The Folk-Rhymes of the Bengali Vratas : Complete and Fully Translated and Annotated

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The objective of this work is to prepare a comprehensive compilation of the folk-rhymes, embedded in the vratas only, current in West Bengal and Bangladesh. The Bengali texts (with transliteration), English translations and notes on all the rhymes, entwined with the katha, i.e., the story (summarized), rituals, constituents and objectives reflect the desire and the attainment, customs, beliefs, the status of women (unmarried and married) in the society, the innate nature of women’s feeling for the family, relatives, the neighbours, the community and even the commitment to the protection and conservation of the environment (vide — observance Nos. XIX, XXII, XXVIII, XXXIV, etc.). Records are there of the child marriage, bigamy, relation and status of co-wives in the family, the desire of the supplicator to have a young groom to avoid a polygamous husband (vide — observance No. XXXII). The information, with recorded and chanted texts, it is hoped, will be of some value to cultural anthropology and sociology as well. The Indian Society is somewhat of a puzzle to the foreigners. It is hoped that the analysis, contained in this work, will help an inquisitive reader to get a better insight into the family set-up and social nexus of this part of India and Bangladesh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bhabataran Datta

Dr. Bhabataran Datta is one of the most renowned rhymists in Bengal. He has devoted his life to the collection of materials on Bengali Chada, folk-rhymes, proverbs, Vratas and many other similar sundry subjects which are culturally, socially and anthropologically very much important and which are almost buried in the land of oblivion. Born in 1927, Dr. Datta, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta, served the Department of Comparative Philology (now Linguistics) nearly fifty years. Dr. Datta started his career as a Khaira Research Assistant and ended up as a lecturer in the same Department. Dr. Datta's study was orientated under the guidance of Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sukumar Sen. He has been collecting materials for the untrodden field of folk-rhymes and Vratas for a long time. Dr. Datta was awarded the Prabhabati Debi Memorial Medal in 1999 by the Department of Folk-lore of the Kalyani University, West Bengal, for his contributions to the subject of Folk-lore. Dr. Datta has several publications of his credit. Besides many articles on Bengali Chadas and Vratas, his Bangla Deser Chada (1970), Du Parer Chada (1972), A Linguistic Study of Personal Names and Surnames (1982), Banglar Chada (1998) have earned fame for him. As a senior Research Fellow of the Asiatic Society, Dr. Datta completed the present work, The Folk-rhymes of the Bengali Vratas, which was the outcome of his long study and painstaking research.