chandrabati's delineation of sita
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Answer:
Chandrabati was an impoverished Brahmin woman from a small village of Bengal, in eastern India, who had never been exposed to urban culture. We shall try to see how similar these two contemporaries were in their own cloistered cultures, and why one text is regarded as a major success while the other is considered a dismal failure by scholars of literature. To find an answer, we have to sift through questions of gender roles, silenced voices and the tensions between social versus individual priorities.
Just as Chandrabati was the first woman poet of medieval Bengal, Molla was the first woman poet of medieval Telugu literature. Both were devotees of Shiva; yet they wrote about Rama, an avatar of Vishnu. Both women remained unmarried and earned a living writing poetry—a pretty tough task even in twentieth-century India. More importantly, Chandrabati had written a short Ramayana in her mother tongue, Bengali; Molla had written one in hers, Telugu. Both women moved away from tradition by discarding the literary language, Sanskrit, in favour of the regional. For Chandrabati, choosing Bengali as the language of her poetry had no larger significance, as her knowledge of Sanskrit was minimal. But for Molla, the choice of Telugu was a conscious and subversive decision.
Having fallen prey to the literary charms of Chandrabati, I was utterly thrilled with the prospect of getting acquainted with yet another sixteenth-century woman poet who rewrote the Ramayana. I soon discovered that Molla had not been translated into English. Irrespective of the endless references to her Ramayana the text itself was not available in translation. So I set out out to find her myself in Andhra Pradesh, her homeland, and finally did manage to get hold of a tattered copy of a Hindi-Telugu bilingual edition of the Molla Ramayana, long out of print. This happens to be the only available translation of the text in any language. And as I studied Molla—I discovered that this poet wasn't like Chandrabati at all. There were more differences between the two women re-writers of the epic than the few superficial similarities.
Molla's Ramayana is regarded as one of the classical Ramayanas in Telugu, ranked after the two other medieval Telugu Ramayanas by Ranganatha and Bhaskara. Molla's Ramayana is still widely available in Telugu—thin paperbacks in cheap newsprint, with a shiny colourful picture of a beautiful young Molla lost in meditation on the cover.
Hardly anyone knows about Chandrabati's Ramayana, except for researchers of medieval Bengali literature. Even then, it is known only as a notoriously weak attempt at retelling the Ramayana. Thus, no one generally cares to read it. I wouldn't have, either, had I not felt an unholy urge to see just how bad this Ramayana was. That's when I came to know Chandrabati, in 1989. You will find Chandrabati's Ramayana either in D.C. Sen's collection, Maimansingh Geetika, volume IV (1916), or in K.C. Moulik's Purva Banga Geetika, volume VII (1976). Both scholarly editions are out of print, and therefore rare. Only the most exhaustive libraries may have them.
The Ramayan was reimagined by a Bengali poet in the 16th century. Much ahead of its time, she preferred to deliver an epic in her mother tongue rather than Sanskrit which at that period was respected. Even if she is discouraged and scorned about its attempt, it is groundbreaking because it is probably the first of its kind, written from a woman's point of view: Sita's
Explanation:
- Chandrabati, 25 years, was born in Patouari, near the town of Kishoreganj, on the Phuleswari River in Bangladesh in 1575. She appears distressed by , since her father has given her a herculean task— the Ramayana must be re-written .Historically, her version of the Ramayana is possibly one of the first examples of feminist literature.
- Chandrabati makes an epic well away from the heroic, far from the absolute Bhakti veneration. The gallant battle between Ram and Ravan is undermined and a comprehensive view of the emotional upheaval of Sita is provided. As unorthodox as ever, (Chandrabati starts the story with Sita's miraculous birth.
- Further, Chandrabati does something far more unthinkable. Although the epic of Valmiki is based in Ram's birth was for destroying Ravan's Chandrabati moves the spotlight and introduces Sita as being born to the destory King of Lanka.
- Mandodari (Ravan’s wife) is described as a women who is distraught at Ravan’s affairs with the women he abducts. In a moment of sheer helplessness, Mandodari consumes the blood taken by Ravana from the sages he tormented presuming it for poison
- Mandodari is conceiving an egg, but he is being warned by a prophecy: "The child born of it will bring disaster on the Ravana." Fearing the fall of Ravan, she throws it into the sea. As an average, imperfect man, Chandrabati paints Ram, who leaves his pregnant wife. Being subversive, Chandarbati is driven by the need to provide agency to women's plight against sufferings. Chandrabati takes an epic of quintessence — known as a masterpiece of Valmiki that glorifies Ram in all his strength, his wisdom and his greatness— and upends it. She made the Ramayan a kind of women’s unending tragedy. She makes Sita the beating heart of the story.
- Chandrabati compares the suffering of Mandodari whose huband runs after other women, to Sita's whose husband rejected her. In addition, during her personal suffering, Chandrabati went on the tradition of retelling the Ramayana. This is why she ties herself with these two mythological figures by theme of rejection, making it an even greater history of women's suffering.
- The war is over and Sita returns to Ayodhya in the palace with her husband. Chandrabati gives us the whole story with Baromaasi. "A Baromaasi, typical of the folk genre, is a song that is sung by women to explain their agonies , and the poet uses that as a literary device for Ram's wife. Sita’s layered and lucid narration of grief which becomes the epic's linchpin