Plural Embodiments: The Performative World of Sankari Vaishnavism in Assam

Abstract

The state of Assam is located in the northeastern part of India. From the very beginning of its history, Assam’s literary–cultural evolution has been marked by plural linguistic as well as social and cultural formations. Its plurality presents a composite culture contrary to the common perception that Assamese culture is a monocultural entity considering only its dominant linguistic–literary culture. The Neo-Vaishnavite movement, under the leadership of Sankardeva (1449–1568) and his disciple Madhavdeva (1489–1596), was instrumental in fashioning a distinctive Assamese literary culture by appropriating and radicalizing the multilingual and multicultural elements of the Assamese society in the early modern period. This chapter studies the development of ankiya bhaona as a literary–performative genre. It was also an integral component of the Neo-Vaishnavite repertoire constructed by Sankardeva to facilitate the transmission of his philosophy of ekasarana namadharma that subsequently brought about a marked transformation in all aspects of literary and performance cultures of Assam. The study here particularly draws attention to what Francesca Orsini calls the ‘materiality of the archive’ by means of which the language, script, and format of the ‘text’ in question along with the space/location of its composition/performance and the forces behind its circulation beyond the point of its origin are given due importance within literary–cultural studies. Based on these premises, the present essay attempts to undertake a study of select ankiya bhaonas composed by Sankardeva as part of the larger Neo-Vaishnavite archive in existence for over a period of four hundred years since the end of the sixteenth century. The ‘texts’ of the ankiya bhaonas will be read both in the light of their spatial–temporal location within the ritual/performative culture of sixteenth-century Assam and in the present context of the twenty-first century when they have gradually moved out from the sacred space of the Vaishnavite monastery into the secular space of the metropolis. The paper argues in favour of studying the ankiya bhaonas more as texts-in-performance open to reception from an essentially heterogeneous Assamese audience belonging to various castes and ethnic groups both within and outside the sectarian order of Neo-Vaishnavism. The focus of the study here is to explore the position of these texts-in-performance as active agents in cultural renewal over a long period of time in the Assamese social life.