Ritual songs and folksongs of the Hindus of Surinam

Language

The speakers of various dialects (vide p. 1) in India were mostly separate, each in their own region. Even though they often mixed in market places and perhaps at sacred baths and on pilgrimages, their coming together to live in a single community, as happened on their arrival in Surinam, was unprecedented. In Surinam there was an inevitable exchange of dialects. It must also be borne in

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mind that all these dialects are inter-related and a large number of forms are identical in many; furthermore, the same dialect may have many forms. The people of the pachą̄h were soon absorbed into the eastern group which was the majority. Now, slowly, there is developing what has been termed the Sarnāmī dialect of Hindi (Adhin 1964), through an intermingling of dialects, Hindi and the local Surinam influences.

Having been the language of Rāmacaritamānasa, which was the religious and literary book of the immigrants, Avadhī is predominant in these songs with some influence of Hindi and Bihārī forms.

The mixture of dialects shows itself in the songs in several ways, the degree of each dialect represented differing from song to song. For example, in song No. 78 karo, calo etc. are Hindi forms, karaų, besāhäu etc. are Avadhī forms, bhäilī, nikarala etc. are Bihārī forms, and bhari bhari etc. are forms common to Avadhī and Bihārī.

Where the song is sung by a group, the members of the group do not always follow the group leader but introduce each her own dialect form, e.g. purave (Avadhī) and puravelā (Bihārī) in song No. 1.

Quite often the same song is sung in various dialect forms by different singers who have not yet borrowed from other dialects, perhaps because of being only first generation Indians in Surinam. Several versions of song No. 1 have been recorded in this way. Song No. 52 is a good example of Brajbhāṣā, No. 29 of Bihārī and No. 26 of Avadhī.

There is also a tendency to use those forms of the dialects more frequently which are common to more than one of them, for example in some songs, jā̈ī is used more often than jāb or jābai. Many forms of Bihārī such as bǫ, bi or bų are hard to find, instead of which there occurs be as ending for the first person future tense.

In modern compositions the use of non-Indian words in an Indianised pronunciation and form is also a common feature, e.g., talavā, Avadhī form of the Dutch taal, ‘language’ (in a song not included in the text here), or yākles < jagtlust (song No. 99 C).¹

In general, the language of the songs should be studied in comparison with the spoken language;² some tape-recordings of which have been deposited at the Instituut voor Oosterse Talen.

1 See also Dr. J.H. Adhin: 1964.

2 Vide Speckmann: Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 1966.