Anthology of Santal Songs, Dance & Music Santal of Orissa (An Old and Rare Book)

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It is a matter of immense gratification to be associated with the planning, editing and supervision of the publication undertaken by Dr. Sunil Kumar Satpathy Anthology of Santhali song, dance & music by Indian Academy of Folk and Tribal Culture.

Traditionally, Indian society has been a totality of the city. village and forest. The civilised' people of the cities, the village folk and the tribals have never been looked at as representatives of three separate levels. But unfortunately, the approach and outlook of contemporary studies treats society as being divided into separate levels rather than looking at each constituent as a part of a living organism. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata bear testimony to the integral or holistic approach towards various constituents of society; the city is incomplete there without the village and the tribal region Similarly, interaction between the written and oral traditions has been so close and constant that it is impossible to say who borrowed from whom or what travelled from where to where. Just one example would illustrate this point. There are several fables in our folk-lore depicting how a woman was transformed into a creeper or a plant. Kalidas the doyen of the written tradition, has used this motif effectively in the Vikramorvasiyam where Urvasi is turned into a creeper because of her entering the Kumara vana. Now, who could say definitely whether Kalidas borrowed it from the oral folklore or vice-versa?

A cursory glance at the thought content of the songs of the Santhals would be enough to convince one about the strong bond of unity of the tribal with the main stream of culture.

When the plan of Dr Sunil Kumar Satpathy to bring out an anthology of 50 Santhal songs and also to release a cassette of 10 songs and instrumental interludes with commentary is executed. there will be a wealth of material available for further studies. Such studies would be fruitful only if they treat life as a whole and not in separate bits of music, dance, folk-lore, crafts etc.

I wish Dr. Sunil Kumar Satpathy Indian Academy of Folk and Tribal Culture speed in their proposed undertakings and congratulate them for their ambitious plans. The members of the L.A.F.T.C. under whose benign guidance the whole programme is being planned and executed deserves the gratitude of all concerned and I humbly join this host of grateful admirers.

Dr. Sunil Kumar Setpathy had already given the initial push to the research activities of Kala Vikash Kendra, which brought out the first volume of Dance and Music of Orissa in a new series in 1936. This was devoted to Santal Music of Mayurbhanj and Balasore districts, detailing the method of collection and representations of the music in a system of notation derived from the clossical traditions.

I was privileged to witness the first presentation of the Santal music recordings and notation at the time of the Silver Jubiles of the Department of Anthropology. Utkal University in December, 1982. An exhibition on Culture of Orissa was organized by the Department on this occasion. The then doyen of Orissan culture and history, late Dr. Hare Krushna Mahatab, had inaugurated the exhibition and appreciated the eventful presentation of the Santal music tradition by Dr. Satpathy. For the first time Dr. Satpathy had graphically compared the Santal hymn 'Bakhen' with the musical pattern of Gayatri recitation of the Vedas and demonstrated their structural (notational) similarities. Other scholars right from the Missionary P. O. Bodding had pointed out the Sanskrit-Santali mutual borrowings in vocabulary. Even the Figvedic settlements had some ritual Interaction with the village cults of 'Nishada' or indigenous people around them. It is, therefore, not improbable that the hymns of the Aryan and the indigenous people of India could have developed some formal resemblance.

The Santal of Mayurbhanj and Balasore are immigrants for not more than two centuries. Most of them have picked up the regional language. Oriya and have played a major role in the agricultural development of the region. The Sadtal are justly famous for their deep sense of beauty, cleanliness and orderliness, as also for their joi de vivre Their dance and music are complex and cultivated, yet vibrant with themes of life, labour and nature. Two groups of Mundari-speaking people, the Santal of North Orissa and the Gadaba of South Orissa, are adept in dancing and music and their comparative study promises a rich harvest.

Much has been said by Prof. (Miss) Prem Lata Sharma. Vice-Chancellor or Indira Kala Sangeet Viswa Vidyalaya, Khairagarh, on the continuties between the tribal, folk and classical musical traditions in India. If this is true of India, this is emphatically true of Orissa, a region inhabited by Dravidian-speaking indigenous people in the south and west, and the Mundari-speaking indigenous people in both south and north Orissa, In all probability, the Aryan language, a precursor of Oriya, became an intensive, but important link language or lingua franca of the region, as much as Assamese became the lingua franca of north eastern India including Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. But it is difficult to visualize a massive influx of outsiders to man different occupations and caste positions in Orissa's regional society. It is obvious that the indigenous population of Orissa has undergone a process of social evolution to produce a cultural mosaic and a social fabric called 'Ori/a society and culture' with sub-regional variations. If we comprehend the process of building up of the regional civilization or Orissa on its soil, indigenous peoples and cultures are to be understood as its building blocks. Under this perspective the amargent regional cultural forms like Odissi dance, Chhau dance, Odissi music, Odissi weaving designs, Odissi painting or Odissi architecture are apt to be synthesized formations, drawing upon the indigenous base, as much as blending the ingredients from classical shastric sources. In this view, today.s so-called typical or unique Santal or Gadaba or Kondh dance or music styles and patterns appear to be the residual ingredients not yet integrated with, and reclassified as belonging to, the regional cultural forms. On the other hand, much of today's contents, styles thames and models of the music, songs and dinces of the so-called tribal peoples in Orissa, as elsewhere in India, may be incorporating, even deliberately, many elements from the regional cultural forms or other apparently alien formations.

In this culture-historical upswing of Orissa's dynamic culture, it is reasonable to expect inflow and outflow of diverse cultural traditions, losing tixed identity in some cases, or blending into the emerging transethnic regional pattern, and yet again soma elements rising as solimated identity-markers of a larger entity. Therefore, the present anthology of Santal songs and music patterns and styles with their notational rendering must reflect and embody these dynamic processes and perspectives. The musicologists and music lovers in India stand to gain a lot from the present valume.