Why tales about Bonbibi, guardian spirit of Sunderbans, are so important to the region’s literature

The Bonbibī kecchā, today better known as the Bonbibī jahurā nāmā of Mohāmmad Khater, tells the story of the woman who became the “Mother” of all the inhabitants of the Sundarbans, the Āthārobhātī, or Land of the Eighteen Tides. She was given the epithets of bibī, or matron, and pīrānī, female Sufi saint. She had a fraternal twin in her brother Śājan˙gali, himself a pīr of no small stature, but she was always his senior and in command, while he acted as her second. Like many of the other sagas, this narrative is divided into three distinct tales. In the first part, the narrator describes how Khodā summoned the twins Bonbibī and Śājan˙gali at paradise, behest, and sent them down to the devout Berāhim and his second wife, Golbibī. Because of a rash promise by Berāhim to his first wife, Phulbibī, he abandoned his second wife, Golbibī, in the jungle just as she was nearing term. She gave birth alone, save for wild animals. Distraught by the recognition that she would be hard-pressed to care for one child there in the jungle, much less two, she chose to abandon the girl-child, Bonbibī, in order to save her son, a culturally conditioned choice that, given the circumstances, would surprise no one. At the command of Khodā, or God, Bonbibī was then miraculously raised by the deer and the other animals of the jungle, making good on her name as the lady (bibī) of the forests (bon).

After they had matured, the twins somehow managed to reunite and together left to fulfil the mission assigned to them by Khodā. They headed to Madinā where they received advanced training in the ways of the Sufis, after which they received official sanction. They returned to settle in the Sundarbans. The second part of the story describes Bonbibī’s celebrated battle with Daksin. ā Rāy’s mother, Nārāyanī, after which Bonbibī consolidated complete administrative control over the Āt.hārobhātī, assigning each portion to interested parties to ensure cooperation and reduce competition for the limited resources.

The final episode, which covers more than half of the text, tells a story essentially independent of the two first episodes, sufficiently so that Amitav Ghosh made this the subject of his dramatic verse retell- ing in Junglenama. It relates the romance of the attempted sacrifice of the young boy Dukhe by his uncle, Dhonā, a corrupt honey-gathering merchant, concluding with a reconciliation of all the stakeholders in the Sundarbans. Bonbibī flies to his aid, materializing out of thin air any time he calls on her. She visits people in dreams to accomplish her goals, and even shape-shifts into a white fly to deliver succour and advice. At one poignant moment, Bonbibī has to explain to her twin brother the burden of responsibility she bears as “Mother” of all the inhabitants of the Sundarbans, the mantle of baraka, the charismatic power bestowed by Khodā on his most accomplished of Sufi saints. The story closes with Dukhe establishing an ideal estate that is tax-free for the ryots, or peasants, run by officials and officers free of corruption, with justice administered fairly in an environment beneficial to all concerned. Bonbibī’s support, which sustains Dukhe’s rise from a position of pathetic, poverty-ridden vulnerability as a child to that of a righteous ruler establishing an ābādī, the properly settled and functioning ideal Islamic community, is the closest approximation of a Bildungsroman to be found in the various pīr kathās, not only in this anthology but more generally.

The Bonbibī jahurā nāmā verges on, but does not succumb to, a didacticism unlike other stories in this anthology. Its message relates how people must suppress their personal desires to work together to survive, and be respectful of one another, which in turn results in a better quality of life for all, but in it we begin to see hints of the politi- cizing of religious identities that became the norm in Bengal by the early twentieth century. While the text suggests a clear hierarchy of religious belief and practice, with musalmāni forms proving superior to hinduyāni, people who revere Bonbibī in their daily lives in the Sundarbans do not seem to accept those neat divisions, preferring more pragmatic inclusiveness as a response to the vagaries of their existence. Following the lead of Bonbibī, high-minded personal conduct generates prosperity that is ultimately guaranteed only by judicious governance. Bonbibī alone is responsible for showing the way and, regardless of other allegiances, her devotees abound throughout the southern reaches of the Bangla-speaking world.

The Bengali scholar Sarat Chandra Mitra reports that the earliest attested text, composed by Bayanuddīn, was published in 1877. Copies of it remain elusive, but a revised edition appeared in 1920.4 I have been unable to lay eyes, however, on either edition. The version translated here was composed by Mohāmmad Khater and is easily the most popular version of the story, which has circulated in print since its composition in the late 1870s.

The popular text of Mohāmmad Khater (also spelled Khāter) was first printed in 1880, only three years after Bayanuddīn’s work. In the opening passage, he identifies his composition as the Bonbibī kecchā, or tale of Bonbibī. The title by which everyone knows the text today, the Bonbibī jahurā nāmā, or “The Book Spreading the Glory of Bonbibī,” was apparently conferred on it later. That is the title of the earliest version I have seen, an edition dated 1918, on which this trans- lation is based. For the second half of the twentieth century, a handset, poorly reproduced edition of the text has seen multiple reprints, attesting to its popularity. That edition served as the basis for a digitally printed version with clean laser fonts, which I surmise was copied from its predecessor, based on the replication of identical typographical errors from the handset versions and the reproduction of the earlier title page with dates changed. But that digitally generated edition has altered the earlier text, introduced lexical modifications, and generated a small number of grammatical mistakes not previously found. In every instance I could find, the hand-set version was heavily smudged, in some cases to the point of being illegible, so alterations seem to be as much from the mechanics of reproduction as deliberate meddling. Some of those mistakes in the laser-typeset edition have actually changed the tenor of the text in a few passages, whether intentionally or not. It also modernizes some spellings and occasionally replaces a word with what the compositors apparently considered to be a more current contemporary equivalent, though on occasion one with a more politically charged valence. In an effort to capture the tenor of the text closer to Khater’s original, I have chosen the 1918 version as my source text, but I have triangulated some readings with the handset version of the 1961 and sought clarifications from the laser-printed copy dated 1987.7

Without exception, they petitioned me like this: “Brother, write the story, the kecchā, of Bonbibī and please get it published in print. When you do this, your puthi text will easily find a place in every home throughout the land.”

The author confirms the impulse to go straight to print again in the closing lines, where he begs the reader’s indulgence in the event of an omission or mistake that may deviate from the story as it had been told to him. Toward the end of the text, he complains that he had not enjoyed particularly good health during the writing, but composed it in response to the demands of an eager public.

In another twist in changing attitudes to texts and their circulation, prior to the nineteenth century and the advent of print, newer, cleaner hand-written copies of manuscripts were often preferred to older, often worn texts. It was not unusual for an older manuscript to be ceremonially submerged in the river upon completion of a copy. But several colleagues in Kolkata and Dhaka have indicated in personal conversation that since the advent of print (and, presumably in this case, in the absence of any hand-written manuscript), the older printed editions of Khater’s Bonbibī story are now especially treasured by her devotees in the Sundarbans and are considered to have greater sanctity than the later reprints. In a tradition probably not much more than a century and a half old, the earlier print editions have become physical artefacts that carry a greater weight of authenticity, a near-iconic value (though the content remains the same), which transports their owners and readers closer to the source of inspiration, hence closer to Bonbibī. Older may be better to those devotees in this vibrant living tradition, but regardless of the source, each telling of Bonbibī’s story helps to spread her message, so irrespective of a scholar’s meticulous concern for best editions, textual emendations, and lexical irregularities, for those who earnestly believe in Bonbibī’s motherly duty to the inhabitants of the Āt.hārobhāt.ī, any version of her tale is still her sacred story.

Excerpted with permission from Needle at The Bottom of The Sea: Classic Bengali Tales From the Sundarbans, Tony K Stewart, Speaking Tiger Books.