Bengal Blackie Rides Again

No one really knows anything about the songs of Kanha, not what they mean, not when or where or under what circumstances they were written. They form a verbal Rorschach test. And the interpretations of the songs by the commentator Munidatta, as well as by the academics-Kvaerne, Shahidulla, Dasgupta, and others-are projections at best. Ray sees a butterfly where I see a pelvis. As scholars, however, we are both constrained to justify our projections, to explain to others why they make sense. Making sense is as close as we can come to truth. Ray, as a Tibetan scholar and a practicing Buddhist, envisions Kanha the siddha, and, basing his knowledge of the siddhas on hagiographical literature (the impulses of which were inspirational rather than historical), he argues that I have over-emphasized the and aspects of the singer and his songs. There was indeed a siddha named Kanha, but to assume that he is the same person as the one who wrote the song in question just because they have the same name is an interpretive step I do not choose to take. It may be like assuming that Reginald Ray, Martha Ray, and Satyajit Ray are one and the same being. Once these mysterious songs became incorporated into Vajrayana canonical literature centuries later, Kanha the songwriter did, indeed, become identified as a siddha and commentatorial apologetics were necessarily written. But those institutional glosses reveal no more about the meaning of the original songs in their own context than do the Patristic commentaries on the Songs of Songs tell us about the original meaning or function of that erotic, bucolic text. As a student of Indian cultural traditions, a non-believer, and an unabashed, if not aspiring, hedonist, my projections are different than Ray's. All Rorschach blots look dirty to me. I think I may-if anything-have under-emphasized the colorful and unconventional dimensions of the songs. I see Kanha the Kapalika (Skullbearer) and I do so because Kanha repeatedly describes himself as one (songs 10, 11, and 18). He is, he says, a Skullbearer who has renounced his family, smeared his body with ashes, and taken up with a low-caste consort

Bay · BENGAL · Civil engineering · Engineering · Indian History and Philosophy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

• Ambiguous sexuality

  Roger R Jackson•Religion•1992

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