After Panini put together the discoveries of the grammar of Sanskrit language, India's contributions to literature reached lofty heights. The quality and amount of contributions are unsurpassed in the world. Panini captured the lyrical nature of the human expression and helped the writers to produce word structures of complex thoughts with brevity and precision. The momentum in creativity continued at least until 800 AD when Arab invaders got track of India's wealth and scholarship. The incursion of foreigners and the news of atrocities segregated the country into smaller units leading to the development of regional languages and culture. In place of Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali and Prakrit, the country developed more than a dozen of local languages with their own grammar and script. Many of these languages were in popular use even earlier, but there was sudden progress in developing scripts and calligraphy. This was about the same time when English language also came to be formalized. While the earlier poets and writers had created the foundation of India's culture through their massive contributions, the new writers in the regional languages took the liberty of rendering the stories and the philosophical discussions in the local context. A strong mythology based folk culture existed among the masses and the new stories from Sanskrit literature got woven into the popular culture. Such fusion produced extremely colorful renditions of stories through arts, music, dance and drama. In Orissa, a poet born in a low-caste farming family took upon himself to retell the story of the epic Mahabharata through the local language Oriya. It is believed that the Sanskrit text of Mahabharata was written in several segments at different times and compiled together by oral singing. To handle the hundred thousand stanzas in eighteenparva (sub-book) must have been a monumental task. He wrote it for the everyday use, possibly with the goal of education. He used an unstructured meter that was in use in folk singing.
While it is the first complete regional rendition of the great epic, one enjoys the new poetry through its originality and folksy mapping to the local culture. The complex plot is rendered like an improvised piece of music where the poet could move in his own trajectory to tell the local stories and rejoin to the flow in the main plot at suitable turning points. The artistic nature of the work is beautiful and creative. Poets imagine, Poet Sarala Das saw Orissa in his Mahabharata. Many other poets have followed him in rendering epics to the local languages, but none has rewritten to set the material in the local regional context. It is creativity of a high order!
While I had known about the poet, I bumped into his birth place while I was on a relief trip in the coastal Orissa in 1999. His humble abode fascinated me and I read him more critically. I translated a section from his book to English and it was incorporated to a book on Krishna published by the Oxford University Press in 2007. Through his imagination, the poet created new myth in connecting the old deity Jagannatha of Puri to the mortal remains of SriKrishna of Dvaraka. Though a myth, it is sometimes taught as "history" in text-books. Poets do wonders! My efforts to create a biography of the poet has not been successful. Nothing is known about him except his birth place and the birth name. Because the poet deviates freely from the Sanskrit text, he makes a case that he was writing under the command of the local deity. He continues to plead ignorance and humility possibly to escape the criticism to his liberal thinking. He disguises his revolt against the existing social order through the puns of poetry and the cover of the context of the story. Being curious about the poet, I had thought about initiating new research about the poet's life as we may discover through analyzing the poetry. Dr. Natabar Satapathy, an expert in Oriya literature and a retired Professor of Oriya had agreed to help in the effort. He had convened a meeting of a few selected playwrights, language scholars and musicologists to brainstorm and to help create a path forward.
Dr Laxmicharan picked me up early in the morning. I had to go a gentleman's house to pick up some papers connected to our home at Cuttack. After finishing the task, we moved on to a place called Sarala Bhavan a special building in Cuttack created to host meetings and performances connected to Poet Sarala's literature. I was happy with the effort of the local organizers to put together a memorial building. It was an auditorium hall with a few side offices. We met in one of the Conference rooms.
We had Dr Khageswar Mahapatra, the eminent linguist from Shantiniketan, who had specilally come for the meeting. Then we had Mr Babaji Patnaik, the dramatist, Mr Ajoy Misra, the writer, Prof Udayanath Sahu from the University, Mrs Suniti Devi from the Doordarsan, Indian TV. Also we had Mr Barada Prasanna Tripathy, a young movie Director and Dr Laxmicharan. The discussion centered on any strategy we might create to help create a docu-drama on the poet researching material from his writings.
The table was rich with experience and knowledge. Reconstruction of a bio however is more archaeological. We had to have the boldness to extrapolate from small traces to a tangible story. We needed to know the history and the social system during the time the poet lived and we must help help create how he might have moved in life. Though he claims otherwise, he certainly had tremendous competence in Sanskrit and other streams of knowledge. We have to guess how he might have prepared himself to undertake the grand task of rendering Mahabharata in his own style. Besides his training we have to map his association and family. The majestic work could easily be the effort of a decade.
We settled with a decision that a small group of scholars would research and select about a dozen episodes where the poet significantly deviates from the original story line. The assumption would be that the episodes might have something to do with the poet's personal life. A small group of writers would analyze the selection and make a chronological selection. They would write a screenplay and we would use the lyric for each episode to depict the story.
Though the steps appeared complex and challenging, we agreed to complete the task in five years. Dr Natabara Satapathy would manage the progress in India and would get in touch with me. Mr Barada Tripathy showed special interest in our work. Dr Laxmicharan agreed to help.
Thanking all for their work and ideas, I had to beg leave to attend a High School reunion that my friends were organizing. Sri Rabi Das showed up and helped me in transport to go to the new location.
