Outstanding Personalities of Ráŕh

The greatest proof that someone is a developed person is that person’s refined taste and subtlety based on his or her intelligence and wisdom.

A person comes to be a philosopher when that person studies his or her environment and thereby learns to see his or her inner self.

This very Ráŕh gave human society the first philosopher – Maharshi Kapil.

He wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery of creation and bring the causal factors of the universe within a framework of a theory of numbers.

We in today’s world cannot imagine how much self-confidence and inner daring it took for a person to do this.

Maharshi Kapil was born in a certain place near Jhalda in Ráŕh. He came to the highest philosophical realization at Gangasagar, on the Bay of Bengal, at the furthest extremity of Samatat in Ráŕh.

Later another philosopher, Maharshi Patanjali (who was born in Patun village in Burdwan), endeavoured to establish a heartful union between the earth and human beings, and between human beings and their inner divinity.

The Mahábhárata is an all-encompassing history of the India of the middle period of India

The poet Kashiram Das, from Siddhi village (modern Singi village) of Burdwan in Ráŕh, was of Ráŕhii Kayastha [a caste].

He made that Mahábhárata accessible to Bengalees in lucid language and in a sweet style.

Valmiki’s Rámáyańa is more than an epic, because it abounds in educative features.

Some call it a puráńa [educative fiction], but so much aesthetic sense is hard to find in a puráńa. But that Rámáyańa epic [of Valmiki] is not for the common people.

It was Krittivas Ojha who offered the Rámáyańa to common people in a new way, telling the story in a context of the joys and sorrows, the smiles and tears, of the general populace.

As between Valmiki’s Rámáyańa and Krittivas’s Rámáyańa, Valmiki’s is a poetic story or an epic, while Krittivas’s is a ballad of the life of the common people of Bengal. Krittivas was also a man of Ráŕh.

It was Maladhar Basu of Kulingram of Burdwan District, also a Ráŕhii Kayastha, who brought the Bhágavata Shástra, that unending flow of devotion, through the ears of deep-thinking Bengalees into their very hearts.

The Vaeśńava [Vaishnavite] poets of this very Ráŕh – Lochandas Thakur, Vrindavandas Thakur and Govindadas Thakur – were all sons of the red soil of Ráŕh, most of them Vaidya by caste.

Giving a heartfelt touch, they dyed their deepest thoughts with the mystic ideas of the Bauls(2) of Ráŕh.

Those who drenched Ráŕh in a flow of sweetness in those days and caused people to lose themselves in joy were the original Vaeśńava poets, people of Ráŕh – Dvaja Chandidas (from Nanoor of Birbhum), Dina Chandidas (from Burdwan) and Baru Chandidas (from Chatna of Bankura). The mission to enliven the human mind with a flow of sweetness was first taken up precisely by people from Ráŕh, and they inspired the rest of the world to activate themselves in this same mission.

What flooded, and is still flooding, the minds of the people of Ráŕh is the joy of inspiring others to do noble deeds.

The basic theme of the Mauṋgalkávya(3) involves presenting a description of the joys and sorrows, the smiles and tears, of common people, to those same people through the stories of different known or unknown gods.

All these gods and goddesses have the power to bestow wrath and love and curses and boons and all such things.

If they curse, the merchant ship Saptad́iuṋga sinks, and if they are propitiated, the ship which has sunk may float up with everything in it untouched by water.

Logical argument about this fact [the reality of these things] would be out of place here, because the deities had no social standing though they had gained currency in society [i.e., in the worship of the common people].

The poets of the Mauṋgalkávya helped the deities gain social standing. The poetic stories of the Vaishnavites were almost contemporary with the Mauṋgalkávya era.

The Mauṋgalkávya poets were almost all from Ráŕh. Those who vibrated people’s minds through characterization and a flow of sweetness were Ghanaram Chakravorty (of Burdwan, who wrote the “Dharmamauṋgal”), Kavikankan Mukundaram Chakravorty (of Damunya [village] of Burdwan, who wrote the “Chandimauṋgal”), Raygunakar Bharatchandra Ray (of Penŕo Vasantapur of Bhursoot, who wrote the “Annadamauṋgal”), etc. They were all from Ráŕh.

Jaydev, a poet who appeared at the beginning of the Vaishnavite Age and the author of the famous Giitagovindam, was a son of the red soil of Ráŕh. Sitting on the sandy north bank of the Ajay River in Birbhum District (the ancient kingdom of Gopabhum), a spot filled with the fragrance of nágeshvar [a kind of magnolia], he made the human mind dance to the rhythm of his poetry.

Litterateurs who came much, much later, such as Kathashilpi Sharatchandra,(4) Shailajananda Mukhopadhyaya, Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Premendra Mitra, etc., were people of Ráŕh. Though not born in Ráŕh, Rabindranath [Tagore] and Michael Madhusudan Dutta were Ráŕhii by lineage. Rabindranath also became a man of Ráŕh by choosing Ráŕh in which to work. The contribution of Kazi Nazrul Islam to Bengali literature demands praise. He also emerged from the undulating red soil of western Ráŕh. The wizard of rhythm, poet Satyen Dutta, who trained his flow of rhythm to surge and dance with vitality like a fountain, was a man of Burdwan District – a Ráŕhi Kayastha. Rajshekhar Basu (Parashuram), who left a novel imprint on Bengali literature, was by lineage a Ráŕhii Kayastha and by place of birth also a Ráŕhi (of Brahmanpara of Burdwan District). Dr. Sunitikumar Chattopadhyay, internationally famous and a pioneer of linguistic science, was also a son of Ráŕh.

Since the dawn of civilization, shining celestial bodies have had an inseparable relation with man on earth. They provide human beings with what they need to journey forward. They illuminate people’s external world. They stir people to action in quest of their inner divinity. They transform people’s desire into intense longing through arithmetical rhythm and the expression of mathematical sweetness. So the forward movement of Ráŕh in this sphere at that time never came to a standstill.

Shubhankar Das, the illustrious mathematician, created his Shubhauṋkarii(5) on this very soil of Ráŕh. He was a Ráŕhii Kayastha of Bankura.