Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 29 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20896/saci.v4i3.245 RESEARCH OPEN ACCESS Comparative Literary History in Assamese: Some Possibilities Dhurjjati Sarma† Abstract The essay attempts to explore some possibilities of Comparative Literary History with respect to . Writing a literary history is a complex business, and the tenets underlying its conceptualisation and execution have often been determined by factors other than purely ‘literary’ ones. In the essay, the conceptual dimensions of literary historiography are examined in relation to its recently developed nexus with comparative literature and cultural studies. Within this theoretical framework, the essay briefly touches upon the development of literary historiography within the Indian context in the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods, and subsequently moves on to discuss its position vis-a-vis Assamese literature, particularly in the latter’s institutionalisation as a subject for graduate and postgraduate study under , , in the post-Independence period. The essay deals specifically with the efforts of Professor Satyendranath Sarma, prominent academician and literary historian of Assam, towards the academic study of Assamese literary history. It explores the possibilities of comparative literary history in Assamese—one that is not based on a linear narrative of succeeding generations of poets and writers recorded and documented under a progressive model of impact and response, but rather a history of literary reception with many complex and multidimensional narratives often at loggerheads with each other. Key words: Literary Historiography, Comparative Literature, Comparative Cultural Studies, , Assamese Literature, Satyendranath Sarma

†Assistant Professor of Comparative Indian Literature, Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, Gauhati University, Assam, Email: [email protected] © 2017 Sarma. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 30 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20896/saci.v4i3.245 Introduction which, according to David Perkins (1992: 1), Why do we read or write literary included “works on the literature of nations, histories? ... Literature [is often] periods, traditions, schools, regions, social regarded as a product and expression of classes, political movements, ethnic groups, a historical moment, a culture, and, women, and gays, and these studies above all, of a nation’s spirit.... [And] foreground the genesis or production of texts, historicity involves a continuous conflict their effect on society or on subsequent and negotiation between past and literature, their reception, or all these moments present, contemporary and historical synthetically”. perspectives. However, the subject of literary history has not Literary texts do not merely reflect been without its share of criticism, as evident particular historical and cultural from various critics, including Rene Wellek, moments; more importantly, they Robert E. Spiller and even David Perkins, who constitute history through reading and have raised questions regarding the credibility rereading, they shape the personal and of the discipline’s avowed endeavour to record collective mentality of readers who and faithfully represent the events of the past. participate in the social construction of The past cannot be visualised as a ‘thing-in- reality (Marcel Cornis-Pope and John itself’, complete in all aspects; it is in fact an Neubauer, 2004: 1) ‘event’ that is constantly in flux, continually accruing to itself new meanings and This article attempts to examine some of the dimensions. The past is characterised through possibilities of comparative literary history with the visions of the present. To quote from (1992; respect to Assamese literature. It is well known quoted from Singh, 2011: 5): “Contemporary that the act of writing a literary history is an studies can talk about past events with an endeavour to explore and document the nature awareness of misogyny, homophobia, racism, and types of literary creations carried out and colonialism that was unavailable to the within a group or community. Even though such people who experienced them, events that an activity existed in various formats since the must have felt quite different from our Middle Ages and even before, a concerted imaginings.” Therefore, in this condition, we effort towards its formulation as a discipline may argue that what is present in literary was undertaken as part of the intellectual history is not the ‘representation’ of the past, temper nurtured by Enlightenment1 in but its ‘reconstruction’ based upon the present- eighteenth-century Europe. That was a time, day imagination of the literary historian. which fostered a belief in literary tradition as a marker of a community’s shared social and Further, there is question regarding the cultural identity. The growth of nation-states as conceptual nature of literary history. What, a political phenomenon further necessitated exactly, is the function of literary history? Is it a the record and documentation of people’s past mere chronological documentation of various through tangible and intangible heritage- literary works classified and presented in terms markers. The subject of nationhood found a of period, genre or any ideological movement? suitable ally in the discipline of literary history Or rather what makes a particular history ‘literary’, and not ‘political’ or ‘social’? David Perkins, in the chapter ‘The Functions of 1 “A movement in Europe from about 1650 until 1800 Literary History’ from his book Is Literary that advocated the use of reason and individualism History Possible? sought to address this instead of tradition and established doctrine” question in the following manner: (Enlightenment, retrieved from, https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Enlightenment). Literary history differs from history Here, the reference to the Enlightenment is made with because the works it considers are reference to the area of literary study as it developed in felt to have a value quite different Europe.

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 31 from and often far transcending their delimiting the scope of works to be considered significance as a part of history. In as sahitya (or literature) within the history of other words, literary history is also literature . Its aim is not merely Therefore, within the theoretical context to reconstruct and understand the mentioned above, the present article seeks to past, for it has a further end, which is examine the possibility of understanding the to illuminate literary works. It seeks literary history of Assamese from the to explain how and why a work perspectives of comparative literature and acquired its form and themes and cultural studies. The following sections deal thus, to help readers orient progressively with the development of literary themselves. It subserves the historiography in India, particularly in the hands appreciation of literature. The of colonial historians, while, at the same time, function of literary history lies partly also looking at the way how literature and its in its impact on reading. We write textuality developed during the precolonial literary history because we want to times, before moving on to talk about an Indian explain, understand, and enjoy dimension to the hybrid discipline of literary works. (Perkins, 1992: 177-8) comparative literary historiography. On the By aligning literary history with literary basis of the arguments and premises generated criticism, Perkins has emphasized upon the and discussed in the said sections, I would ontological function of the former alongside its discuss (or rather explore) the possibilities for usual genealogical obligations. Over and above comparative literary history in Assamese. chronological documentation, a literary history Literary Historiography in India should enable the readers to understand the politics of representation vis-à-vis the reception The early days of literary history in the and sustenance of a literary work both during eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were and subsequent to the period of its motivated by nationalist and romantic composition. In addition, any literary work finds aspirations. Literary history was, as already place in literary history not merely through mentioned, closely associated with the project authorial authority, but more importantly of national self-fashioning in Europe and through its reception within the sensibility of subsequently permeated its colonies in Asia the readers. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Africa, including India under the British. In and Dickens find mention in every possible India, the early Orientalists undertook research book on the history of English literature and deliberated upon the subject of Indian because their works have found acceptance literary history within the Enlightenment model among the reading community across time and borrowed from the West. However, prior to space and have exerted perceptible influence such studies, the medieval hagiographies or upon other works of literature composed in the literature within the carita tradition could subsequent periods of literary history. actually be considered as belonging to the genre of literary history of precolonial India. In In the Indian context too, there has been a long Assam, there was a long tradition of buranjis and sustainable tradition of literary criticism in (historical chronicles) composed under the and the regional languages that patronage of the medieval Ahom court. developed out of it, including Assamese. However, I do not deny the possibility of Therefore, with respect to the critical tradition historical writings in Assam before the advent prevalent in Sanskrit or in any of the bhasas of the Ahoms. Nevertheless, the Ahoms were (regional literature), there has been a the ones who started the tradition (or brought perceptible and continued practice of defining with them) of writing buranjis in Assam. Apart what constitutes kavya ( and, by from that, or the texts composed extension, literature) and consequently, in Assamese during the Bhakti movement were

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 32 not avowedly 'historical documents'; instead At this point, if we may pause to reflect upon they were primarily 'socio-religious' texts that the basic objectives of colonial and nationalist contained possible historical references, as all literary histories of India, we would realise that such texts do, to the contemporary events. attention was primarily based on the text- Notwithstanding, as noted by Blackburn and centric or printed canons of literature. Whether Dalmia (2004: 2), it was only in the nineteenth it was the case of Vedic or Sanskrit literary century that a modern literary and historical tradition, or the medieval hagiographical sensibility developed as part of the gradual tradition, or even the new experimentations transition from a mere recording of past events carried out under the impact of Western to rewriting it within the larger public debates modernity, we witness the preponderance of surrounding the questions of national origins, written literature that defined and determined linguistic identities and political entitlements. the features of Indian literary historiography. The nineteenth century witnessed new To quote Sheldon Pollock (2006: 4): developments in the study of archaeology, The invention of literacy and the epigraphy, anthropology, and folklore. Indian growth of manuscript culture literary historiography also developed in occurred in India a little before the consonance with the institutionalisation of beginning of the Common Era; from these disciplines, which was directed towards that point on, writing, the symbolic conceptualising an understanding of Indian elevation of what is written, and the nationhood. internal transformations the literary Early research into Indian literary history were text undergoes by the very fact of undertaken by the European scholars being written down would become increasingly prominent features of motivated by an erroneous understanding that Indian literature was constituted majorly by literary culture.... In addition, writing what was composed within the cosmopolitan makes possible the production of a Sanskrit literary tradition, with the near history of a sort the oral is incapable exclusion of literature composed in the of producing. These and other vernacular literary traditions of India. However, features mark the written as a the closing years of the nineteenth century and distinct mode of cultural production early twentieth century witnessed the gradual and communication. consolidation of a veritable literary culture in Literary histories of most Indian languages many regional languages of India, including that have, according to Pollock, prioritised the in Assamese. It was also a period that heralded written word over the oral and performative the nationalist phase of Indian history whereby dimensions, and, as such, marked the progress aspects of colonial modernity, nationality and of a language from antiquity to modernity as a regional identities were merged and gradual transition from oral to written modes synthesised. Examples may be drawn from the of literary transmission. Sheldon Pollock, in a works of (Assamese), series of books and articles, has sought to Bharatendu Harishchandra (Hindi) and Bankim reassess the literary situation in South Asia, Chandra Chatterjee (Bengali) who sought to especially India, and, in the process, synthesise elements of colonial modernity with endeavoured to encompass the oral, printed a growing sense of national identity, (or written) and performative aspects within accentuated by the awareness of being under the ambit of literary tradition. the foreign rule, as well as a deep commitment Under the ‘Literary Cultures in History’ project, to the cause of the regional culture into which Pollock and his collaborators attempted to they were born and of whose intricate features understand what the texts of South Asian and characteristics they were inheritors. literature meant to the people who wrote, heard, saw, or read them, and how these

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 33 meanings have changed over time. The attempt studies has been extended to the domain of was to know what literary culture meant in literary history. In an essay entitled Rethinking history. “Instead of segregating the oral from Literary History—Comparatively, Mario Valdes the literate, or mechanically assuming that the and Linda Hutcheon (2002: 2) adequately transition to print was exported from Europe summed up the basic objective of comparative with the same consequences everywhere,” the literary history: group, according to Pollock (2003: 15), “wanted This broadening of the object of to explore what relationships have existed study not only increases the number between literature and the often simultaneous of types of texts to be examined by orders of oral, manuscript, and print cultures.” literary historians, but also expands They wanted to understand how the South the historical contexts in which such Asians themselves conceived of their literary texts will, of necessity, be pasts and how they established their canons considered.... Literary historians over and conventions of literary judgement. The the centuries have always been objective was to write not literary criticism but aware of the complexity of literary rather a history of what has been considered as production, but the new the criticism of literature in the literary cultures methodological paradigms developed of South Asia. In case of languages, these by various critical theories in the last scholars aimed to show them not as “pure, self- few decades have made it impossible identical, thing like isolates” (a thing that most not to add to this an awareness of literary histories endeavour to do), but instead the equally complicated and equally as “mutually constitutive processes” (Pollock, significant nature of literary 2003: 15). reception. What has come to be Comparative Literary Historiography and the called the "literary institution"-the Indian Dimension field in which literary experience With respect to the shift from a study of literary occurs-is therefore as much a part of history towards the history of literary cultures, this history as is the development of we can strongly emphasise upon the relevance genres or thematic motifs. For this of comparative literature, particularly, in the reason, economic, political, and Indian context. Further, under the broader cultural and social workmanship of Steven Totosy de Zepetnek perspectives on issues like race or since the 1980s, the gradual development of gender must be brought to bear in the discipline of comparative cultural studies the constructing of any "literary" history today. marks the merger and extension of the tenets of comparative literature with those of cultural Valdes and Hutcheon stated the above in the studies. In comparative cultural studies, context of a proposed set of multi-authored emphasis is on the study of culture in relation volumes of comparative literary history to be to other significant forms of human expression published in a series sponsored by the as well as other disciplines in the humanities International Comparative Literature and social sciences. To quote Totosy (2003: Association (ICLA). To name a few, these 261): “While this direction does not give volumes included Comparative Literary History priority to the study of literature over other of Latin America (Editor: Djelal Kadir), cultural fields, it does situate comparative Comparative Literary History of the in ‘a global, inclusive, and multi- Diaspora (Editors: Biodun Jeyifo and Henry disciplinary framework and an inter- and supra- Louis Gates, Jr.) and Comparative Literary national’ understanding of the humanities.” In History of Eastern and Central Europe (Editor: the recent years, the understanding inherent in Wlad Godzich). A look into the titles of these the conceptualization of comparative cultural literary history projects would suggest a

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 34 gradual shift from the more traditional under the motto of “Indian Literature is one ‘national’ model of literary history to a though written in many languages,” the project ‘comparative’ one. This indicates an endeavour of formulating individual literary histories of to move between past and present rather than Indian languages recognised by the Sahitya presenting a linear narrative, and travel beyond Akademi was undertaken during the 1960s and the study of mere aesthetic and formal aspects 1970s. Birinchi Kumar was entrusted with of literature thereby taking into account the responsibility of composing the History of important political, historical, geographical, Assamese Literature (1964). In addition, with sociological, anthropological and economic the establishment of the Gauhati University in factors that impinge upon the production of 1948 and the subsequent introduction of literature within a community. graduate and postgraduate courses in On the basis of these observations, we can Assamese necessitated the composition of think about the further possibilities of histories of Assamese literature. rethinking the literary history of the Indian One of those many significant personalities languages. Sisir Kumar Das begins his prologue whose lifelong endeavour shaped the present- to A History of Indian Literature, 1800-1910 day discipline of Assamese literature was (1991: 1) with this statement: ‘It is not possible Professor Satyendranath Sarma. In the course to write a literary history of India without a of our discussion in the preceding paragraphs framework that accommodates not only the of this essay, we have witnessed the diverse literary traditions existing in the country importance of literary history as a subject of but also the complexities of its multilingualism.’ study and the significance of the role Therefore, for a reassessment of the situation envisioned for comparative literature (and by of literary history in India, it is important to extension, comparative cultural studies) vis-a- explore and uncover the various dimensions of vis the study of literary history. Moreover, as an interactions and interpenetrations among the academician, Professor Sarma was actively regional language literature. engaged in the process of composing histories Exploring Possibilities for Comparative Literary of Assamese literature. He wrote a History in Assamese comprehensive history of Assamese literature entitled Asomiya Sahityar Samikshatmak As indicated in the title, the present essay will Itibritta. An initial version of this work had examine the premises that have been appeared as Asomiya Sahityar Itibritta in the considered while conceptualising the idea of year 1959. The work ran through seven editions Assamese literary history in the twentieth before the aforementioned updated version century. As mentioned earlier, there was a long was published in 1981 whereby works and rich medieval tradition of history-writing in composed from the onset of literary activity in Assamese in the form of chronicles called Assamese until 1980. In addition to this work, buranjis and which offered a narrative and Professor Sarma has to his credit four more chronological documentation of multiple books on the history of Assamese literature. aspects concerning Assam, including its history, They are, namely, Asomiya Natya Sahitya geography, religion, literature and society. (1962; A book documenting the history of Since the beginning of the twentieth century, drama in Assamese literature), Asomiya Assamese intellectuals like Debendranath Upanyashar Bhumika (1965; An Introduction to Bezbaroa, Hemchandra , Banikanta Assamese ), Asomiya Kahini Kavyar Kakati, Suryya Kumar Bhuyan, and Dimbeswar Prabah (1970; Trends in Assamese Poetic Neog had been engaged in the task of collecting Fiction) and Asomiya Upanyashar Gatidhara old manuscripts from various sources and (1976; Trends in the Development in Assamese thereby conceptualising a history of Assamese Novel). literature. Following Independence in 1947 and the establishment of Sahitya Akademi in 1954

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 35 Through these books and a few others, b) Second Phase: Literature Professor Sarma made consistent attempts to from the Sankardeva Era, document and record the development of 1491-1700 CE various genres and forms within Assamese c) Third Phase: Literature literary tradition from the beginning until from the Post-Sankardeva around the 1980s. Era, 1700-1830 CE An immediate concern accompanying any study 3. Modern Period: a) First Phase: Age of of literary study, particularly in the Indian Literature, 1826 context, is the issue of periodisation. Studies on (36)-1870 CE Indian history and regional histories, literary or otherwise, have mostly adhered to the b) Second Phase: Age of imported tripartite model of Hemchandra and Ancient/Medieval/Modern. According to Gunabhiram, 1870-1890 CE William A Green (1995: 99-111): c) Third Phase: Romantic [T]he ancient/medieval/modern Age or Age of Bezbaroa, formula currently in use had its origins 1891-1940 CE in Italian humanist thinking, but d) Fourth Phase: acceptance of this tripartite model did Contemporary Period, 1940 not become universal until the CE onwards. nineteenth century. Since then, tripartite periodization has gripped Source: Asomiya Sahityar Samikshatmak Western academe like a straitjacket, Itibritta, p. 11. determining how we organize Interestingly, Professor Sarma has only outlined departments of history, train graduate the possibility of periodising Assamese literary students, form professional societies, history in the manner cited above. In the book, and publish many of our best he divides the subject matter into seventeen professional journals. chapters. In the introductory chapter, he marks Inspired by this model via the colonial the beginning of the Assamese literary tradition influence, Indian historians have stuck more or with the composition of the Charyapadas (p. less to this model, and literary historians too 10). Composed by the Tantric Buddhist have attempted to classify their studies in Siddhacharyas in Assam- at various terms of ancient, medieval and modern periods periods between the ninth and the twelfth of Indian literature. If we consider Professor century, the Charyapadas are recognised as Sarma’s Asomiya Sahityar Samikshatmak poems of a high mystic nature and, most Itibritta, which is often referred to as an importantly, considered the first written authoritative account of Assamese literary specimen of the proto-Assamese literature. history, we find the following pattern of However, Sarma here is adhering to the periodization: conventional elevation of what is written down over the oral and performative forms, as 1. Ancient Period: Literature from the beginning claimed as Pollock, as the distinct feature of a of literary creation, 950- literary culture. Contemporaneous with 1300 CE, Charyapadas, Charyapadasand in the later periods were the Mantra Literature miscellaneous specimens of oral literature in 2. Medieval Period: a) First Phase: Literature the form of folksongs, traditional idioms and from the Pre-Sankardeva folktales. Being oral and subject to mutations Era, 1300-1490 CE and modifications over time, it is difficult to ascertain the exact dates of their composition and nature of circulation. However, as

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 36 components of the Assamese literary culture, the characteristic features of the pre- they deserve to be looked at more critically as Sankardeva era, not necessarily contributing to markers of a developing Assamese sensibility at a latter-day Vaishnavite literary movement. the turn of the first millennium. Further, the assimilation of the distinguishing Coming to the medieval period, we can see that features of an age under the appellation of one the literary activities included therein have person or one religious ideology effectively been categorised around the corpus of marginalises all other existent, not necessarily literature mainly composed by Sankardeva and competing or dissenting, traditions thereby his associates from the closing years of the straitjacketing all of them into a linear and fifteenth century to around 1700 CE. However, hegemonic narrative. In addition, the danger as belonging to pre-Sankardeva era, literary inherent in the act of pulling together all compositions in Assam that were primarily literary practitioners under an umbrella based on the epics and designation is that we create homogeneous date back to the fourteenth narratives around the literary epoch. With century with the ’s translation respect to the English Romantic Movement as of Valmiki’s epic into Assamese. Other poets, an ‘event’ within English literary history, David namely, Hem Saraswati (Prahlada Carit), Perkins (1992: 87-88) says: Harivara Vipra (Ashwamedha Parva, In England between 1798 and 1824, Babruvahanar Juddha, Lava-Kushar Juddha, the term romantic did not designate Tamradhwajjar Juddha), Kaviratna Saraswati a contemporary literary movement (Jayadratha Vadha) and Rudra Kandali (Drona or period. The adjective was widely Parva, Satyaki Prabesh) of the pre-Sankardeva current, and meant wonderful, period composed episodic kavyas in Assamese, exotic, like a medieval romance. which were based on the stories from the After 1813, the influential distinction Ramayana and Mahabharata. All these texts are of the Schlegel brothers between seen as precursors to the radical formulisation classical literature or culture and the of the Assamese Vaishnava literary culture by romantic or modern was known to Sankardeva through ekasarana namdharma. In English critics, but in this distinction Asomiya Kahini Kavyar Prabah (1970), romantic or modern referred to the Professor Sarma has provided in-depth analyses literature of the late Middle Ages and of the aforementioned kavyas under various Renaissance. The poets we now categories, namely, short poetic fictions (laghu- group together [as Romantics] kavya), heroic poems (bir-kavya), didactic or seemed very different. Overall, they revelatory poems (mahatmya kavya), conjugal disliked each other at least as much poems (parinaya- or pranay-kavya), modern as they were friendly and admiring. kavyas, historical kavyas and other To the poets and their miscellaneous poetic fictions. In most literary contemporaries, their relative histories, these kavyas, barring the modern and standing at present would have historical ones, are generally considered as seemed time’s incomprehensible laying the ground for the subsequent flowering caprice. The canon of contemporary of Vaishnavite literary culture. Even Professor poets in 1820 generally began with Sarma has acknowledged the precursory role- Byron, Scott, Campbell, Wordsworth, played by the aforementioned poets, most and Moore. Blake was unknown; importantly, Madhava Kandali vis-a-vis the Shelley and Keats had few readers; literary production of the Sankardeva era. the genius of Coleridge as a poet was However, by adopting this approach, we are not widely recognised. running the risk of overlooking certain other aspects, which are highly relevant towards In the case of Assamese literary histories, developing an independent understanding of including the authoritative ones composed by

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 37 Professor Satyendranath Sarma and Professor professional caste invented them and Maheswar Neog, the existence of period parceled them out. markers like Sankari Yug or Vaishnav Yug may This brings us to the complicated yet equally thus seem a retrospective construction of a significant aspect of literary reception. In any glorious period in the history of Assamese discussion of an author’s place within the literature in terms of the representative literary traditions, we ought not only to features of the dominant ideology understand the extent to which he/she was () of the time and thereby fall short successful in utilising the linguistic and cultural of directing our understanding towards the resources made available to him/her by the diverse literary-cultural formations of the contemporary social and cultural milieu, but stated period. At this point, we may reiterate also record and document the ideologies and the efficacy the comparative cultural studies frameworks within which that particular author towards enabling an inclusive and multi- gets projected in the subsequent periods of the disciplinary framework and understanding of literary tradition. Bezbaroa’s projection of literary activities undertaken not only during Sankardeva as the ‘cultural hero’ of Assamese the medieval period of Assamese history, but nationalism in the early twentieth century is a also in the subsequent periods of its literary case in point. With respect to William history. For instance, the ‘incomprehensible Shakespeare’s continued popularity within the caprice’ mentioned by Perkins above may also English literary tradition, Jonathan Bate (1989: be extended to our theorisation of the modern 1) once remarked, “‘Shakespeare’ is not a man period of Assamese literature as clusters of who lived from 1564 to 1616 but a body of supposedly likeminded literary activities work that is refashioned by each subsequent undertaken under the aegis of missionary age in the image of itself.” In a similar vein, K.N. service or the Jonaki circle of intellectuals. By Phukan (1996: 142) says: “Bezbaroa’s re- equating the Romantic Age roughly with the discovery of Sankaradeva was inspired partly by time span of Lakshminath Bezbaroa’s literary the wish to affirm by celebration the joy of faith career, as done within the periodisation model and partly in order to identify in neo- by Professor Sarma, can we realistically Vaishnavism a foundation of the expansive and visualise the nature of literary activities of the importunate ethos of the Assamese as a period as part of the collective production of distinct nationality in the combined terms of a literary pleasure and interest. To quote Stephen common faith, culture, language and a vaguely Greenblatt (1988: 4): defined and standoffish political temper.” [The] production of literary pleasure Therefore, Bezbaroa’s reception of Sankardeva and interest … is collective since and the entire accompanying Vaishnavite ethos language itself, which is at the heart need to be reanalysed within the context of of literary power, is the supreme Assamese . Similarly, the present- instance of a collective creation. But day response to Bezbaroa and the recent this knowledge has for the most part observance of his 150th birth anniversary remained inert, either cordoned off deserve similar attention with respect to his in prefatory acknowledgments or elevation as the ‘maker of diffused in textual analyses that literature’ or the ‘harbinger of Assamese convey almost nothing of the social modernism’. We ought to understand that such dimension of literature's power. epithets are part of the retrospective ‘imaging’ Instead the work seems to stand only of a great personality from the past whose for the skill and effort of the credentials are subsequently reconstructed vis- individual artist, as if whole cultures a-vis the exigencies of the present time. All possessed their shared emotions, these ‘reimagining’ and ‘reconstruction’ stories, and dreams only because a processes are part of a community’s ‘literary

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 38 experience’. The modern Assamese society reception is one with many complex and would have known about Sankardeva even multidimensional narratives often at without the agency of Bezbaroa. But what loggerheads with each other. The job of the Bezbaroa has done is to reorient and establish literary historian is not to iron out those the Assamese perception of Sankardeva within conflicts and inconsistencies for the sake of a specific ideology. Going back to the medieval providing a plausible narrative of literary age, we can argue similarly about Sankardeva’s events. Hindsight is a positive attribute but it own repositioning of Madhava Kandali’s must not lead to overt rationalisation of Ramayana to fulfil the objectives of the Neo- otherwise contingent and tentative incidents Vaishnavite Movement. Could there have been that might have occurred in the annals of an alternative prospect of knowing Madhava literary history. Kandali, not as a pre-Sankardeva or pre- References Vaishnavite poet who unknowingly/posthumously contributed to an Barua, Birinchi Kumar. 1964. History of epoch-changing movement that happened Assamese Literature. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. many years and decades after his death, but as Baruah, Manjeet. 2012. Frontier Cultures: A a poet translating the Ramayana under the Social History of Assamese Literature. patronage of a tribal king and thereby catering New Delhi: Routledge India. to the untutored and un-proselytised sensibility of a community. This is what Manjeet Baruah Bate, Jonathan. 1989. Shakespearean (2012: 68) said with respect to Madhava Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism, Kandali’s 14th century Sat Kanda Ramayana and 1730-1830. Oxford: Clarendon Press. the Sankari intervention in the text: “Two Blackburn, Stuart and Vasudha Dalmia (ed.). notable features about Kandali’s text are that it 2004. India’s Literary History: Essays on was aimed at/for royal clientele, i.e., ‘tribal’ the Nineteenth Century, New Delhi: monarchy, and that the text has a social base Permanent Black. which is ‘tribal-peasant’ in nature.... The Cornis-Pope, Marcel and John Neubauer (eds). ‘reflection’ of the social base in the text can be 2004. "General Introduction." In History found, for example, in the nature of access of the Literary Cultures of East-Central that common people were shown to have to Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the the royal palace as well as in the nature of 19th and 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: John gender relations that mediated social Benjamins. relations.” Das, Sisir Kumar. 1991. A History of Indian Implications Literature, 1800-1910. Delhi: Sahitya By studying the aforementioned dimensions Akademi. impinging upon the reception and Green, William A. “Periodizing World History”, reconstruction of a literary text within the History and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 2, (May, tradition of its circulation, we are moving closer 1995), pp. 99-111. to the tenets of comparative literary history. Therefore, not only literary, but also broader Greenblatt, Stephen. 1988. Shakespearean perspectives centring on culture and society Negotiations: The Circulation of Social must be brought to contribute to the present- Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley day study of literary history. Assamese literary and Los Angeles: University of California tradition, or any literary tradition for that Press. matter, is not a linear narrative of succeeding Perkins, David. 1992. Is Literary History generations of poets and writers recorded and Possible?. Baltimore, London: Johns documented under a progressive model of Hopkins University Press. impact and response. History of literary

Sarma. Space and Culture, India 2017, 4:3 Page | 39 Phukan, K.N. 1996. ‘Bezbaroa’s Analytical Sarma, Satyendranath. 1976. Asomiya Perspectives in Sankaradeva Studies’. In Upanyashar Gatidhara. : Ranjit Kumar Dev Goswami (ed.), Essays Soumar Prakash. on Sankaradeva, Appendix-A. Guwahati: Sarma, Satyendranath. 1981. Asomiya Sahityar Forum for Sankaradeva Studies and Samikshatmak Itibritta. Guwahati: Lawyer’s Book Stall, pp.138-160. Soumar Prakash. Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Singh, Ahanthem Homen. 2011. ‘Historiography Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, of Literature for Literatures with a Short Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Literary History’, Unpublished MPhil California: University of California Press. Dissertation. Submitted to the Pollock, Sheldon., ed.2003. Literary Cultures in Department of Modern Indian History: Reconstruction from South Asia. Languages and Literary Studies, California: University of California Press. University Of Delhi. Sarma, Satyendranath. 1962. Asomiya Natya Totosy De Zepetnek, Steven. (ed.). 2003. Sahitya. Guwahati: Soumar Prakash Comparative Literature and Sarma, Satyendranath. 1965. Asomiya Comparative Cultural Studies. Indiana: Upanyashar Bhumika. Guwahati: Purdue University Press. Soumar Prakash. Valdes, Mario and Linda Hutcheon. Rethinking Sarma, Satyendranath. 1970. Asomiya Kahini Literary History— Comparatively, ACLS Kavyar Prabah. Guwahati: Bani Prakash. Occasional Paper, No. 27.