First Encounters

Try as I might, I cannot remember the first time I met Madhu Nath, the senior author of this volume. That I came to record his performance of Gopi Chand was initiated neither by me nor by him but by his relatives Nathu and Ugma Nathji—some of my closest associates during my residence in the Rajasthani village of Ghatiyali. Madhu, although born in Ghatiyali, settled many years ago in another nearby village, Sadara. Therefore, although he celebrated life cycle rituals among his kinfolk in Ghatiyali, and periodically performed there, he spent most of his time in Sadara. This accounts for my being unaware of him as a special person after over a year's residence in Ghatiyali and a deep involvement with several households of his relatives there.

Because of manifold links between pilgrimage and death, I had been systematically recording "hymns" (bhajans ) sung on the eve of funeral feasts by the Nath caste and non-Nath participants in the sect which they led. I had grown increasingly interested in the Naths' peculiar approach to death and the liberation of the soul (Gold 1988, 99–123). When Madhu was directly introduced to me as a singer, in January 1981, I was reminded that my bhajan recordings of April 1980 were made at hymn sessions, first for his son and then for his wife. I had actually attended both their funeral feasts. This latter significant connection was phrased as, "You ate his son's and his wife's nukti" —nukti being the little sugary fried balls that are one of the most characteristic foods of ceremonial village feasts (called nukta ). During these particular feasts I must have seen Madhu, as I have seen so many

other hosts at dozens of similar events, harried and anxious to keep all his guests satisfied, with no time for casual conversations. Madhu always wore his pale red-orange turban tied low, almost hiding and also supporting the heavy yogis' earrings that might otherwise have caught my attention.

My memorable and formal introduction to Madhu Nath took place over half a year later when, after six weeks in Delhi and Banaras, where I had been recuperating from hepatitis, I returned to Ghatiyali accompanied by Daniel Gold (then friend and colleague but not yet husband). Daniel, as a historian of religions researching the sant tradition in North India, had become interested in Ghatiyali's Naths when I showed him the transcribed texts of their hymns—many of which had the signature (chhap ) of the poet-saint Kabir, and some of which employed the coded imagery common to Sant poetry (Gold 1987; Hess and Singh 1983).

Daniel expressed his desire to talk with persons learned in Nath traditions, and my research assistant Nathu Nath introduced to him several members of his family and sect. The last person he brought to us was Madhu, and that evening—Daniel's last in the village—Madhu performed, and I duly recorded, Gopi Chand's janmpatri or birth story. I was immediately intrigued and delighted: here was a living bard singing a story that was obviously about the same character as Temple's Punjabi version, yet evidently startlingly different in certain prominent details. I recalled from Temple nothing about Gopi Chand's being won as a boon by his mother's ascetic prowess or borrowed from the yogi Jalindar. Yet these were the dominant elements that framed the plot of Madhu's "Birth Story."^[1]

Until that first evening with Madhu Nath I had largely confined my recordings of folklore to much briefer performances: women's worship tales and songs, and men's hymns. Yet now I felt compelled to obtain the whole story of Gopi Chand, despite its lack of direct relevance to my pilgrimage research, and the perceptible ticking away of my finite time in India. My recording sessions were not continuous; Madhu made a trip to Sadara to look after his fields when he had finished the "Birth Story" (in one night) and the "Journey to Bengal" (in two). Persuaded to return so that I could have the complete tale of Gopi Chand, he next gave me "Gopi Chand Begs from Queen

[1] In chapter 3 I discuss how Gopi Chand varies from region to region.

Patam De," which belongs chronologically between the segments on birth and Bengal, and "Instruction From Gorakh Nath"—the conclusion. Seven years later I returned to Rajasthan with the express purpose of recording from Madhu the tale of Gopi Chand's maternal uncle, Bharthari of Ujjain. Despite the gap in time, the circumstances of the recording sessions in 1988 were not very different from those of 1981, except that the loudest crying baby on the second set of tapes belonged not to my host's household or neighbors but to me.

In January 1981 when I came to know Madhu Nath he did not strike me as a man undone by loss and mourning, although in 1980 he had buried first one of his two sons and then his wife. The son had suffered a long and debilitating illness through which he was intensively and devotedly nursed by his mother. She had, I was told, kept herself alive only to serve her child and had not long outlived him. Accompanying this double personal loss, Madhu had incurred the great economic stress of sponsoring two funeral feasts. I saw others driven to or beyond the brink of nervous collapse by just such accumulated pressures.

Yet Madhu Nath was calm, confident of his power with words, always entertaining, and sometimes very humorous. Retrospectively, I wonder if he did not derive some of his solidity, following this very difficult period of his life, from the teachings of the stories that he told so well again and again—stories with the bittersweet message that human life is "a carnival of parting." Another factor in his equilibrium could have been the Nath cult's promise of release from the pain of endless rounds of death and birth, and thus certainty of his wife's and son's liberation.

It is also true, however, that I approached Madhu Nath as a source of art and knowledge rather than as a man who had recently suffered much grief. We never spoke of his family; indeed, we hardly exchanged any personal courtesies of the kind that constitute much of normal village social intercourse. Madhu teased me sometimes—making jokes at my expense during the spoken parts of his performance—but outside the performance itself we did not talk very much in 1981. In short, although he was a wonderfully expansive storyteller, Madhu seemed to me a reserved and veiled person.

I did not attempt to obtain even a sketchy life history from Madhu Nath until my 1988 visit. My experience then confirmed in part the intuition that our lack of personal relationship could be attributed to

him as much as to me. My attempt at a life history interview rapidly degenerated, or evolved, into an illuminating session of "knowledge talk," rich in myth but skimpy on biography. What follow here are the bare outlines of Madhu's career as I gleaned them from that leisurely and rambling conversation, supplemented by a few inquiries made by mail through my research assistant Bhoju.

Madhu, a member of the Natisar lineage of Naths, was born in Ghatiyali, but in his childhood he was sent to live with an elder brother already residing in nearby Sadara. His brother was pujari or "worship priest" in Sadara's Shiva temple.^[2] The thakur or local ruler of Sadara—and this would have been in the thirties when thakurs still ruled—came into possession of a pair of yogis' earrings and took a notion to put them on somebody. Madhu, and other Naths who were listening to our conversation, concurred on the consistent if seemingly superficial interpretation that the Sadara thakur was endowed with great sauk (a term translatable as "passionate interest") in such works. Perhaps more salient, they also suggested that enduring "fruits" (phal ) accrue to the one who performs such a meritorious act. And they offered as evidence the information that, even today, when independent India's concerted attempts at land reform have greatly reduced the circumstances of Rajasthan's former gentry, there is "nothing lacking" in the Sadara thakur' s household.

Whether we see Madhu as beneficiary or victim of the thakur' s sauk, the rationale for his becoming the recipient of these yogis' earrings appears to have been more economic and social than spiritual. The landlord deeded some fertile farmland to Madhu's family in exchange for cooperation on the family's part. As for Madhu himself, he was young and clearly his head was turned by the attention he received in the ceremony, and the pomp with which it was conducted. Fifty years later he described to me with pleasure the feasts, the processions, and the "English band" that were for him the most impressive and memorable aspects of this function. He stated that, although two "Nath babajis"^[3] were called to be ritual officiants, he had no personal

[2] Through much of rural Rajasthan it is Naths, not Brahmans, who serve as priests of Shiva temples. The Nath cult and their lore are strongly, but not universally, identified with Shaivism; see chapter 2.

[3] Like maharaj or "great king," babaji, literally "respected father," is a common epithet and term of address for Nath and other renouncers. It has connotations of intimacy that other terms for "father" lack and may also be used affectionately for children.

guru. For Madhu, his own ear-cutting seems to have been completely divorced from the kind of spiritual initiation with which it is consistently associated, not only in the tales he himself delivers but in other published accounts.

Nevertheless, this experience and its visible physical aftermath—the rings themselves—surely set Madhu apart from the other young men of his village world. Although Madhu did not state this in so many words, what he did make clear was that after the ritual he found himself restless and unsatisfied with the life of an ordinary farmer's boy. His brother sent him out to graze the goats, but he felt this was "mindless work" (bina buddhi ka kam ) and quarreled with him. Evidently the economic fruits of Madhu's ear-splitting were being reaped not by Madhu but by the senior male member of his household. The brother declined to support a non-goatherding Madhu; Madhu declined to herd goats. At this juncture, Madhu decided to set off on his own. As he put it, "There was no one to control me so I had a sarangi [the instrument he plays to accompany his performances] made by Ram Chandra Carpenter." Madhu continued, "I rubbed it,"—meaning he did not know how to play properly—"and went to all the big feasts."

Madhu then listed a number of events (weddings, holiday entertainments, and so forth) that he had attended in several villages where Naths performed their tales, both for their own caste society and at the request of other celebrating groups. In the course of these meanderings Madhu hooked up with his mother's brother's son, Sukha Nath, who was already an accomplished performer. Madhu began by informally accompanying and making himself useful to Sukha. Eventually they agreed on an apprenticeship. Madhu said, "I'll go with you," and Sukha said, "Come if you want to learn." Madhu then sought permission from his grandmother in Ghatiyali, telling her—as he recalled it for me—"I'11 wash his clothes, I'll serve him, I'll live with him."

Madhu appeared to remember the years of his discipleship fondly, and no doubt selectively. He described eating two meals a day of festive treats for weeks at a stretch when he and his cousin were commissioned to perform for relatively wealthy patrons. It was particularly at such special events—the only occasions when the stories are narrated from beginning to end rather than in fragments as is the usual custom—that he mastered Sukha Nath's repertoire. This comprised the three epics Madhu himself performs: Gopi Chand, Bharthari, and the

marriage of Shiva. Madhu also knows countless hymns and several shorter tales.^[4]

At a time that Madhu estimated to be about five years after he acquired the yogis' earrings, he was married, eventually becoming the father of two sons. After his brother's death, the Sadara property came fully into Madhu's possession, as did the service at the Sadara Shiva temple. He seems then to have settled into a life divided between agricultural and priestly tasks in Sadara and exercise of his bardic art in a group of nine surrounding villages, including Ghatiyali.