Premanand Bhatt: The Man With the Copper Pot

This is his actual achievement and it is easy to describe and hard to overstate.

He made them Gujarati.

Not translated. Relocated.

Nala and Damayanti

In the Mahabharata they are Sanskrit royalty. A king and a princess, in a world of svayamvaras, dice, gods and forests, described in a register that keeps them at a distance.

In Premanand's Nalakhyan they are a Gujarati couple.

They talk like people in Vadodara. The wedding has the customs a seventeenth century Gujarati audience recognised, performed in the order they were performed in that town. Damayanti's mother behaves like somebody's mother. The domestic detail, the food, the teasing, the in laws, the anxieties about money, the way a wife speaks to a husband who has ruined them, are all local and contemporary and observed.

And the effect is that a listener standing in a square is not hearing about kings. They are hearing about a marriage that has gone wrong in a way they recognise, happening to people who talk like their neighbours.

When Nala abandons Damayanti in the forest, which is the hardest passage in the story, the audience is not watching a myth. They are watching a man walk out on his wife.

The technique, listed

Because it is a method and it is portable.

One. Local speech. Nobody in a Premanand akhyana speaks in a register the audience does not use.

Two. Household detail. What was cooked, what was worn, who was annoyed about the seating, what the neighbours said. The puranic sources have none of this and it is what makes the story stick.

Three. Comedy. He is very funny, particularly about relatives, weddings, and the gap between what people say and what they mean.

Four. Women who talk. His female characters argue, complain, make decisions and are given the best lines, and Damayanti in particular is not a passive figure to whom things happen.

Five. Emotional pacing across nights. He knew he had fourteen evenings and he built to them. The heaviest material is placed where an audience that has been coming for a week will take it.

Mamerun and Hundi

Two of his akhyanas are about Narsinh Mehta, the fifteenth century Gujarati poet who is the beginning of this literature.

Mamerun is the story of the mameru, the gifts a mother's family brings for a daughter's first childbirth. Narsinh is destitute. He cannot provide. And the whole akhyana is about a poor father's humiliation in front of his daughter's in laws, which is an entirely recognisable social agony in Gujarat then and now, until it is resolved.

Hundi is the story of the promissory note Narsinh writes on a god who does not have a bank.

And the reason these matter is that most Gujaratis know the Narsinh Mehta stories in Premanand's version rather than in any earlier one.

Which is what a great performer does to a tradition. He becomes the version.

What was lost

The performance.

The manbhatt tradition is now close to extinct. A handful of practitioners keep it, it is occasionally staged as heritage, and it is not what it was: a working profession with an audience that came every night.

And what killed it is not neglect. It is print, and then radio, and then everything after.

Which is the trade this series keeps recording. Printing preserved the text and ended the practice, and a form that exists only in the moment of performance cannot be saved by being written down, because the writing is not the thing.

You can read Nalakhyan. You cannot hear Premanand do it, and the difference is most of it.

And now the part that makes this entry worth reading for somebody with no interest in Gujarati literature.

A large body of work attributed to Premanand is fake, and it was manufactured about two hundred years after he died.

What happened

In the later nineteenth century, a set of plays began to appear in Gujarat, attributed to Premanand.

Sanskrit style dramas in Gujarati, previously unknown, published from manuscripts that nobody had seen before, and they were received with enthusiasm.

Because Gujarat wanted them.

Why they were wanted

This is the important part and it is the general lesson.

The later nineteenth century in India was a period of vernacular literary nationalism. Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati intellectuals, educated in English, were arguing that their languages had literatures equal to anything in Europe.

And drama was the gap.

Gujarati had lyric, it had narrative, it had satire, and it did not have a classical dramatic tradition. Bengal was producing a modern theatre. Sanskrit had Kalidasa. English had Shakespeare.

And then, conveniently, Premanand's lost plays turned up.

How they were caught

By ordinary scholarly method, and the tests are worth knowing because they apply to anything.

One. The language is wrong.

The Gujarati in the plays contains vocabulary, constructions and idioms that did not exist in the seventeenth century. Language changes at a measurable rate and a forger writing in his own idiom cannot fully suppress it.

Two. The stage conventions are wrong.

The plays assume a theatre that did not exist in Premanand's Gujarat, with staging, act structure and dramatic apparatus belonging to the nineteenth century and to the influence of English and Parsi theatre.

Three. There is no manuscript tradition.

Premanand's genuine akhyanas exist in many copies, in many hands, in many places, over generations, with the ordinary variations of a transmitted text. The plays appeared suddenly, in a small number of copies, in one circle, with no earlier trace at all.

Four. Nobody mentioned them.

A significant body of dramatic work by the most famous performer in Gujarat does not go unmentioned for two centuries. No contemporary refers to them, no later poet responds to them, and no tradition of performing them exists.

Five. The circle.

The works came from a small number of connected people, and Chhaganlal Vidyaram Raval is the name most associated with their production, with the surrounding controversy running through Gujarati literary scholarship for decades before the consensus settled.

And a set of biographical stories came with them, including the widely repeated tale of a vow Premanand took about his turban and the status of Gujarati, which belongs to the same manufactured layer and is not attested from his own period.

Why this belongs on a devotional site

Because the same thing happens to religious texts constantly, and the tests are the same tests.

The Achyutananda entry in an earlier batch describes exactly this pattern with the Malika prophecies: manuscripts that keep being newly found, containing material relevant to whatever is currently wanted, with no critical edition and no earlier trace.

And the questions to ask are identical.

One. Is there a manuscript tradition, or did this appear recently?

Two. Does the language belong to the period claimed?

Three. Did anybody in that period mention it?

Four. Who wanted this to exist, and what did they get when it did?

That last one is the sharpest. The Premanand plays existed because Gujarat wanted a classical dramatist, and the Malikas keep appearing because somebody wants a prophecy, and a newly discovered text that gives its discoverers exactly what they were looking for deserves the most scepticism, not the least.

And what it does not do

It does not damage Premanand.

The akhyanas are genuine, they are in the manuscript record, they were performed within living memory of his own century, and they are extraordinary.

A man does not become less of a poet because somebody later wanted him to be a different kind of poet as well.

Where to go

• Vadodara, his city
• Junagadh, for Narsinh Mehta, whose stories he made canonical
• A manbhatt performance if you can find one, which is difficult and worth the effort, and Gujarati academies and folk arts bodies occasionally stage them

What to read

• Nalakhyan, in Gujarati or in translation, and read it aloud, because it was not written to be read silently
• Sudama Charit and Mamerun, which are shorter

A daily practice from this entry

• Shri Krishna Sharanam Mama, or any name your household uses
• Read something aloud to somebody, which is the entire technology of the akhyana and needs no pot
• And the manuscript question, for anything anybody hands you: where was this before last year

Who: Premanand Bhatt, roughly 1649 to 1714, of Vadodara, the master of the Gujarati akhyana. He was a manbhatt, a professional narrator, and the akhyana was a live serial performance rather than a book, which is the fact everything else depends on and the one most easily lost when the work is read as literature on a page.

How it worked: he sat in front of an audience with an upturned copper pot, the mando, worn or held and struck with the fingers and rings, which is a household object turned into a drum and is the whole aesthetic of the form, since nothing is needed except a story, a voice and a pot. He told a story over many nights, a week or a fortnight or longer, an episode a night, in kadavas, each closing with a valan or turn that signals the section has ended, which is exactly how a television serial works and for the same reason: both are solving the problem of keeping an audience coming back tomorrow. The audience was a town square, a courtyard or a temple forecourt, mixed and free, which is the socially significant fact, since the material was puranic and in Sanskrit was available to very few, while in Gujarati in a square over fourteen consecutive nights it was available to everybody who could stand there. That is the same move this series recorded with Jagannath Das in Odisha, with the bhaona in Assam and with Chinmayananda's Jnana Yajnas.

The repertoire: Nalakhyan on Nala and Damayanti, his masterpiece; Sudama Charit; Okhaharan; Mamerun and Hundi, both on Narsinh Mehta; Abhimanyu Akhyan; Chandrahasakhyan; Ranyagno; and Dashamskandh on the tenth book of the Bhagavata.

What he did to the stories: he made them Gujarati, not translated but relocated. In the Mahabharata, Nala and Damayanti are Sanskrit royalty in a register that keeps them at a distance; in Premanand they are a Gujarati couple who talk like people in Vadodara, with the wedding customs a seventeenth century audience recognised, a mother who behaves like somebody's mother, and domestic detail, food, teasing, in laws and money anxieties that are local and observed. The effect is that a listener in a square is not hearing about kings but about a marriage that has gone wrong in a way they recognise. His technique was local speech, household detail, comedy particularly about relatives and weddings, women who argue and are given the best lines, and emotional pacing built across fourteen evenings. Two of his akhyanas are on Narsinh Mehta, and most Gujaratis know those stories in Premanand's version rather than any earlier one, which is what a great performer does to a tradition: he becomes the version.

What was lost: the performance. The manbhatt tradition is close to extinct, kept by a handful and occasionally staged as heritage. What killed it was not neglect but print, then radio, then everything after, which is the trade this series keeps recording: printing preserved the text and ended the practice, and a form that exists only in the moment of performance cannot be saved by being written down.

The forgeries: a large body of work attributed to Premanand is fake and was manufactured about two hundred years after he died. In the later nineteenth century a set of Sanskrit style dramas in Gujarati began to appear, previously unknown, from manuscripts nobody had seen, and they were received with enthusiasm because Gujarat wanted them: the period was one of vernacular literary nationalism, Gujarati had lyric, narrative and satire but no classical dramatic tradition, Bengal was producing a modern theatre, Sanskrit had Kalidasa and English had Shakespeare, and then conveniently Premanand's lost plays turned up. They were caught by ordinary scholarly method: the language contains vocabulary and constructions that did not exist in the seventeenth century; the stage conventions assume a theatre that did not exist in Premanand's Gujarat and belong to nineteenth century English and Parsi influence; there is no manuscript tradition, since the genuine akhyanas exist in many copies in many hands over generations while the plays appeared suddenly in a small number of copies in one circle; nobody in his period or after mentions them; and the works came from a small number of connected people, with Chhaganlal Vidyaram Raval the name most associated with their production. A set of biographical stories came with them, including the widely repeated tale of a vow about his turban and the status of Gujarati, which belongs to the same manufactured layer.

Why this belongs on a devotional site: the same thing happens to religious texts constantly and the tests are the same. Is there a manuscript tradition or did this appear recently. Does the language belong to the period claimed. Did anybody in that period mention it. And who wanted this to exist and what did they get when it did, which is the sharpest: a newly discovered text that gives its discoverers exactly what they were looking for deserves the most scepticism, not the least. None of it damages Premanand, since the akhyanas are genuine, are in the manuscript record and are extraordinary, and a man does not become less of a poet because somebody later wanted him to be a different kind of poet as well.