Banas: City of Tulsidas

The genres of Manas performance outlined above may be found throughout a large geographical area, including not only the Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Rajasthan—a composite region with a total population of roughly three hundred million persons—but also adjacent states where Hindi is not the predominant language. Thus, the Manas has long been popular among Hindus in the Punjab and among certain Vaishnava communities in Gujarat, as well as among transplanted Hindi-speaking groups in other regions. Some influence of the epic is said to extend eastward into Orissa and southwestward into the Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka.^[99] A more detailed survey of the geographical extent of Manas performances would be interesting, but it is beyond the scope of the present study.

Although the kinds of performances I have studied occur regularly throughout the above-mentioned region (and I have included some data from a variety of locations—e.g., Delhi, Ayodhya, and Chitrakut), I have chosen to focus my research on a single locale in order to acquire

[99] Kali C. Bahl described to me his childhood exposure to the Manas in Amritsar and has documented Katha programs there. It is also noteworthy that a major nineteenth-century commentary on the epic was composed in mixed Punjabi-Hindi dialect by Sant Singh, a Sikh (see Chapter 3, The Manas-Katha Tradition). The popularity of the Manas in Gujarat is attested to by Gandhi's early exposure to the text in Kathiawar (see Chapter 6, The Politics of Ramraj ), and a number of prominent contemporary expounders are Gujaratis. In recent times, Calcutta and Bombay have developed into major centers of Manas performance, because of the presence of wealthy Hindi-speaking patrons (see Chapter 6, People of the Book). On the popularity of the epic further to the east and south, see Induja Awasthi, "Ramcaritmanas and the Performing Tradition of Ramayana," 507-8.

Figure 5.
Banaras: bathers at one of the city's many ghats

a greater familiarity with the range of the performances that occur there and to develop closer relationships with the people who create and patronize them. This locale is the city of Banaras, located on the western bank of the River Ganga (Ganges) in eastern Uttar Pradesh—a city that occupies a special position in the Hindu world and in the Manas tradition.

The city is commonly known by three names—Banaras, Kashi, and Varanasi—each used in a different context. "Varanasi," the least commonly used name, appears in formal writing and on government maps and signboards. "Banaras" is favored in everyday usage to refer to the city as an economic and cultural unit.^[100] "Kashi" is used in religious contexts to refer to the city as a holy place (tirth ), the boundaries of which are strictly defined and do not correspond to the urban limits of modern Banaras. The distinction is important; when I asked one religious scholar whether he lived in Banaras, he replied pointedly, "No, I live in Kashi," adding, "Banaras is only a city, but Kashi is a sacred abode [dham ]."

The praises of Kashi/Banaras have been sung by countless poets, mystics, and theologians and more recently by a number of anthropologists and historians of religion interested in the rites and institutions of popu-

[100] Diana Eck points out that this name is not, as is often claimed, a recent Anglicization of Varanasi, but a vernacularization with a long history; Banaras, City of Light , 26.

lar Hinduism.^[101] Diana Eck's notable study presents a vivid and sensitive account of the city as a sacred complex and attempts to convey to Western readers the experiences and associations it evokes for Hindu pilgrims. Drawing heavily on Sanskrit mahatmya literature glorifying the city, this study understandably presents a somewhat idealized view of its subject, and although it also offers much information on the contemporary religious life of Banaras, this is slanted toward the Shaiva sites and institutions for which the city is famous. Yet Banaras today epitomizes the multiform synthesis of Vaishnava and Shaiva outlooks that, partly as a legacy of Tulsidas himself, is characteristic of popular Hinduism in North India.^[102] Since my own study will be concerned with performances that unfold within the context of everyday life in Banaras, it seems appropriate to present here some additional data on the city's contemporary ambience and ethos and on its special relationship to the Manas and the Ram devotional tradition.

During the two decades prior to the period of my field research (1982-84), Banaras grew from a city of some five hundred thousand people to an urban complex of more than one million. Little substantial modification was made to the physical layout of the older sections of the city to accommodate this increased population, and although new suburbs sprang up on three sides, their growth was largely unplanned and placed a further strain on the city's already-overburdened road network, as well as on its water, electricity, and waste disposal systems. A particularly serious crisis developed because of the discharge of enormous quantities of sewage into the Ganga—which is the source of the city's water supply, its principal bathing place, and the embodiment of its special sanctity. In earlier times, lower population and traditional methods of waste disposal (involving the daily transport of nightsoil to outlying fields) had kept river pollution at lower levels; the advent of flush toilets and sewage mains precipitated an ecological crisis, reflected in a high incidence of gastrointestinal problems and a high infant mortality rate in the region. In the early 1980s, a grass-roots campaign was organized, headed by a traditional religious leader, to educate the city's residents about the gravity of the pollution problem and to urge the local government to take remedial measures. Despite official indifference and

[101] E.g., Sukul, Varanasi down the Ages ; Vidyarthi et al., The Sacred Complex of Kashi ; Eck, Banaras, City of Light .

[102] Although Eck presents data on a number of Vaishnava sites (e.g., the Bindu Madhav Temple) and festivals, she sometimes accords them rather peremptory treatment. Thus her account of Dashahra, which climaxes the Ramlila cycle, labels the event a "Kshatriya festival" and conveys the impression that the lila is restricted to the royal production at Ramnagar; Banaras, City of Light , 269.

continued popular belief in the inviolability of Ganga water, the campaign had a modest impact and attracted world attention to the city's plight.^[103]

Banaras is certainly not unique in its pollution problems, although its inhabitants' intimate relationship with the river that is their city's most powerful symbol makes the problem particularly visible. The overcrowding of the central city in recent years and the resultant traffic problems (it is sometimes literally impossible to move, even on foot, in the downtown area at peak traffic periods), as well as increasing levels of air and noise pollution, are all common to much of urban India—indeed to urban centers throughout the world. The fact that, despite such problems, Banaras retains its magnetic appeal for Hindu India and continues to evoke the fervent pride of its own citizens invites us to consider just what it is that is so special about this city.

Most residents would probably sum it up with the word Banarsipan —"Banarsiness"—an allusion to the city's characteristic ethos, which is thought to combine spirituality and worldly pleasure, sanctity and satisfaction.^[104]Banarsipan is held to manifest itself in a carefree life-style characterized by such qualities as "passion," "intoxication," and "joy" (mauj, masti , and anand ) and in the cultivation of "passionate engagement" (sauk ), especially in religious or cultural activities. Educated Hindu Banarsis often allude to the city's unique "culture" or "civilization" (samskrti^[*] )—a term that, to Western readers, may suggest universities, museums, libraries, and concert halls. All these institutions exist in Banaras—most in varying degrees of dilapidation—but the culture-specific sense of "culture" here may be better understood in terms of smaller and less centralized units: neighborhood temples that stage oratorical and singing programs; merchants' associations that sponsor neighborhood fairs; ethnic social clubs that mount elaborate puja rites, accompanied by processions and musical performances; families that sponsor annual poetic competitions or music recitals in honor of a revered ancestor's death-anniversary; aged pandits who live in tiny rooms off dingy alleys but carry whole libraries of Sanskrit and Hindi texts in their heads; household-oriented schools of music and dance under the

[103] The Svaccha Ganga Abhiyan (Clean Ganga Campaign) was led by Dr. Virbhadra Mishra, who was both the mahant (hereditary head) of the popular Sankat Mochan Temple and a professor of hydraulic engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. Partly as a result of this campaign, in 1986 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi cited the cleanup of the Ganga as one of his government's priorities.

[104] The concept of Banarsipan was first brought to my attention by Nita Kumar, whose excellent study of urban recreational activities includes much insight into its implications; The Artisans of Banaras, 8.

tutelage of renowned gurus; groups of migrant laborers from the hinterland who gather on street corners to sing their village folksongs for hours. The city's annual festival cycle is complex;^[105] its cultural performance cycle is beyond cataloging. On one particularly busy weekend in October 1983, for example, there were some forty Ramlila pageants running concurrently in various neighborhoods, along with thirty (Muslim) Muharram processions and more than a hundred elaborate Durga Puja tableaux mounted by Bengali cultural associations^[106] —not to mention the usual assortment of nautanki^[*] folk plays, all-night concerts, annual temple srngar^[*] festivals, wrestling competitions, and semi-public functions such as marriage celebrations with their bands, processions, and fireworks.

For a visiting student of cultural performance no less than for a resident Banarsi, such events help to compensate for the inconveniences of everyday life in the City of Light—for the fact that shops, schools, and offices rarely open on time, function indifferently, and occasionally close without warning; for the fact that water and electricity supplies sometimes fail and telephones are dead more often than they are alive. But if cultural programs are what help to make Banarsi life worthwhile, they may also contribute to making it difficult. If the bureaucrat one needs to see is not at work yet at 11:00 A.M. (or is present but nonfunctioning), it is possibly because he was up all night at a Ramlila , srngar^[*] , or nautanki^[*] program. Where else in the world could thousands of people routinely take a month's leave from work each year to attend the all-engrossing lila cycle at Ramnagar? It happens in Banaras.

The words Banarsipan and samskrti^[*] suggest music and ceremony, dance and decoration. They also evoke a range of atmospheric associations: temples, Brahmans, and even cows are part of "culture" here, and so are cacophonous gongs, bells, and conch-trumpets at 4:00 A.M. , awakening the deities to the accompaniment of loud cries of "Har Har Mahadev!" (two names of Shiva, uttered in his praise). Banarsi culture is also, quite literally (borrowing Richard Bauman's phrase) "a way of speaking," for apart from the many kinds of performances that occur in the city, Banarsi speech itself has a high "performance density," manifested in the speaker's ability to shift artfully between vocabularies and dialects appropriate to various contexts—for example, from a highly Sanskritized suddh ("pure" or "refined") Khari Boli Hindi used for for-

[105] For a partial festival calendar, see Eck, Banaras, City of Light , 257-78.

[106] This information is courtesy of Linda Hess, who interviewed the harried Superintendent of Police; personal communication, October 1984.

mal speech, to the Bhojpuri dialect associated with the city's rustic hinterland, or the Urduized Hindustani preferred by the city's Muslims—and also to ornament his speech with folk maxims and quotations from poetry and popular songs.

The Banarsi ethos manifests itself too in a certain plucky cynicism, an urbanity that is at once worldly-wise and otherworldly, and a simultaneous local self-deprecation and intense pride. One frequently hears complaints of "our wretched eastern U.P.," where everyone is poor, the authorities are corrupt, and nothing functions as it should. Then one is reminded, "Look here, brother, this is Kashi!"—the Center of the World, or rather, not in the world at all, since it is balanced atop the trident of Lord Shiva, and all who live and die here, whether religious or not, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, even (as someone told me) "flies and mosquitoes," are guaranteed liberation from further rebirth by the grace of Shiva and the power of the name of Ram. This embarrassment of spiritual riches becomes itself a source of verbal humor, as when cycle-rickshaw drivers teasingly hail one another: "He guru-ji! He mahatma-ji!"—"O Master! Great-souled One!"

It is well known that Banaras is the City of Shiva, who is adored here in many forms and under many names: as Rudra and Bhairav, awesome lords of ghosts and spirits; as the transcendent and resplendent Mahadev of the Puranas, husband of Parvati and father of Ganesh, with his trident, serpent necklace, and long matted locks from which the River Ganga pours forth—a slayer of world-threatening demons and a dancer who beats out the rhythm of the aeons on his double-headed drum. He is also the Bhola Nath of folklore—the "mad" or "simple" god—intoxicated both with divine wisdom and with bhang (a cannabis preparation much consumed in Banaras), a wandering ascetic who is also a storehouse of erotic energy and fertility. For Banarsis he is especially Vishvanath—the Lord of the World—who is all these things and also a smooth, dark stone, roughly the size and shape of an ostrich egg, set upright in a gold-plated recess in the inner sanctum of the city's most famous temple, which lies at the heart of a maze of narrow, congested lanes near the riverfront. In everyday speech this deity is affectionately known as "Baba Vishvanath"—Papa Vishvanath—the city's benign and paternalistic ruler as well as its supreme preceptor, who imparts the liberation-granting mahamantra to all who leave their bodies within his special jurisdiction. This "great mystic utterance" is widely held to be the name Ram, which is inscribed on countless walls and doorways in the city. Shiva Vishvanath is thus a special patron of the Ram bhakti tradition as well as the original narrator of its great epic.

It is said that Tulsidas came to Banaras for his religious education and studied for fifteen years under the guidance of the Vedantic scholar Shesh Sanatan at Panchganga Ghat. The story is not improbable, since Tulsi was clearly familiar with a good deal of Sanskrit religious literature and Banaras was then, as it is today, a leading educational center. He is thought to have returned to the city sometime in the fifth decade of his life and to have remained in it, apart from periods of travel, until his death in 1623. Today, numerous sites in the city are associated with him. There is a house at Prahlad Ghat, near the northern limits of the sacred area, where an image of the poet has been placed and where, neighborhood people say, "Goswami-ji lived when he was writing the Ramayan." A plaque on an old building near Gopal Mandir, a Vaishnava temple in the Chowkhambha area of the central city, identifies the room in which Tulsi is supposed to have composed his Vinay patrika . Some two kilometers to the south, almost on the Assi creek forming the southern boundary of the holy city, stands a riverfront house in which the poet is believed to have spent his last years. Tradition holds that it was built by Todar Mal, a local landowner who was Tulsi's intimate friend and admirer. The tiny room that the poet is supposed to have occupied has been made into a shrine, and objects of veneration include a pair of wooden sandals and an image of Hanuman—one of roughly a dozen believed to have been established by the poet within the city.

More must be said concerning Tulsi's—and the city's—association with this deity, the "monkey god" whose vermillion-daubed images are among the most ubiquitous of Banarsi icons. A divinity who surely rose out of the "little" or folk tradition, Hanuman is a dispenser of power and potency. As a martial hero and Ram's victorious general, he is the patron deity of wrestlers (pahalvan )—young men who practice body-building and martial arts in gymnasiums or clubhouses (akhara^[*] ) situated along the ghats, most of which incorporate his shrines.^[107] But Mahavir, the "great champion," is also the patron of grammarians and students, fervently invoked before annual school exams and in the face of problems in general; the deity to repair to on "dangerous" days like Tuesday and Saturday, associated with malefic planetary influences. In this capacity he is primarily an intercessor figure, a middleman. The Hanumancalisa hymns:

You are the guardian of Ram's door,
there is no access without your leave!

[107] On the akhara^[*] culture of North India, see Alter, "Pehlwani. " Hanuman is discussed on pages 399-438.

In the influence-conscious society of eastern Uttar Pradesh, such connections can make all the difference. I have heard oral expounders exclaim jokingly that there are more temples to Hanuman in Kashi than to Ram himself; this may well be true, and on a little reflection, it seems only appropriate. For as every U.P. politician knows, the key to getting the Great Man's ear is knowing the right person in his entourage. If Tulsi's Ram, in his endless perfection, seems distant and unattainable at times, his monkey servant is earthy and accessible. The fact that Hanuman is divine and can, like all divinities, be invoked in the most exalted terms (as "the ocean of wisdom and virtue" and "illuminator of the three worlds")^[108] never entirely obscures the fact that he is also a monkey, or rather a god in monkey form. Accounts of Hanuman's deeds often feature comic episodes arising out of his simian simplicity, crude strength, and occasional destructiveness. To laugh at these things is, for Hindus, in no way incongruent with reverence, and retellings of Hanuman's heroic mission to Lanka to find Sita—celebrated in Tulsi's Sundar kand^[*] —can alternately evoke laughter and tears.

A further point needs to be made concerning Hanuman. I have noted that a major theme of Tulsi's epic is the compatibility of the worship of Ram/Vishnu with that of Shiva. In this sphere too, Hanuman plays the role of intermediary and "bridges" the two traditions, even as, in the narrative, he leaps the sea separating the mainland from Lanka (where Ravan and his cohorts, like most Puranic demons, are devout Shaivas). It is said in the Manas that at the time when Ram was born in the house of Dashrath, "all the gods" took the form of monkeys and went into the forests to wait for him, to assist him in the war against Ravan (1.188.2-5). A popular tradition, widely current in the Banaras region, holds that Shiva became Hanuman and thus that the Son of the Wind (an epithet of Hanuman, whose father is usually said to have been Vayu, the wind god) is none other than a special avatar of the Great Lord himself. This idea, which was already current in Tulsi's day,^[109] remains a favorite theme of Manas expounders, who support it with their interpretations of certain verses.^[110] Such readings offer additional evidence of the syn-cretizing influence of the epic: Shiva, the primal knower of Ram's mysterious carit , does not merely enter the story as its original narrator but also becomes one of its best-loved characters.

[108] Hanumancalisa , 1.

[109] See Vinay patrika , 25.3 and 26.1.

[110] E.g., when Ram praises Hanuman on the latter's return from Lanka, the poet suddenly interjects, "Recalling that state, Parvati's lord was overcome with bliss" (5.33.2,3). The choice of participle is often cited to support the view that Shiva was "recalling" his own former experience.

Further evidence of the commingling of the cults of Ram, Hanuman, and Shiva in the Banaras religious complex is provided in succeeding chapters, but one shrine needs special mention here. The Sankat Mochan (Liberator from Distress) Hanuman Temple is located in the southern section of the city and outside the traditional limits of the sacred area. Although far less ancient than the Vishvanath Temple, it can be said today to complement it in popularity, drawing worshipers from throughout the city and its environs. Most of the structures in the Sankat Mochan complex have been built within the past few decades (and the site appears to owe its popularity in part to the southward expansion of the city following the construction of Banaras Hindu University), but the main shrine encloses a stone image of Hanuman—now barely discernable as such beneath heavy layers of vermilion—believed to date to Tulsidas's time and linked to an important episode in the poet's legend.

Like Elijah and Khwaja Khizr in the Jewish and Sufi mystical traditions, Hanuman possesses physical immortality, for Ram is thought to have granted him the boon that he might retain his body "as long as my story is current in the world."^[111] The circumstances of the boon suggest the special association of Hanuman with the Ram-narrative tradition, for he is said never to tire of hearing the creative retelling of the deeds of his lord and thus is the special patron of oral expounders; it is still widely believed that he is present (albeit usually disguised) at every Manas performance. A well-known legend, first recorded in the Bhaktirasbodhini of Priyadas (c. 1713), concerns Tulsi's own encounter with the god.^[112]

It is said that Tulsidas was in the habit of retiring for his morning ablutions to a spot in the woods outside Banaras, taking with him a water pot with which to cleanse himself. On his return to the city, he would pour the small amount of water that remained in the pot at the foot of a certain tree. As it happened, this tree was the abode of a bhut (a type of ghost), who was greatly pleased with the daily water-offer-ing—for ghosts are always tormented by thirst and are happy to receive even impure water. One day the ghost appeared to the poet, thanked him for his longtime service, and offered him a boon; Tulsi replied that his life's desire was to obtain a glimpse of Lord Ram. "That's out of my league," said the ghost, "but why don't you ask Hanuman to arrange it?

[111] Shastri, trans., The Ramayana^[*] 3:516.

[112] For the original text and an English translation, see Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , xliii. The version given here is based on oral accounts and differs in some details from Priyadas's version.

He comes every day to hear your Katha . He is disguised, but you may know him by the fact that he is always first to arrive and last to leave."

That evening when Tulsi took his seat on a ghat along the Ganga to recite and expound his epic of Ram, he observed that the first listener to arrive was an aged leper, who positioned himself unobtrusively in the rear of the enclosure. When the Katha was over, Tulsi quietly followed this old man, who led him out of the city and into a thickly wooded area—to the very spot where Sankat Mochan Temple stands today. There Tulsi fell at the leper's feet, lauding him as Hanuman and imploring his grace. "I know who you are. Help me! I want to see Ramchandra!" At first the old man pretended annoyed incomprehension: "Go away, you're mad! Why are you tormenting an old, sick man?" But the poet held firmly to the leper's feet and at last the Son of the Wind revealed his glorious form—

With golden-colored body shining with splendor,
like another Sumeru, the world-mountain.
4.30.7

The god blessed Tulsidas and instructed him to go to Chitrakut, the place of Ram's forest exile; there he would have his desired vision.^[113] Later, Tulsi showed his gratitude by causing an image of Hanuman to be erected at the spot where the god appeared to him—or rather, devotees believe, he used the power of his holiness to draw forth the image as an eternal saksat^[*] (visible to the eyes) manifestation of his beloved guide.

Although urbanization has in recent years engulfed the Sankat Mochan complex, some eight and a half acres of land remain as a preserve around the temple, and most of this has been left in a semi-wild condition: a mass of bamboo thickets and towering trees, appropriately infested with troops of chattering monkeys. Easily the most pleasantly situated temple in a city where green space is at a premium, Sankat Mochan has literally become a refuge for the urban population—for worship, prayer, and even for family outings on Sundays. It is also an important center for Manas performances. On any morning or evening people sit before the main shrine, reciting the epic—especially the beloved Sundar kand^[*] , which celebrates Hanuman's exploits—and every afternoon professionals expound the poem in the temple courtyard. In addition, there are twice-yearly exposition festivals, and on Hanuman's birthday (the full moon of Chaitra—March/April) there is all-night Manas singing by groups from all over the city. The temple also spon-

[113] The manner in which the instruction bore fruit is celebrated in another story; see Hill, The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama , xi-xii.

sors a Ramlila troupe, which stages an eighteen-day production of the epic during the Dashahra festival season. Thus, the temple serves as a locus for many of the performance genres to be discussed in this study.

One other shrine may be mentioned here; even though it is more a museum than a temple, it has become one of Banaras's biggest attractions and is revealing in its own way of the status of Tulsi's epic in this city. Tulsi Manas Temple, an enormous marble-faced edifice that stands in an ornate garden on the main road linking the city with the university, was built by a wealthy Calcutta merchant and opened by the president of India in the mid-1960s. The fact that the two levels of its inner walls bear the entire text of the Manas inscribed in white marble is but one of its curiosities. It also contains a life-sized mechanical image of Tulsidas, perpetually reciting his epic via an extremely scratchy recording; a library of Ramayan-related literature; and a sort of religious penny arcade where, for fifty paise (four cents), one may view a series of electrified dioramas of mythological scenes. Each year during the rainy season month of Shravan (July/August), the temple's expansive grounds become the setting for an outdoor fair that draws huge crowds, the centerpiece of which is a vast exposition depicting, through similarly motorized dioramas, every major episode in the Manas . This Disneyesque approach to the beloved Hindi epic—in an architectural setting that causes art historians to shudder—has scored a great popular success, and today hardly a pilgrim leaves Banaras without a visit to the Manas Temple.^[114]

To this brief sketch of Banaras as a setting for the life of a text I would add one small but telling vignette, which surprised and delighted me when I first became aware of it. Anyone who has traveled in South Asia has seen the ubiquitous "public carrier" trucks plying the countryside and noted the garish and grandiloquent folk art with which their carriages are usually adorned. In the Banaras region many of these trucks bear an additional touch: a half-caupai from the Manas painted on their sides. Several verses are in current use, but the most common one is drawn from Sundar kand^[*] and again has associations with Hanuman. As he is about to enter Ravan's fortress city, the monkey is challenged by a female demon who serves as its gatekeeper. When he knocks her down, she recognizes him as Ram's messenger and as the fulfillment of a

[114] Its fame has now inspired imitation; not to be outdone, an Ayodhya mahant in the 1970s solicited funds to erect a more-Sanskritic-than-thou "Valmiki Bhavan" similarly enshrining the 24,000 slokas of the Sanskrit Ramayana^[*] . This structure is roughly the size of an airplane hangar and has already become a great tourist attraction. Ironically, it is frequently used for Manas recitation performances.

prophecy she heard long before concerning Ravan's eventual doom. Overcome with emotion (in Tulsi's world, even demons may become Ram devotees), she gives her blessing to Hanuman—and now to countless lorries, scooters, rickshas, pedestrians, and even an occasional foreign researcher:

Enter the city and carry out all your work,
keeping in your heart the Lord of Koshala!^[115] 5.5.1

[115] I.e., Ram; Koshala is another name for Ayodhya.