Satya Pir

Satya Pir one of the popular beliefs and practices that crept into the fold of popular aspect of ISLAM by long association of the Muslims with other religionists and probably also due to the increasing number of converts. The Hindu writers changed the word Pir for Narayana, though there was hardly any difference between the Satya-Pir of the Muslims and the Satya-Narayana of the Hindus. The worship of Satya-Pir could be found even in the early twentieth century particularly in north and western part of Bengal. A wooden plank was made the seat of the Satya-Pir and offerings of edibles like confectioneries, MILK, sugar, Betel leaf, betel nuts etc were made.
In the literature, two traditions find prominence. According to the first, the Hindu god Shri Hari appears in the guise of a faqir before a poor Brahmin and orders him to make offerings to Satya-Narayana; the Brahmin obeys the order and becomes rich. According to a second tradition, a merchant is blessed with a female child with the blessings of the Satya-Narayana. The female child when grown up was married, and the merchant takes his son-in-law with him in a certain trading voyage. There the merchant got into trouble because he did not worship Satya-Pir. But the merchant's wife was a devotee of Satya-Pir, so he got out of trouble. When the merchant was returning with his son-in-law they again were about to be drowned, because the merchant's daughter being eager to see her husband, neglected the offerings of the Satya-Pir. She later realised the importance of worshipping Satya-Pir and thus they all got out of trouble. In this way, the Satya-Pir (or Satya-Narayana) literature gained popularity among the people; the main purpose of the literature was to glorify the Satya-Pir. The first book on Satya-Pir called Satya-Pir Kavya is attributed to Shaikh Faizullah and the book is supposed to have been written in between 1545 to 1575 AD. Some scholars think that Sultan Alauddin HUSAIN SHAH (1494 to 1519 AD) was the originator of the Satya-Pir movement, but there is no evidence to support this view.
A close examination of the literature, mode of worship and traditions show that worship of the Satya-Pir (or Satya- Narayana) was almost similar to the worship of local deities MANASA or CHANDI; the Satya-Pir was represented not by any deity but by a simple wooden plank. The Satya-Pir worshippers generally came from the poor class people and their offerings were also simple. There were both Muslim and Hindu elements in the concepts of Satya-Pir and it can be said with some amount of certainty that the Satya-Pir (Satya-Narayana) concept originated through a fusion of Muslim idea of the pir and the Hindu notion of the local deities. It is a local variation of the Muslim concept of pirism, when the local people were converted to Islam, they got the conception of pirism mixed up with the old idea of the supernatural power of their deities. A further evolution of this process saw its culmination in the personification of Pir in Satya-Pir (or Satya- Narayana) or pirism itself began to be conceived as a supernatural power. [Abdul Karim]
Bibliography Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihas (in Bangla), Calcutta, 1920; Muhammad Enamul Haq, Bange Sufi Prabhava (in Bangla), Calcutta, 1935; Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal, (2nd ed), Chittagong, 1985.

MatuyaSangit

Matuya Sangit spiritual songs of the Matuya sect, containing praises of the god Hari and their gurus, Harichand Thakur and Guruchand. Composers of Matuya songs include Aswani Gosai, TARAK CHANDRA SARKER, Manohar Sarker, Mahananda Sarker, Rasik Sarker, Prafulla Gonsai, Surendranath Sarker, and Swarup Sarker.
Composed in the manner of BAUL songs, these songs are predominantly about love (prem) and devotion (bhakti). The closing lines of the songs mention the name of the composer. Musical instruments such as the drum, shinga, and kansa are used as accompaniments. The devotees dance while they sing.
Matuya songs describe the longing of the soul for the divine. As in other religious poetry, the desire of the human soul is imaged in terms of human love as in the following songs: Hari tomar namer madhu pan korla na man-bhramara (The honey-bee mind has not drunk the honey from your name, oh Hari), Kabe tanre pab re, paran kande Harichand bali (When shall I meet Him, my soul cries for Harichand), Amar ei akinchan, he Guruchand tomay ami bhalabasi (Listen to me, O Guruchand, I love you).[Wakil Ahmad]

Thakur Harichand (1811-1877) & Matua Community

Harichand (1811-1877) a Hindu votary and founder of the MATUYA sect, was born in Orakandi of KASHIANI upazila in GOPALGANJ (Greater FARIDPUR) on the thirteenth day of Falgun 1214 of the Bangla calendar. His father, Yashomanta Thakur, was a Maithili Brahmin and a devout Vaisnava.
Harichand received little formal education. After completing his initial schooling in a pathshala, he attended school for only a few months. He then started spending his time with shepherds and cowboys and roamed with them from one place to another. He started changing from this time. He was loved by all of his friends for his physical beauty, naivete, love for music and philanthropic attitude. He could also sing BHAJAN (devotional songs).
Harichand's doctrine is based on three basic principles-truth, love, and sanctity. The doctrine treats all people as equal; people are not seen according to castes or sects. Himself a Brahmin, he professed mixed with lower-caste people and treated them with the same dignity as he did other castes. This is why most of his followers believe Harichand to be an avatar (incarnation) of VISHNU, and are from the lower strata of society. They used to affirm: Rama hari krisna hari hari gorachand. Sarba hari mile ei purna harichand (Rama is lord, Krishna is lord, lord is Chaitanyadev. But all of them make our Harichand, who is our lord.)
Harichand did not believe in asceticism; he was more of a family man; and it is from within the family that he preached the word of God. He believed that 'Grhete thakiya yar hay bhaboday. Sei ye param sadhu janio nishchay' (the best ascetic is he who can express his devotion to God remaining a family man). He mobilised all the neglected sects and castes and inspired them to remain true to the openness of Hinduism.
Harichand left 12 instructions for the matuyas, known as Dvadash Ajna (Twelve Commands): 1. always speak the truth, 2. respect your parents like gods, 3. treat woman as your mother, 4. love the world, 5. remain liberal to all the religions, 6. never discriminate on racial counts, 7. try to establish Harimandir (temple of the Lord), 8. sit in prayer everyday, 9. Sacrifice your self for God, 10. do not practice asceticism in a garb, 11. hold the six cardinal passions in check, and 12. utter the name of your Lord while working with your hand. Harichand died on Wednesday 23 Falgun, the year 1284 of the Bangla calendar. [Monoranjan Ghosh]

Tusu Festival

Tusu Festival a FOLK FESTIVAL held on the last day of the month of Paus, based on popular beliefs as well as rituals associated with harvesting. Tusu is imagined as a young girl, and is worshipped by songs improvised by womenfolk. At the end of the festivities the immersion of the image of Tusu is done vividly and with songs which have a melancholic ring. Rural fairs are organised at the time when the festival is held. [Anjalika Mukhopadhyay]

Nouko(Boat)

Boat the most popular means of transport in Bengal. The boat is an ancient, low-cost, and convenient mode of transport in the floodplains, especially in HAORs and BAORs. There are more than 150 types of boats. They vary in size, design and construction and serve a host of purposes. A general typology may group boats into small (having a carrying capacity of less than 3,000 kg) and large categories. Boats used for ferrying across narrow rivers, for household and agricultural purposes, or for fishing by individuals, or 4-5 member groups of fishermen in inland waters are of much smaller capacity. Such boats are usually grouped under dinghy or dingi. Medium and large boats are used for carrying cargo, ferrying passengers and fishing in coastal and offshore waters. Small rowing boats like canoes, dug-outs and dingis are used mainly in rural areas for transporting people, private belongings and crops. Many such boats as well as boats in commercial operation and fishing are now indigenously fitted with engines of shallow tubewells. The large commercially operated cargo boats include types such as sampan, balam. teddy balam, trawler and jali (sulluk). These are now mostly power driven.
A more acceptable typology based on differences in design and construction classifies boats into bainkata and flat-bottomed types. The bainkata usually has a golui fore (protective head made of solid WOOD) and aft and a spoon-shaped hull. A group of bainkata boats do not have golui but have the spoon-shaped hull. The flat-bottomed type of boats is so named because they have neither golui nor spoon-shaped hulls. The boats with golui are the most numerous in type and include the ghasi, jong, gachari, dorakha, kathami, mallar, paloani, patam, panshi and bedi. The general name applied to boats without golui is kosha. These are represented by types like the bhudi, raptani, and the military kosha.
Apart from being a private means of transport and an essential carrier for shallow or deepwater fishing, boats constitute an important economic link in the life of the people. The owners/operators of boats earn their livelihood and/or conduct businesses, in which profitability depends upon tariff, efficiency, and capacity utilisation. The cargo carried by country boats arriving at and departing from 6 major and 10 secondary river ports was about 10 million tons per annum in 1963. The volume, however, declined in later years with improvement in ROAD TRANSPORT as well as increased difficulties in river navigation in dry season, mainly because of siltation. But country boats continue to play a significant role in local and regional cargo movement, especially in the eastern, central and southern parts of the country. Most hats in these regions are located on the sides of rivers and channels. The income of boatmen depends on carrying capacity of boats and the number of trips made in a day. But it is relatively stable as the seasonal fluctuations are negligible and the income from freight trips (carrying according to fixed tariff) and business trips (sharing profit gained from selling the cargo) varies little.
The boat owners, operators and builders have become an essential part of the society and economy of the country since time immemorial. Boats are also important as vehicles of sports and entertainment. The nouka-baich (BOAT RACE) is a major attraction in most parts of the country, especially during the rainy season. Boatmen have their own songs with typical lyrics and rhythm, mostly bordering on melancholy and devotional themes because of the threats posed by sudden storms and tidal surges. Life of the boatmen and their relationship with rivers and the sea naturally fascinate poets, writers and artists.
Boat making At one time, people carved fat logs to get a solid contour with blank rounded space inside and floated them in the water as boats. Later, boats were made of bundled CANE and BAMBOO, leather and wood. Modern day boat-building materials include such manufactured materials as ferocement and fibre-glass. However, wood continues to be the material preferred for boat making in the country for centuries. Commonly used TIMBER species are jarul (dipterocarpus turbinatus), sal (shorea robusta), sundari (heritiera fomes), and Burmese teak (tectons grandis). Seasoning of timber is important in boat making. Boats made with properly seasoned timber are expected to last longer and require fewer repairs. Two methods of seasoning are used in Bangladesh: (i) sun drying and (ii) immersion in water. Mechanical seasoning is not in practice although recently, seasoning is being done with electric heating at some enterprises. The fixing materials used are staples, iron nails, wire nails, etc. Usually, one end of the staples is flat and the other is pointed. Due to increased price and non-availability of the right quality timber, steel is becoming popular in making boats. In fact, more than 80% of boats above 25 tons capacity are now built by steel. Electric welding is applied for fabrication. The frames are made of steel angles. In some small kosha boats the bottom planks are sometimes placed transversely. The transverse structural elements consist of baka (the floor), quina (the bilge frame), gocha (the side frame) and gura (the deck beam).
In the past, the people of Bangladesh in general, and the boatmen and boat makers were not very efficient in wood treatment and preservation. But they had a good knowledge of how to season wood and apply coal tar coating for resisting the penetration of water and protect the wood from decay. Wooden boat making was historically done by carpenters, who did not have formal training but acquired the skill by apprenticeship in the profession which was mostly hereditary in nature.
Boat making is still not an organised industry in Bangladesh and the profession of boat making has become quite rare. Most people making boats are non-professional and boats are not made in the standard types and shapes, and with the decoration used in the past. The decay in the boat making industry has taken place largely because of the high cost of boat making materials, especially, wood and because of the fear that the boats made may not be sold in economic lots. In most cases, boats are now made on piecemeal order basis. According to government sources, the number of boat making industry units in the country was 4,508 in 1991. The major boat making places of the country are Barisal, Patuakhali, Bhola, Madaripur, Gopalganj, Jhalokati, Pirojpur, Bagerhat, Khulna, Faridpur, Shariatpur, Chandpur, Comilla, Dhaka, Narsingdi, Munshiganj and Chittagong. Some coastal areas and islands like Cox's Bazar, Hatiya, and St Martin also have carpenters for making and repairing boats. [S M Mahfuzur Rahman].
The boat builders and ships have been depicted in the brick temple in the district of Midnapore, Birbhum and Bankura in Bengal. The vessels are classified as raft, dugouts and cargo carriers and are used for commercial purpose. Dinghy is a one-man passenger boat in Bengal. It is unique for its features and movement in the river. The boatman squats at paddling on the low sharp stem to maneuver in the zigzag path of the river. A neat cabin with semicircular roof occupies the space available in the middle of the boats. A tall bamboo mast is generally used for long distance travel. In Bengal, small boat is never used except as cargo carriers. The steering paddle is the most remarkable feature of the cargo carriers (Malbahi nauka).

Pottery

Pottery appeared in Bengal, in all probability, in or around 1500 BC. In an alluvial country like Bengal, fine clay is a distinctive geological feature. The ancient inhabitants of the region exploited this natural resource for making numerous potteries. Archaeological sites, such as PANDU RAJAR DHIBI, MAHISDAL, Bharatpur, Mangalkot, CHANDRAKETUGARH, TAMRALIPTI, RAJBADIDANGA, Harinarayanpur and Bangarh of West Bengal and MAHASTHANGARH, GOVINDA BHITA, BHASU VIHARA, WARI-BATESHWAR, Raja Harish Chandrer Badi, MAINAMATI and PAHARPUR of Bangladesh have produced varieties potsherds/potteries, namely Black-and-red Ware, Northern Black Polished Ware, Rouletted Ware, Amphorae, Black-slipped Ware, Knobbed Ware etc. While the potteries from the Chalcolithic and the early historic sites have diagnostic characteristics, the early medieval, medieval and late medieval potteries do not; since in later period metal and other utensils replaced traditional potteries used as utensils and for everyday religious and other household purposes. The main types of potteries are described below:


Black and Red Ware is a vessel type with distinct diagnostic features: black in the interior and the exterior top, and red on the exterior. These pots are manufactured by inverted firing technique, though double firing has also been suggested as a technique of manufacture. They are turned on the wheel except a few handmade specimens which come from the earliest level of Pandu Rajar Dhibi. The fabric is medium, though a coarse variety occurs in the early and degenerate phases. The clay is indifferently levigated and tempered with fine sand. In most pots a slip is applied on both sides but vases are treated with slip on the exterior and up to the neck on the interior. Some sherds have achieved a smooth and shining surface due to burnishing. Firing under different conditions has given a few pots a completely black interior and red exterior, while others are partly black and partly red on both sides; the later occur in larger frequency. Some pots are painted on the inner side. The channel-spouted bowl is occasionally stained with red ochre towards the end of the spouts. Graffiti is extremely rare. The common shapes are the medium-sized vase, of which the tulip-shaped flower pot types are distinctive; the other shapes are bowl, channel-spouted bowl, basin, jar, dish-on-stand and vase-stand.
Potteries are to be found practically all over India and in different period eg from Neolithic to post-NBPW culture. Seventy-seven sites have been discovered in West Bengal alone. The chronology in terms of absolute dating and stratigraphy suggest that the Black-and-red ware in West Bengal flourished in circa 1500 BC and continued to evolve till the Chalcolithic culture merged into the historical period dating from circa 3rd century BC.
Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) usually has a fine and thin fabric. It is made of well-levigated clay with little tempering material and has a strikingly lustrous surface. The core of the pots varies in colour from blackish to grey; but in some cases reddish varieties have also been noticed. Although the surface colour of 90% of NBPW is jet black and brownish black, the remaining 10% are steel blue, pinkish, silvery, golden, brown, chocolate, violet and deep red. NBPW can be found in monochrome. There are also some examples of bichrome NBPW. The bichrome variety shares all the features of the monochrome group, except that it shows a combination of two colours; these can be dark steel blue and deep red, grey and light red, black and dark brown, black and brown, black and pale red, and black and ash grey. The ceramic is mostly without any decoration but sometimes painted designs can be found. The common designs are thick and thin horizontal bands, vertical strokes, vertical strokes coming out of a horizontal band, transverse band or strokes, and simple circular bands or arches. In addition to painting, incised designs, and graffiti marks are also occasionally found on NBPW.
The shapes in the NBPW are mostly represented by: (1) dishes with inverted or straight sides; (2) bowls with straight, convex, corrugated or tapering sides; (3) lids with flat terminal; and (4) sharply carinated handis (pots). Other shapes that have been reported are bottle-necked jars, knobbed lids, saucers, small vases with varying rim forms and conspicuous necks, spouted jars, and surahi. NBPW does not have any large and heavy forms such as storage jars or globular pots.
NBPW was highly valued, deluxe ware, perhaps meant for the elite, a possibility indicated by its limited quantity and by specimens where fragments have been repaired with copper rivets, fillets or pins. This suggests that NBPW vessels with minor breakage were not usually thrown away after they had been damaged but were used after repairing, since the repair-cost would have been less than the cost of getting a new vessel.
Technologically, NBPW is among the best pottery produced not only in ancient India and South Asia, but also, one of the best in the entire Old World. Turned on a fast wheel, it was fired in a sagger-kiln at high to very high temperatures and cooled in a reduced atmosphere. The core of the ware, however, varied in colour. This colour variation was due to the potters' inability to control temperatures; nor were they able to ascertain the actual amount of iron present in the clay. Some scholars believe that the black gloss of NBPW may have resulted due to some sort of post-firing technique in which the kiln-hot pottery was coated with some organic liquid. Chemical reports suggest that the black glaze was achieved because of a certain chemical property applied over the black-slipped surface of the pottery. It must be said, however, that in spite of various scientific analyses the production processes of NBPW are yet not clearly known.
NBPW occurs in a larger area than any other known ceramics in India, an area even larger than that of the Harappan potteries. This wide distribution has been variously ascribed to the spread of Mauryan imperialism, Buddhism, or to trade routes. The early phase of NBPW spans from circa 700/600 BC to 400/300 BC and the late phase from circa 400/300 BC to 100 BC or even to the beginning of the Christian era in the Indian Subcontinent. In Bengal, scientific dates are not available; however the tentative time bracket for NBPW is circa 400 BC to first century AD. Prominent NBPW producing sites were Mangalkot, Chandraketugarh, Bangarh, Mahasthan and Wari-i-Bateshwar.
Black-slipped Ware has a basic resemblance with NBPW but lacks its gloss. A smooth black slip is uniformly applied on the surface, giving a fairly shiny appearance but minus the lustre of NBPW. This type of ware is found with the Painted Grey Ware, Black and Red Ware and NBPW level in the Indian Subcontinent context. Numerous Black-slipped Ware has been found in Mahasthan, Wari-i-Bateshwar, Bangarh and other sites in NBPW level.
Bowls of different types are the most common type of black-slipped ware found; among other shapes, dish, jar, vase and miniature vessel have been discovered. Spouted Jar and dish on stand and bowl on stand are also common in this ware type. The ware has a fine quality though pots in impure clay and with gritty core, ill-fired and turned on a slow wheel, are also present. Generally, the ware has a fine to medium fabric and is turned on a fast wheel. The core is grey. Instances of burnishing are also noticeable. The black pigment is composed of magnetite. The black slip was produced by the application of liquid clay containing finely ground red ochre, which gave it a burnished look, baked in a low temperature.
Rouletted Ware is another classical ceramic type of the early historic period and has been reported from a large number of sites in India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. This ware has become a valuable source for our knowledge of the trade and exchange network across the Indian Ocean during the early historic period.
The discovery of Rouletted Ware is proof of the participation of Mahasthan, Wari-i-Bateshwar, Tamralipti and Chandraketugarh in particular and Bengal in general, in the growing trade network of the early historic period, which connected many other urban centres in South India and Southeast Asia.
Rouletted Ware is a dish with thick incurved rim, contiguous body and base, and without any foot. It has a smooth lustrous surface, exhibiting a variety of colour and indented concentric circular decoration on the interior surface of the base. The pattern consists of one to three bands of concentric circles, each band containing three to ten rows of closely placed indentations that look like tiny dots, strokes, wedges, triangles or other shapes. The pottery is essentially fine ware but there are also a few coarse varieties. The uniformity of shapes suggests that it was wheel-turned.
Rouletted Ware is named after its decoration, which, no doubt, is its most distinctive feature. The patterns are produced by the continuous rolling motion of roulette when held against a revolving clay vessel, and typically are arranged in narrow bands consisting of one or more rows of evenly or closely spaced small indented marks. A comparison of the stylistic attributes of Rouletted ware with the ones found in the classical Roman world suggests that Arikamedu Rouletted Ware was imported from the Mediterranean region and date to 1st to 2nd century AD. The better examples of Rouletted Ware from Arikamedu were doubtless imported but cruder varieties could be local imitations. The Rouletted Ware of Arikamedu was probably produced locally, but the technique of 'rouletting' seems to have been introduced from the Mediterranean region, since it was not known in South India at that time. The Rouletted Ware of Arikamedu has been dated to 2nd - 1st century BC.
Comparison of the characteristics of the rare earth elements present in Rouletted Ware from Arikamedu and Koraikadu in India, Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and Sembiran in Indonesia, has led to the conclusion that the Rouletted Ware could have been produced from a single source of clay. Based on X-ray diffraction analysis of clays from sites that have yielded Rouletted Ware sherds, the hypothesis that has been drawn is the ware was produced in the Chandraketugarh-Tamluk region of the lower Ganga Valley, India. The Rouletted Ware reported from Arikamedu, Alagankulam, Kottapatnam, Manikapatna, Sisupalgarh, Nasik, Tamluk and Chandraketugarh in India and Tra Kieu in Vietnam show similar mineral patterns. However, the clays of South India and Southeast Asia are mineralogically different from those of the Rouletted Ware. On the other hand, the clays of the Ganga Plain have mineral patterns similar to the Rouletted Ware. So it has been argued that the Rouletted Ware was manufactured in Tamluk and Chandraketugarh area but was dispersed into South India and Southeast Asia by Buddhist monks and traders.
Glazed Ware Potsherds with blue, green, chocolate and other colour-glaze have been found in different sites. A sherd of turquoise blue glaze found in Mahasthangarh has been assigned to the pre-Medieval period but might have come from the Persian Gulf region. West Asian and Chinese origin Glazed Ware also appear in Bengal later periods when they were known as Islamic glazed ceramics.
Knobbed Ware has been found in the early historic context in Bengal and other sites in the subcontinent and Southeast Asia. It has a distinct knob in the centre that is surrounded by incised circles of 7 to 10. The precise function of the Knobbed Ware is not known. These containers, whether of bronze, stone or pottery were not in use for every day cooking, or as food-serving or display vessels, but they did serve special purposes such as ritual and funerary use. The knobbed vessels may be seen as a Mandala, a schematic cosmological symbol representing perhaps Mount Meru and the surrounding oceans.
Amphora are flask-like jars, most of them with rectilinear and high-shouldered double handles, high straight shoulders and tapering or conical bottoms, used for storing oil or wine in the Mediterranean/Roman world. A complete amphora specimen from Karanji on Bengal-Orissa boarder is very significant because it helps us understand the early historic trade network of Bengal with the Mediterranean region.
Common pottery Potsherds, rather than Black and Red Ware, Northern Black Polished Ware, Black-slipped Ware and Rouletted Ware, scattered over archaeologiocal sites in Bengal have been termed as common pottery in a broad sense for the convenience of description of ceramic finds. However, in the absence of a specific ceramic index it is not possible to give specific names to these pottery types.
However, Dull Red Ware and Grey Ware are common in the assemblage. The fabrics of the wares are coarse to medium in texture. The ceramics are wheel made as well as hand made. In most cases, the clay is not well levigated; and husk has been used as temper. The majority of the potsherds is devoid of slip or wash. Painting is rare and graffiti marks are absent. Some potsherds are decorated with incised and stamped designs. However, mat and basket designs have been commonly noticed.
Earthenware is still in use throughout rural Bengal. There are kumarpada or Palpada in many a village of Bengal. Both the term KUMAR and pal denote people who are potters by profession and pada denotes a locality. Besides pots and jars for everyday use, ceremonial pots such as Raserhadi, Shakherhadi, Dharmaghat, Shitalghat, Nagghat, Manasaghat, Muharramghat, Gazighat, Mangalghat, Laksmisada bear testimony to the ancient potters' art of Bengal.
Introduction of metal and plastic goods in recent years has been pushing earthen pottery to almost extinction. Potters are now making efforts to keep the art alive by introducing novel ideas and newer methods. Pottery these days is seen more as objects of interior decoration rather than of household necessity. The traditional art of pottery is now finding a new life and status. [SS Mostafizur Rahman]

Pitha

Pitha home made cakes. Many kinds of pithas are made in Bangladesh. These are not part of the daily menu. They are served on special occasion such as receiving bridegrooms or brides, entertaining guests, and arranging special get together of family members, relatives or friends. Sometimes children or senior members of the family especially ask for pithas and accordingly, mothers or grandmothers make them. Pithas are of many different types. In some cases, neighbouring families jointly make pithas and use the occasion for chatting and having lunch or dinner together.

Most pithas are sweet and a few are hot. Some are made throughout the year but some are seasonal. Pithas of the winter season are the most delicious. Date juice and molasses from date juice and sugarcane are available in the winter. These are important ingredients of pithas that are loved by people of almost all regions of Bangladesh. The pitha season in Bangladesh starts in late autumn, when farmers procure paddy from the field.

Sometimes the same pitha has different names in different areas. Some pithas are nationally known and familiar to all. These are chitoi, patishapta, pakan, bhapa, andosha, kulshi, kata pitha, chit-pitha, labanga pitha, gokul pitha, chutki pitha, muthi pitha, jamdani pitha, hadi pitha, chapdi pitha, nakshi pitha, pata pitha, tejpata pitha, jhuri pitha, phuljhuri pitha and bibikhana pitha.

The most common ingredients of pitha are rice or wheat flour, molasses or sugar, coconut and oil. Meat and vegetables are also used in preparing some pithas such as the pooli pitha, shabji (vegetable) pitha, bhapa, jhalmangsha (meat) patishapta. Sometimes fruits (mostly, jackfruit, palmyra, coconut and banana) are also used. These pithas are named after the name of the fruit they are made from. A special category of pitha is prepared by using tree leaves as covers and are named pata (leaves) pitha. Some pithas are named according to their size. A big size pitha is called Hadi pitha, while one of the small types of pitha is named khejur (hot) patishapta and (date) pitha.

When a family receives a new bridegroom, it prepares some special pithas in his honour. Such pithas have intricate designs, and are colourful and attractive. One such pitha is named bibiana, which means bride's skill. Another pitha of this group is the jamai bhulana, a pitha that supposedly seduces the mind of the bridegroom.

Phita is part of life and culture of the Bengali people. Nowadays, however, cakes, pastry and other food items sold commercially are gradually replacing traditional homemade pithas, especially in urban areas. But pithas still continue to attract many, even in urban areas. Many specialised shops sell costly pithas and small vendors in street corners also make their living by selling cheap pithas. [Abu Sayeed Khan]

Bengali Gastronomy

Buddhadeva Bose
[My father, Buddhadeva Bose, was a small man and a frugal eater. He was never greedy for food, but used to be upset if there wasn’t a generous spread on the dining table. Quoting Goethe, he would say, “my eyes are larger than my appetite”, so we always had both variety and excess of food even for our daily meals. He would repeatedly talk about the exquisite style of hospitality of the Tagore household at Shantiniketan. Its unique blend of restraint and excess always fascinated him. Buddhadeva Bose was a liberal in all spheres of life except for food. After tasting many types of cuisine in his travels round the world, he would always end up craving homemade Bengali food. While he was teaching in the U.S. where I was studying, we couldn’t once convince him to try universally liked ‘pizza’ or ‘hamburger’; he would prefer to eat ‘machher or mangsher jhol with bhaat’ (rice with fish or meat curry), made by my mom in typical Bengali style, every day of the year. He was a true Bengali where food was concerned no matter where he lived. And how much a connoisseur of Bengal’s traditional food he was is evident from this extraordinary essay.
He himself was the culinary artist who could decipher every little nuance of Bengali food through his palate without knowing the rudiments of cooking. This essay of my father makes me realize that there indeed exists a connoisseur’s palate, which is able to detect every delicate difference in taste without having to know the actual recipe. My father not only enjoyed the connoisseur’s palate, he also had the rare creative genius to describe his personal gastronomical experience in superb language, taking his readers along that delectable journey.
When this long essay was being published in Ananda Bazar Patrika (1-4 Jan, 1971), my father received a huge number of letters and phone calls asking him for the recipes of the food preparations he talked about. But alas! while he could describe the various ways of Bengali cooking, he had no notion about the exact procedure of cooking them. So, he turned to my mother for the recipes and proposed to write a cookbook together. It was a great idea, but sadly, like many dreams of our lives, this dream of his also remained unfulfilled.
Thirty-three long years later I made the original Bengali version of this essay (Bhojonshilpi Bangali) into a little book and provided there all the recipes myself. It may not be the book Baba dreamed of, but it is certainly a dream book of mine as a publisher.
--Damayanti Basu Singh; Kolkata]

There is no such thing as "Indian food"; the term can only be defined as an amalgam of several food-styles, just as "Indian literature" is the sum-total of literatures written in a dozen or more languages. And I think it is no less difficult for Indians to eat each other's food than speak each other's tongues; an "Indian" dinner which a Tamil and a Sikh and a Bengali can eat with equal relish, is more of a dream than reality. This point was curiously brought home to me on one occasion during my travels in America. I had arrived rather tired after a jerky flight at some little university town; meeting me at the airport my sponsor told me with a smile that he had arranged for me an Indian meal with an Indian family. "I am sure it would be very much to your liking," he added. I at once asked, "Which part of India do they come from?" The professor did not know. The upshot of it was that I spent the night hungry, having been unable to consume anything except a few spoonfuls of plain rice and a cup of coffee at the table of the charming Tamil family, where the professor had piloted me from the airport. I hasten to add that no offense is meant to my gracious host of the evening, nor do I think I need apologize for my provincialism. I have seen high-born South Indian ladies ready to faint at the fishy odour issuing from a Bengali kitchen. It's a case of the fox and the stork, and you can't do anything about it Certain varieties of Indian diet are mutually exclusive.
We cannot be sure whether there was ever a standard diet for the whole of India--available records are meagre, and no gastronomic counterpart of the Kamasutra is in existence. All we can guess on the basis of literary evidence is that the ancients were a meat-eating, wine-tippling people, inordinately fond of milk-products and beef-eaters as well.[1]The Buddha himself did not impose a ceiling ban on flesh-eating, many of his followers (Bengalis?) ate fish habitually. The only strict vegetarians in ancient India were the Jains--a rather small and relatively isolated community with scant influence on the social life of orthodox sects. How and when both beef and pork came to be interdicted and the great schism between vegetarians and flesh-eaters arose on the Indian soil cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision; we do not even know whether these arose of religious or circumstantial pressure. Nor we can form a clear idea about the type or types of cooking current in the Vedic and epic ages. Homer describes each meal with meticulous care, dwelling on every detail from the slitting of the bull's throat to the hearty appetites of the heroes; but the great sprawling Mahabharata is remarkably--even annoyingly--silent on such points. The phrase randhane Draupadi--`a Draupadi for cooking' has come down to us and is cited to this day, but not once do we see this proud lady actually in the kitchen, not even during the period of exile; the feeding of the wrathful Durvasa and his one thousand disciples was magically accomplished by Krishna, without any effort on Draupadi's part. Bhima, we are told, served a whole year as the chef in Virata's household, but as regards the delicacies he presumably concocted for the royal table, we are left completely in the dark. The Ramayana does a little better; we often see Rama and Lakshmana bringing home sackfuls of slain beasts (wild boars, iguanas, three or four varieties of deer. We are also told that their favourite family diet consisted of spike-roasted (meats) (shalyapakva), known nowadays as shik-kebab or shish-kebab); --unfortunately no other detail is supplied. Who skinned the carcasses or made the fire or turned the flesh on the spit, what were the greens and fruits eaten with the meat or the drinks with which it was washed down--all this is left to our conjecture. Nevertheless, we are eternally grateful to Valmiki for the passage describing the entertainment provided by the sage Bharadvaja to Bharata and his retinue; there is nothing to compare with it in the Mahabharatan accounts of the Raivataka feast or Yudhishthira's Horse-Sacrifice. For once in our ancient literature we find the courses itemized--savoury soups cooked with fruit-juice, meat of the wild cock and peacock, venison and goat-mutton and boar's meat, desserts consisting of curds and rice-pudding and honeyed fruits, and much else of lesser importance. All this is served by beauteous nymphs on platters of silver and gold, wines and liqueurs flow freely, there is dance and music to heighten the spirit of the revels. Granted that the whole account is somewhat fantastical--it was the gods who had showered this splendour on that forest hermitage--a splendour that rivals that of Ravana's palace in Lanka; but this at least tells us what Valmiki thought a royal banquet should be; evidently he had experience of a highly sophisticated culture.
To read the same passage in the medieval vernacular versions is to be transferred to altogether another world--a world hedged in by scruples where the cult of Kama--the pleasure-principle of life, which was highly honoured in the heroic age, had fallen into desuetude and the epic tales were used as vessels of unrelieved piety. In both Tulsidas and Krittivas many details of the original are suppressed or glossed over; in both, the vegetarian bias is strong. Tulsidas vaguely mentions "many luxuries", but lists no more than roots and herbs and fruits; the only drink he names is "undefiled water". Krittivas begins and ends with milk-products. Both poets, living in impoverished rural-agricultural communities, recoil from magnificence and reduce Bharadvaja's feast to a modest meal, which their public would find both tempting and innocuous
It is refreshing to turn from Krittivas to Kavikankan and watch the huntsman Kalketu wolfing his dinner--putting away huge mounds of rice with the aid of crab-meat and one or two leafy vegetables. We almost hear him crunching the crab-shells and spitting out the well-chewn remnants; we admire the authenticity of the remark he flings at his wife: "You have cooked well, but is there more?" Yet we cannot accept this as typical of the daily Bengali fare in Kavikankan's time; the eater's taste reflects his off-track occupation rather than the norm. Bharatchandra's famous line, "May my children thrive on milk and rice" must not be taken literally, for "milk and rice" is a metaphor for prosperity and well-being. It is only in our prose fiction from Rabindranath and Saratchandra down to the present times that we find adequate accounts of what the Bengalis eat, each according to his station in life and individual taste. Menus are often mentioned, variations noted; some lady-novelists have done us the additional favour of describing methods of cooking. Of food as a means of characterization there is a fine example in Rabindranath's novel Jogajog. Madhusudan has made his millions by honest toil, is aggressively proud of his wealth, is fond of vain display, his dinner service is all silver; yet his favourite diet is coarse rice, one of the inferior varieties of dal, and a mash of fish-bones and vegetables. The addition of this little gastronomical detail makes it all the more clear what a "tough guy" the poor ethereal Kumudini has to confront in her new home. On another level food has made its way into Bengali verse--and not merely for comic effects as in Ishvar Gupta. In a poem entitled Nimantran ("An Invitation") and addressed to an unnamed lady, the aged Rabindranath imparted a touch of his lyricism to mundane food, albeit half in jest and with a slant on the "modernist poets. "No golden lamps or lutes are available now," (I am giving a rough rendering of the passage.) "but do bring some, rosy mangoes in a cane-basket covered with a silken-kerchief, ... and some prosaic food as well--sandesh and pantoa prepared by lovely hands, also pilau cooked with fish and meat--for all these things become ineffable when imbued with loving devotion. I can see amusement in your eyes and a smile hovering on your lips; you think I am juggling with my verse to make gross demands? Well, lady, come empty handed if you wish, but do come, for your two hands are precious for their own sake." The last two lines lift the poem to a non-material realm, but the reality of the mangoes and pilaus remains undiminished.
The novelists know what they are talking about and have all the words at their disposal, but I am now constrained to use a language utterly unsuited to my purpose. In course of my sporadic attempts to translate Bengali fiction into English, I have found the food words the most intractable. There are three possible ways to deal with them: to retain the originals and add explanatory notes, to invent neologisms, or to slur the matter over: none is satisfactory. Generations of Bengali cooks (mostly women) have devised and developed a variety of dishes belonging to the same genre but each with a specific name and distinctive in taste and flavour, all which, to the eternal amusement and irritation of the true-born Bengali, are lumped in Anglo-Indian English in that ubiquitous and imprecise word "curry"[2]. A "dalna" is no more like a "'chachchari" than a horse is like a goat; to label both of them as "'curries" is just like using the term "quadruped" when the goat or horse is meant. "Payasanna" is generally rendered by Sanskritists as "rice-pudding", but "'anna" means any kind of food, and Bengalis cook their payesh also with semolina or vermicelli or casein balls. It would take a dozen English words to distinguish between "amsattva" and "amshi" (both products of mangoes), or between the thick ginger-flavoured "chatni" and the bland liquid "ambal", both sour-based desserts. It's a pity one must use "lentil-cakes" for both "daler bara" and "daler bari", for they differ not only in size and shape, but also in the technique of preparation and their use in cookery. Even that dailiest of daily items, "machher jhol", remains inexpressible in English; to translate it as "fish curry" is an insult to Bengali culture, and that is the only word available.
I have often been appalled by the limitations of Bengali vocabulary, which does not permit us to name al1 the shades of colours or parts of the human body except with the aid of Sanskrit words seldom used in conversation. But, now that I come to think of it, I realize that my native tongue has a marvellous array of food words--single words, I mean, unadorned by any of those adjectival or descriptive phrases which constitute the glamour of a French menu. A dish of spiced potatoes may be called by no other name except "dam", but if you add sweet pumpkin, it at once becomes a "chhaka". "Dolma" is an exclusive term for stuffed patols [3], just as "dhoka" [4] is reserved for fried lentil-cakes served in a thick gravy. No one knows why this is so, but such are the ways of the language; evidently the Bengalis have a passion for affixing a new name to every creation of their kitchen--even where the dishes are variations on the same theme. The "ghanta" and the "chachchari", for example, are both pot-pourries, both composed of vegetables plus chipped fish or fish-bones, or of vegetables only; the only difference seems to be that a chachchari may be cooked with mustard and a ghanta may not. Yet another variety of pot-pourri is the "labra" which, being a favourite of the Vaishnavas and served in their ritual feasts, mustn't ever be contaminated with animal products: according to one lexicographer, it is a hash of six vegetables--the trunk and the flower of the banana, sweet pumpkins, kidney beans, radishes, and brinjals. Likewise there are many variants of the so-called "fish-curry", of which the most common are the "jhol", and the "jhal" or "kalia", distinguished by their relatively bland or sharp taste. Cooking styles are determined by the size, the flavour, and the texture of the fish; each one of the numerous varieties eaten in Bengal has appropriate spices and vegetables assigned to it--special techniques have been devised for dealing with the smallest kinds. There are even specialties prepared with only one particular kind of aquatic food, such as the "dai-machh", which is really "it" only when the fat part of a mature rohit is cooked in sour curd with cinnamon and raisins, or the "muthia" (an emanation of East Bengal), of which the only possible base is the lean part of the chital. As for hilsa, that noble and most versatile of fish, the hilsa alone is capable of yielding as many as five courses with delectable gradations in taste. You begin with the cool tender gourd seasoned with the head of the fish, the spare bones have gone into your mungh dal which comes with the meaty neck-bone fried brown and crunchy; then follow a mild jhol with slices of the green pumpkin and dotted with seeds of the black cumin, and a pungent "bhate" or "paturi" steamed in a sealed jar or braised in a covering of banana-leaf, thickened with oil and mustard-paste. And finally, just for "cleaning your mouth", comes the tail-end of the fish--the least appealing part but made most pleasant with sweetened lime-juice and the green chili. And to get the best out of it all, you must make the slices triangular and never allow onions or ginger or potatoes to approach this queen of fishes, for cooking hilsa with any of them is a worse offence than cooking rohit-kalia without them.
But it is only once in a while that a Bengali would eat hilsa from the beginning to the end of a meal: his general fare is much more varied. Thanks to the natural resources of his homeland, the researches of the ancients, the no-longer exotic fruits and vegetables introduced by European adventurers, and the admixture of Shakta and Vaishnavic strains in his blood and of Brahmanical and heterodox elements in his culture, the Bengali has developed a philosophy of food which is both eclectic and sensible. I know that a la carte menus in Chinese and European restaurants can be fantastically long and elaborate, yet I do think that Bengali food has a wider range than any other I have experienced. What I mean is that Bengali food is designed to cover the entire range of the palate and satisfy every need of human body-chemistry. The Chinese eschew bitters and avoid milk or sweets; in the Occident you may find the bitter or sour taste only in alcoholic drinks, but never a hint of either in any food. The thought that whole areas of sensation should be expelled from the art of cooking would have pained the ancient Hindus who recognized six primary tastes--sweet, sour, saline, bitter, pungent, astringent---along with sixty-three minor variations. Now Bengali food embraces the six primary tastes and many of the variants as well, has room for both animal flesh and the fruits of the earth, can compete with Swiss fare in the variety of milk-based or fruit-based desserts--in short, comprehends all available edibles except the one or two kinds of flesh forbidden by custom. It is wonderful to relate that the dessert itself has two sections in Bengal--first, a sour or sweet-and-sour course, and finally a sweet dish made of casein [5] or thickened milk (ksheer). "From shukto to payesh", was Rabindranath's phrase for a complete Bengali meal, and this is only another way of saying that one must begin with bitters and end with sweets.
Actually, there are three different ways of beginning a meal. You can eat your first few handfuls of rice a la Brahmannaise, with heated ghee and a pinch of rock-salt, or with the so-called "bitter" dal---green mungh cooked with the karala fruit, which is slightly and delightfully hitter. The third alternative is the shukto [6] commended by the great poet or a green or red sag, of which there are as many varieties as of sandwiches in Scandinavia. As for the finish, it must be made with some "white stuff"----either plain milk-and-rice in the plebeian style of Madhusudan in Jogajog, or sour or sweet curd preferably prepared at home or some more sophisticated product of milk. And between the two extremities may be rowed five or six courses--the salines and the pungents and the sours, fish, meat, and meaty vegetables---each with a different combination of spices and a different appeal to the tongue.
A Hungarian lady married to a Bengali poet once said to me, "You Bengalis use too many spices in your food---by your style of cooking, you could make a pair of old shoes edible." Her remark was both unjust and just. It is true that Bengalis (and especially East Bengalese) sometimes ruin the flavour of the original substance by an excessive use of "hot" spices like cloves or seeds of the smaller cardamom. An example of this is the aforementioned dhoka which a1most loses its identity in layers and folds of spice.


A similar treatment is accorded to crabs and certain big fish of the scaleless and carnivorous kind, also to the flesh of the black tortoise, of which the best are found in the easternmost districts of Bengal. And spices are triumphant in that dish of Burmese origin prized by many of my East-Bengalese friends---the "shutki machh", odoriferous dehydrated fish which look like pieces of wood in the bazar and are made palatable only with the generous assistance of onions and garlic and the fiery dry scarlet-coloured chili. Yet this is but one little chapter in the story of Bengali food; the general rule is to use spices discreetly---not with a view to overwhelm, but to balance the effect of the whole. Also, there are dishes made of animal food which are "cool" and most enjoyable---for instance, the traditional Puja-time meat, the young goat cooked in a jhol as thin as the clearest of consommés, sparkling with natural juices and delicately flavoured by a few demure bay leaves. Every Bengali knows that the spring hilsa is intolerant of every spice except turmeric, that the smaller catfish is glorious with slices of the green banana and just a dash of ginger and the yellow cumin, and the pabta fish needs no heady spices if dressed with the coriander-leaf ---an aromatic product of the soil which smells like a "green breeze" blowing over grassy meadows, as a Verlaine or Jibanananda Das would have said. And when it comes to sharper food, it is not the "hot" spices which are guilty in themselves--- they normally serve to make the dish more agreeable and eupeptic---it is only when used in excess that they hurt the stomach, and this is true of every food and drink known to man.


Bengali food suffers from one serious drawback: it cannot be publicized or commercialized. In this great city of Calcutta you will not find a single restaurant which provides an honest good Bengali meal---a menu, let us say, of plain fine well-boiled rice, a savoury shukto, thinly cooked masur dal with slices of the fragrant lime (clearly distinguished from the more juicy variety), along with crisply fried maurala fish to "put into your mouth", and, with luck, a dish of heavenly hilsa-eggs ideally matched with the green papaya---all rounded off with sour curd served in a stone bowl and accompanied by date-molasses in case you prefer it sweetened. The so-called Indian food served in the fashionable hotels follows the Mughal-cum-Punjabi style; even the cheaper eating houses are better off with Lahore or Lucknow or Madras styles of cookery. As for the "smart" Bengali hostess who loves to entertain, she will produce a "neutral" and streamlined dinner when she invites an assortment of friends including some from overseas. Out of consideration for the habits of the Occidental---his timorous approach to spices and his ineptitude in the use of his fingers---she will probably serve a tomato-soup with cream, the bone-free and rather insipid bhetki baked or fried, pistachioed pilau instead of plain rice or roti or that unique creation of Bengal, the swollen pan-broiled luchi, which would have gone splendidly with her mutton-roast or stuffed chicken. There will be a salad of raw vegetables and maybe a seductive tutti-frutti, supplied by a Park Street creamery---in short, her menu will be a repetition of the usual offering of Western-style hotels in India. She will probably introduce one or two local touches by flavouring the salad with lime-juice, or adding slices of the sun-ripened langra mango to the ice but there will be nothing specifically Bengali in the whole arrangement. So it is that a foreigner who spends days and weeks at the Grand or Great Eastern, takes photos, makes a documentary movie, and even writes a book on going back, often boards his home-bound jet without having tasted a morsel of genuine Bengali food.
But perhaps this is only natural. What I have mentioned as a drawback of Bengali food is really also its virtue; if you cannot commercialize it, you cannot vulgarize it either. Any attempt to put it on the Universal Common Market would mean a violation of its dharma, an outrage on the very it-ness of it. It is a product of the home and family-ties, of personal relationships---as much of science as of human affection, as much of age-old wisdom as of an intuitive response to Nature. The food of every region is related to the local climate, but where the techniques of refrigeration and transportation have been perfected, one can eat almost anything one likes any day of the year---out of cans and packs, of course---a situation unthinkable in India. Lacking the blessings and the bane of an advanced technology, India still remains a land where food is attuned to the seasons and even the fluctuations in weather. A whole system of seasonal foods prevails in Bengal, of which our foreign friend can form no idea, unless he has lived in a Bengali home where life is "traditional and ceremonious"---not as an aloof paying guest but a member of the family, and eaten the same food as the others. In order to know what Bengali food is, you must welcome the spring by beginning your mid-day meal with a few fried margosa leaves, which retain their delicately bitter taste for only a week or two in early March, and end the meal with a sour-sweet ambal of green mangoes. The thing for the height of summer is a spoonful of pure stinging home-made kasundi [7] which must be mixed with a dark-green sag and, again, your first mouthful of rice. Summer is also the time for tasting the real bitter watery hingcha, an excellent aperitif, as refreshing as a glass of iced Campari on a June day in Rome. A day of crashing rain evokes the kedgeree---rice and lentils boiled together with eggs and potatoes and the sweet onion, enjoyable even without fish or meat. The mark of autumn is the tender arum-stalk cooked with gram and coconut-chips, and the slippery-tasting astringent chalita fruit stewed in molasses. In winter you must eat a portion of the big buttery brinjal [8] scorched in a charcoal fire, and slices of the tangy red radish embedded in your dal or ambal. And in case there is an orthodox widow in the family, you must---absolutely must---beg her to give you samples of what she cooks for herself. Have no fear about approaching her; for even if she doesn't let you enter her kitchen she will be generous in hospitality.


I rejoice that the rigours imposed on the Hindu widow are now much relaxed, at least in the urban areas; I look forward to the day when the institution of widowhood will disappear. Yet I cannot suppress a nostalgic sigh for the dainties I tasted in my boyhood---offerings from the separate kitchen assigned to widows. I wish I had time to dwell on the savouries and condiments---the handiwork of widows and elderly wives freed from the trouble of tending the young---preserves for the whole family made of the plum, the lime, the guava, the green and the ripe mango, the marme1os, the myrobalan, and the acid tamarind blackened and mellowed by age, into which have entered various degrees of sweetness, sourness, and astringency. I wish, too, I could describe the sweetmeats and the sweet and saline "pithas"--concoctions of grain, fruit, milk and sugar or molasses: fish shaped, discus-shaped, half-moan-shaped fluffy cakes of ground or shredded coconut, little hard toothsome balls of crisp brown-baked rice and of the aromatic sesame-seed, the ksheer-stuffed patishapta with a mat-like texture, the brown-and-white rice-cakes which should come from the pan to the mouth, the dumplings of thickened or curdled milk submerged in payesh---a whole domain of chew-ables and lick-ables and suck-ables as one would say in classical Bengali.
Wonderful products, these, based on formulas which may differ from district to district and even from family to family, but even these are of lesser importance than widow-style vegetarian food. For it is there--among a community of nun-like women living on one meal a day and observing numerous fasts, that Bengali cooking reaches its height of finesse, in spite of the dietary restrictions ordained, or rather because of them. It is, I think, a beautiful style---beautiful because it is frugal, adroit in the use of edibles generally despised, and is both varied and consistently suave. The humble pumpkin-flower in the kitchen garden, chipped husk of the gourd, stalks of the water-lily, the meanest of sag and vegetables: things like these become delicious when they come from the widows' kitchen. You can taste a lentil pate' which melts on your tongue, the succulent vine of the pumpkin laced with undercooked whole grain, fricassees of the slightly astringent green banana with fleshy smooth slightly sweet roasted jack-fruit seeds, velvety mashed arum touched up with raw mustard-paste and the fragrant green chili---delicacies as rare as Japanese raw fish or the truffle of France. And the rice---you will have no idea of what rice can be until you have tasted the "food-of-the-god" variety [9], served not on china or brass, but on a black stone plate---the only kind permitted to widows.

While I am on this subject, I could as well mention a fact from my personal life, which is not without relevance here. I am one of Nature's own flesh-eaters, but my two most memorable meals were vegetarian. The first was at Santiniketan, where my wife and I had gone to visit Rabindranath and were staying as guests of his family. "We could get no fish today---I'm sorry," murmured the poet's daughter-in-law as we stepped into her formal dining room at lunchtime. I confess my first reaction was one of dismay, but as I sat at table and noticed the shapely little mounds of rice, as white and fine as jasmines, laid on jet-black polished stone-plates, I felt it was a special favour that Mrs. Tagore was doing us that day. It was April and already intensely hot in arid Birbhum, but the room was large and cool and dark, the wetted coir-screens on the windows were wafting a mild sandalwood scent in the breeze of electric fans, soft music issued from the radio of which we could see the glowing dial in the half-light, two great Alsatians lay sprawling on the floor, there was our soft-spoken hostess in a buff Orissan sari---and in front of us the cool black stone plates set off by the whiteness of the rice and surrounded by crescents of bowls exuding appetizing flavours: the ensemble was perfect. The special charm of the meal was that sight and hearing and the olfactory organ shared the pleasures of the table, in a sense other than gastronomical.
Some years later, on being invited by a West-Bengalese friend to an evening party held in honour of his betrothal in his Calcutta home, I witnessed a ceremony the like of which I had never seen among East-Bengalese families. In the entire Bengali-speaking area, fish is an inseparable part of any feast connected with a Hindu wedding, but this Brahmin family had evidently a different tradition regarding betrothal feasts: the entertainment was pure vegetarian---and a wonder to behold. We---some fifty guests of us --- sat on grass mats or woollen rugs in a long verandah overlooking the inner courtyard of the house; in front of us were red-brown earthen plates and tall glasses of the same material filled with keya-scented water; the food was served in tiny little bowls of which there was apparently an endless series---everything was spotlessly clean and attractive to the eye. I did not count the dishes, but I was told there were exactly thirty-two of them (or maybe sixty-four!)---that being the auspicious number prescribed by tradition. They came in marvellously diminutive quantities, in a fixed order of succession, without a touch of animal substance anywhere, without any meaty vegetables, even---an extraordinary array of greens cooked with mysterious combinations of spices and grains, according to recipes which, I imagine, were among the most complex invented by man. I could not identify all the dishes, and I no longer remember what were the ones I did recognize, nor whether I relished them all, but I must say that this meal---and the vegetarian lunch at the Tagores' residence---are aesthetically the two most satisfying meals I have ever eaten in my life.


But all this is a thing of the past. The world I have described in the foregoing pages has been vanishing at a rapid rate since the end of the Second War and the partition of Bengal; it has scant chance of survival after the older generation has passed out. Tremendous changes have occurred in the social pattern, especially in and around Calcutta; conditions have emerged which simply do not permit a time-consuming complicated cookery style. The younger generation of middle-class Bengalis lives in small flats, preferably sans parents; man and wife both go out to work; the domestic help they can get is scanty and irregular. These circumstances, combined with the romantic and ebullient disposition by which Bengalis can be easily distinguished from their compatriots of the north and south, have remarkably altered the food habits of the present generation of Bengalis. Gastronomically speaking, they are exhibiting signs of national and international integration to a far greater degree than any other group of Indians anywhere. Bengalis of my children's age delight in dosas and beef-rolls, thrive on sausages and hamburgers; they frequently eat out or bring home packages from Chinese or Punjabi restaurants, in order to save the trouble of cooking; they have developed a taste for casual meals eaten at odd hours. In this country of abundant fresh food, they are allured by the canned ready-to-eat substitutes which have begun to hit the market; some even prefer instant coffee to that glorious offspring of their native soil---the fragrant leaf nourished by Nature and man on dizzy Himalayan heights--chiefly because the preparation of tea demands more time and labour. Everything, of course, is in order, just in keeping with the times---nobody can deny the importance of minimizing housework in the conditions of today. But if the Bengali culinary art is doomed, as it is clear it is, that is all the more reason why records of it shou1d remain, for changes themselves are subject to change and man is nothing without history and ancestral memories.

1. Of this there are many attestations in Vedic and Puranic literature.
2. Derived from Tamil kari, a meat sauce. The root of the Bengali word tarkari (which is used with a similar lack of discrimination) is Persian tarah, a sag, vegetable, or meat. No dictionary says whether the second half of the Bengali word is related to Tamil.
In Sanskrit, the generic term for cooked food (except rice and desserts) is vyanjana, a term of literary criticism denoting effective expression. A vyanjana as cooking term means food which has been made effective by art. This "correspondence" of poetry and cookery was also noted by Baudelaire.
3. I have failed to find an English word for this vegetable. The great Monier Williams defines it as a species of small cucumber (Trichosanthes). I have never seen it outside India.
4. The word primarily means a hoax or camouflage. Lentil-cakes cooked with rich spices resemble a meat-dish in appearance and taste, hence this name.
5. I do not know of any other part of India or the world where milk is turned to casein--the Bengali word is "chhana", and I'm not sure if the English expression is quite accurate. "Chhana" is the base of all the famous creations of the Bengali confectioner. Its nearest Occidental equivalent is cottage cheese.
6. The sag and the shukto are both concoctions of bland or bitter leafy herbs and vegetables--nomenclature depends on the style of cooking "Sag-bhat" is the set phrase for the poor man's diet, also euphemistically used when one invites a friend to a banquet. The first thing served in a wedding feast is a sag.
7. A jelly-like preparation of crushed mustard and spices, sometimes mixed with tamarind or green mangoes. The pure variety is stronger than the mustard Englishmen eat with their beef.
8. "Brinjal" is the Anglo-Indian word for the fruit of the egg-plant, derived from Sanskrit via Portuguese.
9. It may seem paradoxical that this deprived sisterhood should be sanctioned the finest rice. The fact is that most Bengalis prefer parboiled rice whereas the sacerdotal sun-dried variety is enjoined on the widows. Actually, the latter is finer and more fragrant, but is believed to be less nutritious. Of this, however, there is empirical evidence-- the average widow lives until old age in excellent health.

Translated by the author himself from the original Bengali Bhojon-shilpi Bangali. The translation has been published in the daily newspaper The Hindusthan Standard of Calcutta. The Bangla article, first titled "Bhojan-Bilasi Bangali" but later changed to "Bhojon-shilpi Bangali" appeared in 4 daily installments in the Ananda Bazar Patrika of Calcutta, during January 1-4, 1971. Recently, in 2004, this has been published in book form by Vikalp, Kolkata.

Santal Pat

Santal Pat scrolls that deal with the origins of the SANTALs and their views of the life after death. These pats are used extensively in Purulia and in the north-eastern regions of Bankura in WEST BENGAL, where the Santals form the leading. Their artists thus tend to draw pictures that narrate the origins of their tribe based on their folk tales; the tale of Korizak is one such story.
The pictures are drawn in five parts. Starting from top to bottom they illustrate: 1. a submerged world; two swans, one male and the other female, flying over water; there is no dry place for them to sit on; 2. an earthworm building a plot of land out of the water; 3. the swans living on land and the female swan laying a couple of eggs; 4. two swans emerging out of the eggs, one male and the other female; 5. the first man and woman (like Adam and Eve) giving birth to the Santal people.
The legends of the Santals and the pictures drawn by their painters almost details. However, the pats only often the outlines of the story. [Yas Vanu Begum]

KabiKanka

Kavi Kanka (c 15th/16th century) one of the most famous poets of the Middle Ages and the original composer of SATYAPIRER PANCHALI. He is thought to be a contemporary of Chaitanyadev. He was born in a BRAHMIN family in the village of Bipragram in KENDUA upazila of NETRAKONA district. He lost his parents when he was only 6 months old and was brought up by a CHANDAL couple, Murari and Kaushalya, who gave him the name of Kankadhar or Kanka. After the death of his foster parents, he was taken over by a Brahmin couple, Garga Pandit and Gayatri Devi, whose cows he used to tend.
Kanka exhibited his talent as a poet at an early age. He was a good flute player and used to compose shlokas orally. After noticing his talent, Garga arranged for his studies. Kanka and Garga's daughter Lila grew up together and became fond of each other. At about this time Kanka came in contact with a Muslim fakir and became his disciple. At the command of this fakir, he composed Satyapirer Panchali and became famous as 'Kavi Kanka'. This Panchali was very popular in MYMENSINGH.
Kanka's conversion to Islam enraged the Brahmin community, including his provider Garga, and they even conspired to kill him. He was forced to leave the place to save himself. He then started wandering about, singing Satyapirer Panchali. Kanka also composed Malayar Baramasi.
Towards the end of his life Kanka went to Puridham. A manuscript of Satyapirer Panchali by a poet known as Kavi Karna, written in Bangla but using the Oriya script, has been found. It is believed by some that Kavi Karna and Kavi Kanka were the same person. [Ali Nawaz]

Jhumar and Ashariya Jhumar

In Chaitra, a type of composition known as the Jhumar is sung and danced. Jhumar can be sung and danced by only one men and women or both depending upon the particular occasion. The Jhumar at Chaitra is a typical men's dance which is accompanied by drum and cymbals. At time of the transplanting of the paddy only women sing and dance the Jhumar. This is then known as the Ashariya Jhumar. Into the agricultural songs of transplanting paddy was impregnated the theme of the love of Radha and Krishna and other stories of mystical union. The basic tune of the Jhumars remained more or less the same. The development of the Jhumar provides an interesting instance of an old form absorbing a new content.

CONCHSHELLS AND BANANAS: THE BENGALI WAY OF BIRTH

The blare of conchshells, children beating on winnows, a pigtailed Brahmin priest squishing bananas into a bowl of milk: Those were my childhood memories of the mysterious things that happened when babies were expected. When I grew older, I realized that there was a method to the seeming madness of these rites and ceremonies prescribed for pregnant mothers down through the centuries.
There are almost as many birthing customs as there are dialects in India. Each state and each community has its own set, although modernism has ended many. Gone are the days when women, like my mother, had me at home and was then segregated for a month in the antur ghar (delivery room). Still, there are several customs, which I saw used before and after the birth of my nephew last year in Bengal where I live.
One of the most popular customs is the ritual of swad (taste or longing). When childbirth was a potentially dangerous process with no certainty of the mother's survival, the swad ceremony was a way of ensuring that the pregnant mother had nothing left to desire before she went into labour, whether it was special food, clothes, or jewelry. It was also a way of making sure that she was well fed and strengthened for the potentially dangerous event. The swad, which revolves around a lunch, is held in the ninth month of pregnancy, on a day set aside for the purpose in the panjika (almanac of auspicious days). Before gynecologists the date involved a certain amount of guesswork and some mothers had to be rushed into labour before their longings could be fulfilled.
Some pregnant women will have three swads -- one thrown by their aunt, one by their mother and one by their mother-in-law. The guest list must include five married women, the rest can be whomever the girl chooses. The expectant mother wears an elaborate new sari and jewelry given to her for the occasion by the swad's hostess. Specially prescribed food is set out in front of her on a huge silver platter including a cooked fish's head -- one of the most auspicious foods in the Bengali calendar of rituals -- five types of fried food, including banana fritters -- the banana is also auspicious -- and a mix of vegetables called shukto. The first mouthful that she takes has to include a pinch of everything on the platter and as she puts it into her mouth, the conchshells blow alerting the gods that the swad has begun and a future mother is now under their care. The mother's meal ends with payesh, a sweetened dish of rice and condensed milk. Today some swads include Western foods -- glazed ham, mutton en croute and lemon soufflé -- taking the meaning of the ritual into account, rather than its letter. While the mother-to-be is eating, a child is put on her lap -- a boy or girl depending on which gender the couple desire -- and shares the meal with her. Since the advent of ultrasounds which can detect gender, this custom is sometimes no longer observed.
Before the swad ceremony, on another auspicious day, some families celebrate a ritual called the Panchamrita or five nectars ceremony ensured to nourish the mother-to-be. The expectant mother at nine months is fed the five amritas or nectars described in the Hindu sacred books: wild honey, unpasteurised milk, sweetened yogurt, clarified butter and sugar. A special puja (prayer) is performed on her behalf, and that of the child, in the temple with a little of the panchamrita taken from the ceremony. For the day's remainder the expectant mother is allowed to consume only fruit and milk.
Such rituals aside, childbirth calls for cheating the gods and make them believe no baby is expected, so ensuring a safer delivery. There are so no overt signs of preparation made for the baby; no new clothes bought or bedding made. From birth up to age three all babies have their foreheads smudged with kajal (charcoal) since black averts the evil eye. After a session of excessive compliments, the baby's maid might burn chilies in a brazier sending out clouds of stinging smoke to blind the eyes of the evil gods and send them scurrying away. As soon as the baby's birth time has been accurately documented, a horoscope is cast. If the stars predict ill luck, a gold talisman filled with sacred herbs is tied around the baby's wrist with a matching amulet for the mother. The baby also wears an iron bangle around its wrist symbolizing protection and strength
A ceremony called Aathkarhai (eight woks) takes place when the baby is eight days old since eight is one of the auspicious numbers in the Hindu sacred books. This ceremony is in honour of Ma Sashthi, goddess of childbirth and children, and takes place in the new mother's home. A winnowing tray is upturned and tied down at the four corners with sacred thread. Eight children are invited to pelt as hard as they can the tray with nuts and puffed rice, so that all evil spirits can be threshed out of the place and so, it is implied out of the baby. The winnowing tray is then torn to shreds and the pieces carefully disposed of so. Eight small woks filled with fried nuts, grain and puffed rice are then given away to the eight children. During this time, the mother and baby are, at least theoretically, confined to the nursery quarters and not allowed to move freely around the house. The reason for this segregation was the high infant mortality prevalent in the bad old days.
After the first month the probability of survival was considered higher leading to the ceremony of Sasthi. All the clothes that the baby and mother wore during their confinement are thrown away and both get a new wardrobe, courtesy of the mother in-law. Wearing their new clothes, both mother and infant go to the temple to pray to Ma Sashthi. A priest performs a special puja, which includes molding from mud a small artificial tank, or pond filled with milk. The priest asks Ma Sashthi to ensure that the mother's milk supply be as plentiful as the milk stored within the artificial pond. Some 21 packets made from sal leaves are filled with puffed rice, betel leaves, areca nuts and coins are distributed to 21 children. A trousseau, including food and the obligatory fish is sent to the new mother's house by her husband. This is to ensure that he does his part in looking after his wife and child and shows consideration for his in-laws.
The last birth ritual is the annaprasha (rice eating ceremony) when the baby is six or seven months old and first allowed to eat human food. The baby, formally dressed as a bride or a bridegroom, sits on the mother's lap and is offered a tray which contains certain ritual objects: a lump of earth, a sacred book, a pen and a silver coin. If the baby first picks up the pen it means that he/she will be fond of studies; the earth signifies fertility and prosperity, the money wealth and the sacred book religion. Some babies are allowed two dips. After a puja, the baby's mother dips a gold ring in a bowl of payesh and the ring is given to the baby to suck. This is followed by tiny pinches of fish, shukto and sweetened yogurt. These ceremonies take place during the day. At night, guests are invited to dinner and the baby is introduced to the wider world of society. With this last ceremony mother and child are firmly settled in the world and free to lead their lives as they please.
By Anjana Basu

Alpana

Alpana, the form of Rangoli practiced in Bengal, is a natural representation of the artistic sensibility of the people. Practiced usually by the womenfolk of the state, the art form represents an amalgamation of the past experience as well as the contemporary designs. Even though the basic designs are more or less same, new forms and new colors are being tried on a large scale. The changing moods of the seasons are also very much reflected in the Alpana designs of India. The patterns are made with the help of a small piece of cloth drenched in a blend of powdered rice.

Making of Alpana patterns is a part of the rituals in the numerous vratas (fasts) kept by the Hindu women of Bengal. They beautify the whole house and paint the floor with Alpana art, drawing designs passed on from one generation to the other. Bengalis also make use of the Circular Alpana as a holy pedestal while worshipping a deity, especially at the time of Lakshmi Puja. The basis of the word 'Alpana' has two different versions. As per one version, it originated from the Sanskrit word 'Alimpana', meaning 'to plaster with' or 'to coat with'. The other version traces its roots to the word 'Alipana', meaning the art of making ails or embankments.

Origin
The origin of the Alpana art form is very difficult to trace. Some authorities believe that the vratas with which Alpana is associated can be traced to pre-Aryan times. The ascetics living in the country before the Aryans are said to have passed on this art form to the future generations. One can also find detailed mention of Alpana paintings in the later works like Kajalrekha. All the ritualistic and traditional folk arts of Bengal, including Alpana, are believed to have been used by the agricultural communities of the region for driving out evil spirits. The art form of Alpana has been used since ages for religious and ceremonial purposes and is usually done on the floor.

Making of Alpana
Alpana designs are drawn with the help of rice-powder, diluted rice paste, powdered colors (produced from dried leaves), charcoal, burnt earth, etc. Materials like colored chalk, vermilion, flower petals, grains, etc, are also used to decorate the designs. The motifs usually comprise of sun, ladder, leg of goddess Lakshmi, owl, fish, betel, rice stem, lotus, plough, sindur box, etc. Presently, Alpana patterns seem to be influenced by Santiniketani style of art.

LetoGaan

Leto Gan folk song, variant of JATRA, combining dialogue, song, dance, music, and usually performed in the Burdwan area of WEST BENGAL.
Leto performers are classified as sakhi (friend), sangdar (clowns), pathak (reader), and dancers. Adolescent boys perform the part of women. Leto themes include social activities and daily rural life as well as myths, legends, and historical figures and events. As a teenager, KAZI NAZRUL ISLAM belonged to a leto group and wrote Rajputrer Sang, Chasar Sang, and Akbar Badsha in the leto style.
Leto contests are common. Each group is led by Goda Kavi, the master poet. Leto sessions usually take place after the winter harvest when farmers have some respite from work. Leto gan is purely for entertainment. The genre is mainly popular among Muslims, although people of all religions enjoy it.
[Wakil Ahmed]

Bangla

Bangla

West Bengal situated in the eastern parts of India. The essence of Arya-Brahmin culture influenced this parts of the world much later parts. Mostly the history of Aryan cultural dominance began not earlier than 1000 years. Mostly Buddhist, Folk and Tantric culture was practiced then. At that time the northern heartland of India engulfed by the Arya-Brahmin culture. Just after the Gupta dynasty the Brahmins came and began to settle in Bengal. The Aryanization completed in the upper and the middle class of the society at the time of Sen-Barman dynasty. If we began to unveil the lower strata of the social pyramid the relics of the traditional and ancient culture can be observed. Even today, at the beginning of the new millennium, one can find out the root of traditional culture in various many rituals, more and taboos.

Adiparva of Mahabharat tells us a story of Sage Dirghatamas fertilize the Queen of King Bali and gave birth five sons – Anga, Banga, Kalinga, Pundra & Sumha. by their names the janapadas were named. One can found other stories in various puranic texts related to this parts of India tells that this areas are outside of the Arya-Brahmin culture.

The name Bangla took shape much later in modern times. Pundra-Gour-Sumha-Rarh-Tamralipti-Samatat-Banga-Bangal-Harikel are some of the names of this parts of world.