caste of storytellers in temples of North India, who embellished their performances with gestures and songs.It began evolving into a distinct mode of dance in the fifteenth and siteenth century, with the spread of the bhakti movement.The legends of Radha Krishna were enacted in folk plays called Rasa lila, which combined folk dance with the basic gestures of the Kathak storytellers.

Mughal emperors and their nobles kathak was performed in the court. It developed intwo traditions or gharanas: one  in the courts of Rajasthan (Jaipur) and the other in Lucknow.Under the patronage of Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh, it grew into a major art form.By the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it was firmly established as a dance form in the adjoining areas of present dayPunjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.Kathak was viewed with disfavour by most British administrators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.However it survived and continued to be performed by courtesans, and was recognised as one of ‘six classical’ forms of dance in the country after independence.

It is worth remembering that many dance forms that are classified as folk also share several of the characteristics considered typical of classical forms. So while the use of term classical may suggest that these forms are superior, this need not always be literally true.Other forms that are recognised as classical at present are Bharatanatyam (Tamil Nadu); Kathakali(Kerala); Odissi(Odisha);  Kuchipudi(Andhra Pradesh); Manipuri(Manipur)

Paintings

Printing for Patrons, the Tradition of Miniatures

Miniature are small size paintings generally done in watercolour on cloth or on paper. The earliest miniatures were on palm leaves or wood.Some of the most beautiful of these are found in Western India, were used to illustrate Jainas texts.The Mughal emperor Akbar, Jahangir, and Shahjahan patronised highly skilled painters who primarily illustrated manuscripts containing historical accounts and poetry.

These were painted in brilliant colours and portrayed court scenes, scene of battle or hunting and other aspects of social life.These were often exchanged as gifts and were viewed only by an exclusive few, the emperor and his close associates.With the decline of the Mughal Empire, many painters moved out to the courts of the emerging regional states.As a result, Mughal artistic tastes influence the regional court of the Deccan and Rajput courts of Rajasthan. Portraits of rulers and court scenes came to be painted following the Mughal example. Besides, themes from mythology and poetry were depicted at centres such as Mewar, Jodhpur, Bundi, kota and Kishangarh.By the late seventeenth century, the Himalayan region has developed the bold and intense style of miniature painting calledBusohli.The most popular text to be painted here was Bhanudatta’sRasamanjari. By the mid eighteenth century, the Kangra artists developda style which breathed a new spirit into miniature painting. The source of inspiration was theVaishnavite traditionas. Soft colours including cool blues and greens, and a lyrical treatment of themes distinguish Kangra painting.

Tradition and Languages

Growth of regional language

Now a days, people in Bengal, Bengali.From the fourth to the third century BCE, commercial ties begin to develop between Bengal and Magadha, which led to the growing influence of Sanskrit.During the fourth century, the Gupta rulers, established political control over North Bengal and begin to settle Brahmanas in this area. Thus, the linguistic and cultural influence from mid-Ganga valley became stronger.

In the seventh century, the Chinese traveller Xuan Zang observed that languages related to Sanskrit were in use all over Bengal.In 1586, when Akbar conquered Bengal, It found the nucleus of Bengal Suba.During this period, Bengali developed as regional language.In fact, by the fifteenth century, the Bengali group of dialects came to be united by a common literary language based on the spoken language of the western part of region now known as West Bengal. As Bengali is derived from Sanskrit, it passed through several stages of evolution.Wide range of non Sanskrit words, derived from a variety of sources including tribal languages, Persian and European languages, have become part of modern Bengali.Early Bengali literature may be divided into two categories-one indebted to Sanskrit and the other independent of it.The first include translation of the Sanskrit epics, the Mangalkavyas and bhakti literature suchas the biographies of Chaitanyadeva, the leader of Vaishnavabhakti movement.The second include Nath literature such as the songs of maynamati and Gopichandra,stories concerning the worship of Dharma Thakur and fairy tales, folk tales and ballads.Texts belonging to the first category are easier as several manuscripts have been found indicating that they are composed between the late fifteenth and mid eighteeth centuries. Those belonging to the second category circulated orally and cannot be precisely dated.

Maynamati, Gopichandra and Dharma Thakur

The Naths were ascetics who engaged in variety of yogic practices. This particular often enacted described how Maynamati, a queen, encoraged her son Gopichandra to adopt the path of asceticism in the face of a variety of obstacles. Dharma Thakur is a popular regional deity, often worshipped in a form of stone or a piece of wood.

Pirs and Temples

In the sixteenth century, people began to migrate in large numbers from the less fertile western Bengal to the forested and marshy areas of South-eastern Bengal.As they moved eastward, they cleared forest and brought the land under rice cultivation.Local communities of fisher folks and shifting cultivators, often tribals merged with the new communities of peasants.The early settler sought some order and assurance in the unstable conditions of the new settlements. The community leaders called pirs,  were the source of order and stability for the early settlers.They included Sufi saints, soldiers, colonisers, Hindu and Buddhist deities and spirits.The cult of pirs became very popular and their shrines can be found everywhere in Bengal.From the fifteenth century onwards, temple construction started on a large scale.Modest bricks and terracotta temples in Bengal were built with the support of several ‘low’ social groups, such as the Kolu(oil pressers) and the Kansari(bell metal workers).As their social and economic position improved, they proclaimed their status through the construction of temples.When local dietes, once worshipped in thatched huts in villages, gained the recognition of the Brahmanas, their images began to be housed in temples.

The temples began to copy the double-roofed(dochala) or four roofed (chauchala) structure of the thatched huts.This led to the evolution of typical Bengali style in the temple architecture.The interiors were relatively plain, but the outer walls of many temples were decorated with paintings, ornamental tiles or terracotta tablets.In some temple, particularly in Vishnupur in Bankura district of West Bengal, such decorations reached a high degree of excellence.

Fish as food

Bengalis a riverine plane which produces plenty of rice and fish.These two items figure predominantly in the menu of even poor Bengalis. Fishing has always been an important occupation, and Bengali literature contains several references to fish.Terracotta plaques on the walls of temples and Viharas depict scenes of fish being dressed and taken to the market in baskets.Brahmanas were not allowed to eat non vegetarian food, but the popularity of fish in the local diet made the Brahminical authorities relax this prohibition for the Bengal Brahmanas.The Brihaddharma Purana, a thirteenth century Sanskrit text from Bengal, permitted the local Brahmanas to eat certain varieties of fish.