লালন সাঁই-এর বাউল গানে বৌদ্ধ তান্ত্রিক প্রতীক | Buddhist Tantric Elements in the Baul Songs of Lalan Fakir

Abstract

The Bengali Baul songs of Lalan Sain (d. 1890 CE) are notable for their rich poetic genius, but a lesser explored fact about them is the way in which they encode certain ritual practices that are also shared with certain traditions within Buddhist tantric literature. More specifically, Lalan's poetry riffs of Buddhist sources, some of Vaisnavism (and to a lesser degree, Saivism and Saktism), and some off of Islamic mysticism. In some cases, these sources are blended inextricably in a single song, although many songs have a predominant aesthetic "bhava" ("attitude," "spirit") that informs the metaphors used. This article demonstrates that some of these bhavas are undoubtedly a throwback to an earlier age (pre-15th century CE), when Buddhist Tantra is believed to have dominated the landscape of Bengal, from the proto-university of Vikramasila to the stupas of Chittagong. Furthermore, many of the songs that reflect a more Vaisnava or Islamic bhava use alternative motifs to thinly mask Buddhist concepts (e.g. using the Persian pakpanjatan "five holy people" to represent the dhyani-buddha "buddhas of meditation"). Most convincing of all, however, are the sexual practices of Baul fakirs that clearly demonstrate continuity with medieval Buddhist tantra. Many of these earlier Buddhist ideas can be detected in the surviving Mahayana and Vajrayana literature of medieval Buddhism, where they reflect their original contexts. As such, Buddhist literature provides a kind of "control variable" by which innovative elements later incorporated by Baul fakirs can be better understood. This article then aims to briefly summarize the presence of these Buddhist tantric elements in the songs of Lalan Sain and indicate possibilities for future research in this vein.