Hindi Bārahmāsā Tradition

Abstract

Teiji Sakata compares various poems of the bārahmāsā or ‘twelve-month’ form, showing how they form a piece of shared literary heritage between languages that in the modern period have usually been considered to be quite separate. Sakata surveys several poems composed according to the stylistic conventions of this ‘twelve-month’ form, showing that each one has a distinct narrative, religious, and performative context that informed its reception and shaped its meaning. The bārahmāsā contained within Jayasi’s Padmāvat dramatizes the emotional states of characters implicated in a longer narrative. The bārahmāsā attributed to Mirabai expresses longing for the Divine in the form of Krishna. ‘Folk’ versions of the bārahmāsā in Avadhi and Bundeli express more worldly concerns like longing for a distant beloved or the fear of moneylenders.