Ritual songs and folksongs of the Hindus of Surinam

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Chapter one
Introduction

The Indians came to Surinam mainly from the districts of Gorakhpur, Basti, Gonda, Fyzabad, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Gazipur and Ballia in Eastern U.P. and from Saran, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Shahabad, Patna and Gaya districts in the Bihar state. Some people also came from the western districts of U.P. locally referred to as ‘the West’ (pachą̄h). A total of 34, 304 Indians arrived in Surinam between 1873 and 1916. They spoke mainly Avadhī and Bhojpurī dialects and some influence of the Magahī form of Bihārī is also perceptible in their present-day speech. Maithilī and other eastern as well as western U.P. dialects such as the Brajbhāṣā were spoken by some people coming from the areas of these dialects.

The people were of two religions, Hinduism and Islam. The religion with which the present study is concerned is specifically Hinduism, with an occasional reference to Islam.¹

The social system of the Hindus who migrated to Surinam was based on caste divisions in which a family and a member thereof belonged to a sub-group of one of the four social classes, varṇas, viz., Brāhmaṇa, Kṣatriya, Vaiśya and Śūdra. Of the four shiploads of immigrants studied by de Klerk ('53: 103) 17 3/4% were from the higher caste groups, 33 1/4% from the middle caste groups, 31% from the low castes, 17 1/2% Muslim and 1/2% unspecified.

As to the economic conditions of the immigrants suffice it to say here that they came attracted by the promise of a better economic life, as indentured labourers on contract to work on sugar and coffee estates, and, after termination of their contracts, settled down to cultivate their own lands. Their economic ambition has been fairly well fulfilled.

They have complete freedom to lead their own religious and social life with the result that many cultural forms of India, one of which is song, survive among them. Song is with them almost a

1 For the religious and social background of the community this thesis leans on the work done by de Klerk and Speckmann.

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way of life, closely associated with their ritual, religion, and social custom. De Klerk and Speckmann have referred to this in passing (de Klerk '51: 99, 138-140, 149, 151, 180, 181, 204, 205, 206, 214, 217, 219, 220, 221; Speckmann '65: 30, 138, 139, who refers only to the beating of a drum where singing should have been included: 142, 147). There is a failure to establish the relationship of song with the ritual and social life with this exception that de Klerk has given a fair treatment to certain, though not all, categories of song sung at the phagwā festival (219-221). In some cases he comes close to recognising the song as part of the ritual without, however, making this relation very clear. A few examples may be cited: ('51: 99) he describes the singing of sohar songs in the middle of the details of the ritual on the sixth day after childbirth, but without showing the connection between the song and the ritual. He knows that song is used in the maṭkor procession ('51: 149) but again no connection is established between the song and the ceremony. In imlī ghǫṭā̈ī ('51: 149) he describes a conversation between the bridegroom's mother and her brother as part of the ritual without recognising this as part of a song (No. 29). Speckmann dismisses the songs as ‘impudent, even improper’ ('65: 138) without having studied them carefully. Both authors generally fail to mention the important role played by song in various stages of the ceremonial.

The songs in our collection were brought by the immigrants as part of an oral tradition from India although some local composition and adaptation to Surinam conditions has since then taken place. Grierson, also author of an official report on the migration (1883), collected some songs in the original homeland of the migrants and published them in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (see bibliography). Being illiterate, the immigrants could not have known of these journals. The migration was stopped after 1917. The first pioneering collection of these folksongs was by Tripāṭhī in 1929, and there have been a number of scholarly publications from 1943 onwards. None of these is known in Surinam.

Many songs similar to those in our study are found in the above collections. Out of a total of a hundred songs printed in this thesis, eight are found in Avadhī variants, twenty in a mixture of Avadhī and Bhojpurī - even though the authors on Bhojpurī folksongs

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do not acknowledge their Avadhī mixture - and sixteen have their variants in more than two dialects including Brajbhāṣā, Kanäujī etc. There are negligibly few which are handed down only in a single one of these, latter, dialects. Some individual lines or groups of lines from our songs, as well as many phrases are also found in different versions in other contexts. Reference to these is made in the notes to the texts of our songs.

The standard of literacy being somewhat higher among men than among women, some of the men's songs are now more and more often sung from books: this is the case with the songs sung at the phagwā festival, for which Cautāl Phāg Saṁgraha (see bibliography) is used. Most songs of the phagwā festival in our collection, however, are not found in this book.

Some songs, originally brought from India, have undergone changes locally. For example song No. 31 line VII was first heard as ‘the bridegroom's maternal grandfather is so well adorned as the king of Delhi’ but perhaps to some Surinam singers Delhi was too remote so the line was changed to ‘the king of Russia’ and another line to ‘the king of America’. Many such versions exist side by side, as is the case with folksongs everywhere. Though many of these variants have been recorded, only a single version of each song is printed here with the exception of song No. 79.

Many types of songs known in India have been lost in Surinam because of a difference of conditions, for example the bārahmāsā songs, which describe the weather and attitudes towards the twelve months of the year, have not been heard in Surinam because the weather in Surinam is not divided into seasons. Gradually some of the ritual is being lost with the consequence that the songs of Janëu, for instance, are now known to few. For some inexplicable reason only two lines of a song to Ṣaṣṭhī (see p. 15) were heard. The general change in social, caste and family conditions has also contributed to reduce the popularity of several types of songs, for example there are now very few songs dealing with the woes of an infertile woman, bą̄jh. As the professions of water-carriers, kahārs, or clay-potters, kumhārs, are dying out, their songs also are slowly becoming extinct. The introduction of ready-milled flour and modern agricultural machines has caused the women's titillā songs to become less known than before.

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Other causes of loss are the influence of modern education whereby the younger people are taught to disregard non-European forms of culture as backward and primitive, the introduction of modern Hindi through literature, films, the modern reform movements such as Ārya-samāj, and religious missionaries and cultural workers from India. This has generated a feeling of inferiority and often an apologetic attitude among those who speak or sing in the dialect forms.

The author of the present study collected the songs and observed the related customs during numerous visits to Surinam, totalling a stay of more than a year. The groups of singers as well as individual singers were invited to sing to a tape-recorder in their homes and temples. Some songs were written down on paper without being recorded on tape. The repertoire of the singers is by no means exhausted by this collection and only a small part of the author's collection is presented in this publication, which is an attempt to list various categories of songs and to give representative examples. The taped copies have been stored at the Instituut voor Oosterse Talen of the University of Utrecht.