Gopichand: The Tear That Fell on His Back

The scene the ballad exists for.

The instruction

After initiation, a Nath goes out to beg.

And Gopichand's teacher sent him to a particular door.

His own palace.

And specifically to his queen, whom the ballads name Patamde, or Padmini, or Patamdei depending on the region.

What is being asked of both of them

Of him: to stand at the door of the house he owned that morning, in ochre, with a bowl, and ask for food from his wife, and take it, and go.

Of her: to come out, see her husband dressed as a mendicant, put food in his bowl, and let him leave.

And the second is harder and the ballad knows it.

What happens in the ballad

She does not accept it.

The songs give her the longest passages in the whole cycle. She argues, she weeps, she asks what she has done, she asks what will become of her, she asks him to look at her, she holds on to him.

And in some versions she tries to keep him by force, and in others she offers to come with him, and in others she asks him to at least explain.

And he takes the alms and goes.

Why the tradition tells it this way

Because the tradition is not pretending it is easy or that she is wrong.

The ballad could have made her a nagging obstacle, which is what a great deal of renunciant literature does with wives, and this app has said so in the Pattinathar entry.

It does the opposite. Patamde gets the best material in the poem, her objections are given in full, and nobody answers them.

Which means the audience is being made to sit with it.

And this app's position, stated plainly

Renunciation is a real path with an honourable place in the Hindu traditions, the ashrama scheme provides for it, and nothing here is an argument against a person who genuinely leaves.

And leaving dependents is not automatically a devotional act.

Three things have to be said about this particular story.

One. The household was provided for.

A kingdom continued. Gopichand's queens were not left destitute, the state had a treasury and a successor, and the material position of the people he left is not the same as that of a village household abandoned by its earner.

Which softens it and does not remove it, because the ballad is not about money.

Two. The royal households of the period were polygamous.

The ballads give Gopichand a very large number of queens, and the figures given are conventional rather than reliable, and the arrangement is a historical fact about ruling houses that this app reports without endorsing.

And it means the abandonment was collective, which the songs do not dwell on and which is worth noticing: Patamde speaks, and the rest do not get lines.

Three. The ashrama sequence exists for exactly this.

The classical arrangement places sannyasa after the householder stage, when the obligations have been discharged, and the texts discussing it are explicit about the order.

Gopichand skips it, and the story knows he is skipping it, and his mother's argument for why is that the body will not wait.

Which is a real argument and this app is not going to pretend it is not. The ashrama sequence assumes you will live long enough to complete it, and Mainavati's whole case is that this assumption is the one thing nobody is entitled to.

And the practical answer for a reader

If you are responsible for people, the practice available to you is the householder's practice, and every tradition in this series says it is not lesser.

If you are seriously considering leaving a family, that is a conversation to have with the family, out loud, before rather than after, and not a decision to be taken alone on the strength of a ballad about an eleventh century king.

And if somebody, a teacher or an organisation, is encouraging you to cut off your family, that is one of the standard warning signs this series keeps listing, and it is worth saying out loud to somebody outside the situation. Tele MANAS 14416.

The story survives as a song, and this is the part of the entry worth acting on.

Where it is sung

Across a very wide area, in different languages, in different forms:

• Rajasthan, where Nath and Jogi singers perform it, often with the sarangi, and where the Gopichand cycle is one of the standard epics
• Bengal, as Gopichandrer Gan or the Govindachandra Geet, where the manuscript tradition is old and there are recorded versions from the nineteenth century
• Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, in the Nath jogi repertoire
• Assam and the northeast, in related forms

And it is usually paired with Bhartrihari, the uncle, whose story is the next entry in this batch and who renounced Ujjain, so a singer will often perform both.

Who the singers are

And this matters.

In Rajasthan and north India the Gopichand ballads are largely the repertoire of Nath jogi communities: hereditary performers who are also, in many cases, communities of low social standing, who have carried this material for generations and who make a living from it, or used to.

Which is the ordinary situation for India's oral epic traditions: the great narrative material of a region is very often held by the communities with the least standing in it.

And those traditions are in trouble.

The audience for a long sung narrative performed over several nights has largely gone, the performers' children have other work, and the transmission is breaking in the way transmissions break: not through suppression but through the ordinary economics of attention.

What can actually be done about it

Very little by an individual, and a few things that are not nothing:

• Listen to a recording. The archives hold a great deal, and a considerable amount of Rajasthani and Bengali Nath performance material is available online through documentation projects
• If a performance happens near you, go, and pay properly. Oral epic performers are paid badly and the difference an audience makes is direct
• If you have older relatives who know songs, record them. This is the single most useful thing an ordinary person can do about the loss of oral traditions, and it takes a phone

What the ballad does that the summary cannot

It takes hours.

And that is not incidental. The point of a sung epic performed over several nights is that the audience lives inside it: the argument on the roof is not a paragraph, it is an hour; Patamde's refusal at the door is not a scene, it is most of a night.

And by the time the king walks away from his own door with a bowl, the audience has spent long enough with everybody in the room to understand what it costs all of them.

Which is a thing a prose summary cannot do, and this entry is a prose summary, and it is worth saying so.

The kanphata

One practical note, since the initiation is part of the story.

Nath initiates have their ears pierced, through the thick cartilage of the ear, and wear large rings called kundala or mudra. The term kanphata, split ear, comes from it, and it is the visible mark of a full Nath initiate.

And it is a real surgical procedure done by non surgeons.

Cartilage piercing carries a genuine infection risk, considerably higher than lobe piercing, and cartilage infections are difficult to treat and can permanently deform the ear.

Which is not an argument against the practice and it is the tradition's own mark and it is not this app's business to object to it.

It is a reason to insist on sterile equipment, and to watch for infection afterwards, and to see a doctor immediately if the ear becomes hot, swollen, very painful or starts discharging. Cartilage infection is treated with antibiotics and is not treated by waiting.

Who: Gopichand, a king in the Nath stories, usually of Bengal, son of Mainavati and nephew of Bhartrihari. Historically a Gopichandra or Govindachandra of the Chandra dynasty of eastern Bengal in the eleventh century is usually connected with him, plausibly but not conclusively. What survives is the ballad.

The roof: he was being bathed on the palace terrace, in the sun, attended by the household, entirely comfortable at the exact centre of a life that was working, and his mother was watching from the level above and crying, and a tear fell on him. He asked the right questions: had she been insulted, had somebody failed to give her the respect she was owed, did she want something, had he done something, since those are the reasons a queen mother cries and a son assumes he can fix it. It was none of them. She said she was crying because of what she could see: that the body being oiled on that roof was going to die, that the youth in it was already going, that everything arranged around it would not survive it, that she could see it and he could not, and that she could not bear to watch it happen to him.

Why the scene works: renunciation stories usually begin with something going wrong, a death, a loss, an illness or a betrayal. Nothing has gone wrong for Gopichand. He is at the best moment of his life and somebody who loves him is weeping about a thing that has not happened yet and is not avoidable. And she is right.

The connection: he was initiated by Jalandharnath, who had spent twelve years in a pit being fed in secret by this same woman, which is why the two stories are told together. She kept a teacher alive for twelve years without telling anybody why, and this is why: she was keeping him for her son.

The door: after initiation his teacher sent him to beg at his own palace, at the door of his queen, whom the ballads name Patamde or Padmini. She gets the longest passages in the whole cycle: she argues, weeps, asks what she has done and what will become of her, holds on to him, in some versions offers to come, in others asks him to at least explain. Nobody answers her. He takes the alms and goes. The tradition tells it that way because it is not pretending it is easy or that she is wrong, which is the opposite of what much renunciant literature does with wives.

What this app says: renunciation is a real path with an honourable place, and leaving dependents is not automatically a devotional act. Three things about this story: the household was provided for, since a kingdom continued, which softens it without removing it because the ballad is not about money; the royal households of the period were polygamous, so the abandonment was collective and only Patamde gets lines; and the ashrama sequence places sannyasa after the householder stage for exactly this reason, and Gopichand skips it, with his mother's argument being that the body will not wait, which is a real argument, since the ashrama sequence assumes you will live long enough to complete it.

The ballad: sung across Rajasthan with the sarangi, in Bengal as Gopichandrer Gan, and in Punjab, Haryana, western UP and Assam, usually paired with Bhartrihari. It is largely the repertoire of Nath jogi communities, hereditary performers who are often of low social standing, which is the ordinary situation for India's oral epics: the great narrative material of a region is very often held by the communities with the least standing in it. Those traditions are in trouble as the audience for multi night sung narrative goes. Listen to a recording, go and pay properly if a performance happens near you, and record older relatives who know songs.