‘This Is How We Play Holī’

Abstract

John Cort examines phaguā, a type of song associated with the festival of Holi, stressing the role of allegory in north Indian Digambar Jain songs composed in this form. Phaguā was shared by various traditions of Jainism and Hinduism alike, but each tradition put it to quite a distinct use. For Digambar Jains the antinomian transgressions of the Holi festival presented an ethical problem, so their poets adapted the sensual and sexualized phaguā into a metaphorical description of various aspects of the Self and its struggle for spiritual realization. Digambar poets such as Banarasidas and Dhyanatray ‘tamed’ Holi by turning its poetic and musical tradition into a didactic dissertation on discipline, even while retaining the narrative elements (separated lovers, seasonal fecundity, and so on) that were put to more erotic use in other traditions.