Chandrabati's Ramayan

by Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Translator)

Chandrabati, the first woman poet in Bangla, lived in the sixteenth century in Mymensingh district in present day Bangladesh. She was also the first poet in the Bangla language to present a retelling of the Ram story from the point of view of Sita. Idolised as a model of marital obedience and chastity in Valmiki’s Ramayan, Chandrabati’s lyrical retelling of Sita’s story offers us a fresh perspective. Written in order to be sung before a non-courtly audience, mainly of womenfolk of rural Bengal, Chandrabati’s Ramayan adds new characters and situations to the story to provide new interpretations of already known events drawing richly on elements of existing genres. Its location in the tales of everyday life has ensured that Chandrabati’s Ramayan lives on in the hearts of village women of modern-day India.

NABANEETA DEV SEN was one of Bengal’s best-known writers. Equally adept at poetry (her most favoured genre) she also wrote novels, plays, travelogues, critical and academic pieces. She was for many years a teacher of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata and remained involved at the level of activism and support in women’s causes. Chandrabati’s Ramayan was a work that was very close to her heart and this manuscript was completed on her 80th birthday, just under a year before she passed away. Its publication is our tribute to her.

Genres: Poetry, Mythology, Feminism, Nonfiction, Retellings

110 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Nabaneeta Dev Sen is an award-winning Indian poet, novelist and academic. Sen has published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children’s literature. Her short stories and travelogues are a rare combination of fine humour, deep human concern, and high intellect, which has made her a unique figure in the Bangla literary scene.

She is a well-known children's author in Bengali for her fairy tales and adventure stories, with girls as protagonist. She has also written prize-winning one-act plays.

Reviews

[Sudarshana Mukhopadhyay · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 16th century Bengal, poet Chandrabati rewrites Ramayan and breaks a few patriarchal shackles along the way. Chandrabati, daughter of Dwija Banshidas (the Manasa bhasan songs famed), has ballads on her own life in the Maimansingha Geetika. The life and events that inspire Chandrabati to write this masterpiece in itself is a remarkable story. But in this book, we only get to know Chandrabati, the poet, and through her humane lens - Sita - the epic hero of her Ramayan. Yes, not Ram, but Sita is the divine hero in Chandrabati's Ramayan. Sita, an incarnation of Lakshmi, narrates the Ramayan for her women sakhis as Baromasya (or Baromasi) - poems composed by and sung for primarily women audience based on women's emotions and experiences presented in association with the changing seasons throughout the year.
It is hard to believe that in the 16th century, Chandrabati retells Ramayana so that "it is not a threat to a wedded woman's chastity which brings about the doom of the villain and the triumph of the hero, but an insult to the feminine power symbolized by Lakshmi who grants auspicious abundance." The afterward by Prof. Ipshita Chanda adds excellent value to this book, especially to contextualize Chandrabati's poetic and feminist prowess in the broader Indian and South Asian literary heritage. Chandrabati's Ramayan stands out both in the form and narrative of the Ramayan. It's different from Attakuri Molla's (16th century Telegu woman poet, translated Ramayan from Sankrit to Telegu) Ramayan in portraying the epic from Sita's point of view. In Nabaneeta Dev Sen's masterful translation, the rhythm of Chandrabati's lyrical Baromasya poems remains well preserved.
Simply put, it's just so much more than Ramraboner judhha! (battle of Ram-Ravan). Even at times, I wondered if Ravan was a better husband to Mandodari than Ram was to Sita.

Available at Zubaan books: https://zubaanbooks.com/shop/chandrab... @zubaanbooks
Special mention: The cover art by Mantu Chitrakar, patachitra Campaign against Dowry
https://www.posterwomen.org/?p=1894

[Apoorva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chandrabati's Ramayan , translated by Nabaneeta Dev Sen

A retelling in prose form lost through time. This slim book consists of unearthing Chandrabati- a woman poet retelling of the Ramayana through Sita's voice.
Nabaneeta Dev Sen's work as a translator is multifold at presenting simplistic prose of Chandrabati's retelling. It also sadly highlights that many women who sing this song do not know it is the grand work of a 16th century woman poet from present day Bangladesh.

Divided into three books, taking us from the ravagery and greed of Ravan and to the mighty grandeur of Lanka, next to the King Janaka's family feud and finally to the test through fire, we have Sita , an unwavering figurine through it all..
The beauty of these poems is understanding how stories were told through the ages- through poems, through examples, through warning messages of good vs evil.
Good vs Evil remains the common moral take-home message of mythological sagas. But Chandrabati does something different, she makes the characters humane.

Sita is reduced to loyalty and chasteness.
Maryada Ram is encumbered by societal webs.
Lakshman , an instrument to means -whether right or wrong
Urmila, forever behind the shadows
And finally Mandodari, vying for love and accepting fate..

"All our joys and sorrows, fruits of karma, Vidhata alone decides."

Note: Chandrabati's poems were found in the "yellowed pages of Dinesh Chandra's Maimansingha Geetika and Khitish Moulick's Purba Banga Geetika around 1988". These were disseminated by Dev Sen in her lectures at Oxford.

[Aditi]

As a young girl, I questioned Lord Rama's decision to have Sita prove her purity by going through the Agni Pariksha, and later exiling her despite her purity because of the insinuations of a washerman. I fumed with indignation, asking everyone how the very epitome of virtue and morality, the incarnation of God and the harbinger of justice, could turn on his own pregnant wife.

Chandrabati, five hundred years ago, must have wondered the same. It's haunting and hopeful to think about a woman so many centuries back thinking the same things I thought of, and it felt amazing to find out that she wrote her own Ramayana focusing on Sita and her story at a time when women weren't even allowed to be educated.

[M Mohana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello :)

I have been inclined to parallel character studies these days. Isn't it interesting to alter the characters of myths and retell them in the characters of others?
Similarly, Nabaneeta Deb Sen's Chandrabati's Ramayan (translator of original work) retells the mythology or a religious tale from the mind of Sita. As we all have grown up listening to tales from Ramayana or watching it at Doordarshan, a rethinking from Sita's character makes this work of art a masterpiece in itself. Beautifully, Chandrabati in her Bengali Masterpiece, later translated by Deb Sen has gripped my mind. It sets me to think that how Sita is destined to be miserable all her life yet doesn't succumb to her freedom or dignity. No matter, how miserable or incomplete her life was, from Sita getting exiled along with her husband, getting kidnapped by a demon king and finally, is made to go through an Agni Pariksha (a trial by fire) by her husband and other religious authorities, doesn't shudder away from freedom and dignity. No matter how miserable the events in her life were, it is she who places her honor above all.

She proved to overcome miseries in the truest sense of living, love and dignity at the end.

[Ben Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating retelling of the Ramayana from the perspective of Sita written by the daughter of a poet in the 16th century. Composed for the enjoyment of village women rather than royal courtiers, it centers Sita in her suffering and is less forgiving of Rama and his abandonment of his pregnant wife.

[Diptarka Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Refreshing take on the Ramayana tradition of South Asia. An added gift in the book is the "bhanita" section from Chandrabati's ballad, offering a sneak-peek into the narrator's world.

[archisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5