16. Patterns of Composition in the Seventeenth-Century Bengali Literature of Arakan

Thibaut d’Hubert

vādya kavilāsa ādi yantra sulalita |
keha keha susvare gāhe gīta ||1

Alaol, Sikāndarnāmā (1671)

ānchi ū naw ast u ham kuhan ast
sukhan ast u darīn sukhan sukhan ast2

Nizami Ganjavi, Haft paikār (1197)

The divorce between music and poetry is a fairly recent phenomenon and naturally not recognised by all, but it is usually widely accepted that poems are first and foremost texts that demand to be understood with the tools of textual analysis. In the case of premodern Bengali literature, however, neglecting the fact that texts were performed leads to a misunderstanding, not only of the way poems were composed, but also of the dynamics at work in the formation of the literary tradition as a whole. The texts I am dealing with in this article are panchalis, a type of Bengali narrative poem. Though the exact origin of the term remains unknown, panchali refers more to a kind of public performance than to a literary form or a genre.3 In this paper I propose to study the various levels of performance that shaped the compositional pattern of the Bengali panchali author Alaol.

Alaol lived in the kingdom of Arakan, in modern Myanmar, in the seventeenth century. His œuvre is constituted of translations from Awadhi (an eastern form of Hindavi) and Persian narrative poems and treatises. Short poems called padas have also been collected from several anthologies compiled in Chittagong in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.4 Even though Alaol had a deep knowledge of Hindavi, Sanskrit, and Persian literary cultures, his poems follow the rules of traditional Bengali literature, and all of his translations are panchalis. Born in what is modern central Bangladesh, he was brought by Portuguese corsairs to Mrauk-U, the capital of the kingdom of Arakan. He became a royal slave, enrolled in the cavalry, and was finally noticed by Muslim dignitaries for his intellectual skills. He then became a central figure of the artistic milieu of Mrauk-U and worked under the patronage of various dignitaries between 1651 and 1671.5

Major changes in the context of the composition and the performance of Bengali poetry occurred in the gatherings (Ben. sabhā) attended by Alaol in Mrauk-U. These took place in the houses of the Muslim dignitaries of the capital and, as the poet describes them in his prologues, were informal gatherings in which the etiquette of the court was partly reproduced. The hierarchy was less pyramidal than in royal courts and beside the patron who hosted the assembly, other individuals of similar ranks were present, such as other Muslim dignitaries or religious men. After Bengali, the regional culture language, Persian seems to have been the second language of communication.

Alaol’s texts contain several references to the audience that is strikingly present as compared to previous and contemporary panchalis. In the traditional panchali, the audience does not play an active part in the performance, whereas in Alaol’s poems it is clearly considered as a component of its complete realisation. The central feature of this common endeavor is speech (vachana) and the unfolding of its meaning. Thus the panchali provides more than a narrative: it conveys a speech that calls for “another speech”. Resettled in the context of the Indo-Persian assembly or majlis, the Bengali poetical speech (Pers. sukhan) became a subject of speculation and discussion (suhbat).

The topic of this article can be summarised in a comment pronounced by Alaol, before performing a scholarly digression on sangita (lyrical arts)6 found in his translation of Padmāvat (1540), the Avadhi poem of Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Worried about his reputation, Alaol declared:

alapa nā kahõ yabe / baliba paṇḍita sabe / ei kavi saṅgīta nā jāne ||

If I don’t give a short explanation [of this passage], scholars will say: “This poet doesn’t know anything about lyrical arts!”

In this verse, the poet uses some key terms—kavi (poet), pandita (scholar), and sangita (saṅgīta, lyrical arts)—that will set the tone for our reflection on poetry and public performance in Alaol’s texts. We shall see that, through the explicit use of the Sanskrit theoretical knowledge expounded in the sangitashastras (saṅgītaśāstras, treatises of lyrical arts), he provided his readers/auditors with analytical tools that allowed them to think of the compositional pattern of the existing regional literary tradition that lacked proper theoretical literature.7 The literary self-awareness displayed by Alaol is also accompanied by the broadening of the traditional paradigm of performance towards more textuality, a central place given to “speech” (vacana), and the metadiscourse it may induce.

Performance and Authorship
in Premodern Bengali Literature

Premodern Bengali literature was meant to be publicly performed, and performance shaped the very idea of literary composition and authorship. The Caryāgītis (c. eleventh century), allegedly the oldest texts of Bengali literature, were poems meant to be meditated and commented upon. The potential for speculation in the charyas is attested by the very sophisticated Sanskrit commentaries that were written on them. But they were also sung, and legends about their authors often provide a setting in which the poems have been originally composed.8 The manuscripts of the Caryāgītis contain indications about the ragas or musical modes and talas or rhythms used for musical performance. Similarly, the Śrīkr̥ṣṇakīrtana (c. fourteenth century CE) which, after the Caryāgītis, is considered the oldest Bengali text, was recited with specific ragas and talas and contains lots of theatrical features.9 We could go on like this up to the nineteenth century and even further, because modern palagan singers and patuyas are perpetuating this tradition and provide living examples of how premodern literature could have been performed.10

The Bengali literature that was produced after the fourteenth century may be formally divided into short and long versified texts.11 On the one hand, we find the padas—short poems composed on a variety of metres—that include the two foundational corpora just mentioned, and on the other hand there is the voluminous amount of versified narrative texts called panchalis.12 The lyrical and even dramatic dimensions of short poems or padas are systematically referred to by specialists of this literature, but the long narrative poems we are concerned with here are usually not thought about in their performance context by scholars. Yet it is vital to think about narrative texts in performance if we want to comprehend the way they have been composed and transmitted. Narrative texts were, and still are in some places in West Bengal and Bangladesh, recited by professionals called kathak, pathak, or gayen. Each term stresses one aspect of their style of recitation: the two first terms refer to a musically tuned reading-cum-commentary, and the second more specifically to singing.

In many cases the poet is presented as a kind of original performer rather than an “author”.13 For instance, a common motif in mangalkavyas regarding the creation of the book is that of the “inspired poet”.14 One day the poet, usually a Brahmin, while attending to his everyday affairs, or in a dream, sees the Goddess appear before him. She then gives the order to compose a poem whose text she will fully provide, or for which she will bestow the boon of eloquence on the poet who presents himself as ignorant and unfit to fulfill such a task.15 This primeval inspiration originating from the Goddess herself is afterward reinitiated through the performance by the ritual gesture of the gayen before he starts the recitation of the text. Before the performance begins the gayen grasps a chamar (flywhisk), and it is from this moment only that he remembers what he will have to recite during the next several hours.16 In this creative process absolutely no place is left for the poet’s role as a composer. He is first and foremost presented as a devotee, and it is through an act of devotion, represented by the holding of the chamar, that the poem will come into existence. In terms of representation of the literary activity, it is not only that performance is the main way to share the content of a written text; rather it means that no text is ever able to come into existence without a setting of ritual performance.

The Bengali poetic tradition does not openly stress the poet’s skills as a composer. But the performer who recites the poem is expected to be able to provide commentary and improvise new elements, either in verse or prose, in order to highlight a special point regarding the characters’ behaviour, to add humorous elements in due time, or to beautify a specific episode.17 Unfortunately, this part of the performance, which is known from the observation of modern palagan representations, was not written down. As a consequence the only reminders we have of this metatextual practice appear here and there through the numerous variant readings found in the manuscripts of very popular texts. The best example in this regard may be Krittibas’s Rāmāyaṇa (c. fifteenth century) that has proved to be an unsolvable philological puzzle due to its countless variant readings and fragmented transmission.18

Bengali literary texts were part of a larger performing tradition that included music, dance, and dramatic improvisation. The production and transmission patterns of literary texts were thus totally dependent on the way they would be performed. This close connection between performance and literary composition appears clearly in the first adaptation into Bengali of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata by “Kavindra” Parameshwar Dasa. Kavindra’s patron, Paragal Khan, Sultan Husain Shah’s (1493-1519) officer in charge of the Chittagong area, made the following request regarding the composition of the text:

ehi saba kathā kaha saṃkṣepa kariyā | dineka śunite pāri pāñcāli baliyā ||

Summarise this story and tell it, so that I can listen to this panchali in a few days.19

The point here was not only to shift from the Sanskrit to the Bengali literary tradition but rather to provide Paragal and his courtiers with a more performable version of the story, which in its original form and in this court milieu, was hardly fit to be publicly performed.20 What should also be kept in mind is that, unlike Sanskrit texts, Bengali panchalis were not at first linguistically sophisticated. Unlike Sanskrit kavyas, they were not “ornate” (alamkrita), and no commentary was needed to unfold the meaning of the verses and release the rasa. The aesthetic pleasure derived rather from the performance as a whole. Panchalis were heavily narrative, and it was the theatrical setting that provided the ornamentation.21 That is why, textually speaking—and, as I suggested before, through the relative absence of the figure of the author as a craftsman of speech—the story was central, not the word. We will see that things seem to be different in the case of Alaol.

Performance in Alaol’s Texts

What material do we have to study performance in Alaol’s poetry? To answer this question we need to make a distinction between three kinds of sources that the Bengali poet’s texts provide: the description of the sabha (assembly), paratextual indications, and the mise en abyme, inside the story narrated in the poem, in which performance is present. Mise en abyme indicates a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself. Often applied to paintings that contain a smaller image of themselves, I use it to denote the description of performance inside the text (see also Miner, Orsini, and Busch in this volume).

Descriptions of the Sabha

Alaol included many contextual features in his poems, such as descriptions of the assemblies he attended, or his patrons’ interventions during the reading of his poem. The first we notice is that poetry is presented as one pleasurable activity among others in the society parties organised by the Muslim notables of Mrauk-U. According to Alaol’s account, sabhas were held at night and included a dinner, games, dances, music, and discussions on various topics related to some books that had been previously read aloud to the audience.22 The poet seems to have performed his own poem, and there is no mention of professional storytellers in his prologue. He does mention dancers and musicians, though not in relation with the poem he is about to declaim. Alaol does not give any details regarding the precise setting of the sabha, such as the way people were seated, the presence or not of a stage,23 etc.

Paratextual Elements

The paratextual elements found in the manuscripts concerning the musical modes (ragas) do not leave any doubt regarding the musical aspects of the recitation. Another clue furnished by the panchali tradition itself is the bhanita, that is the poet’s signature line marking the end of a narrative section or a song. These can contain a short praise of the patron and the name of the poet, and sometimes they are used to introduce questions and comments made by the poet or even the patron about the episode that was just narrated or on some point of vocabulary.24 The bhanitas hint at the performed dimension of Alaol’s texts because they address the audience directly and help structure the narrative sequences of the poem.25 They provide a lively tune to the recitation, and it is not rare to find copyists who, carried away by the flow of the poem, added their own bhanitas where they deemed it appropriate.26

Performance also surfaces in Alaol’s texts in the mise en abyme that mirrors the actual recitation of his own poems in the sabha. As compared to his models, Alaol lays special emphasis on the episodes that involve some kind of performance. This is often an opportunity for Alaol to provide his knowledgeable audience—the gunigana—with very precise technical information (see also Miner in this volume).27

Among the topics Alaol discusses, sangita and its subsidiary sciences are particularly important to define the poet’s view of artistic composition. Moreover, fragments of what seems to have been a treatise on music composed by Alaol are found in later works called Rāgamālās and Tālanāmās.28 The fragments of Alaol’s Rāgatālanāmā partly deal with the myth of the creation of ragas, talas, and musical instruments.29 The work appears to be framed around the story found in the Nāṭyaśāstra about the origin of Drama, combined with elements of Puranic stories such as the birth of the Ganga (the river Ganges), but it does not match exactly with any version known to me.30 Alaol also provides lists of the kalas, ragas, raginis, talas, and talinis, the way they may be combined as well as the directions, colours, and, for the four kalas, the elements—fire, earth, wind, and water—they are associated with.31

In the bhanitas of this technical text the Bengali poet often addresses the assembly in different ways from his narrative poems and he never refers to the name of any of his patrons.32 This suggests that the fragments were parts of the teaching he delivered to the children of the local elite.33 Alaol clearly states that he is using the shastras in order to explain the science of sangita when he states:

avagata pāiyā śāstra-pustaketa |
bhāṅgiyā kahiba saba bujhaha paṇḍita ||

I learned in the books of the treatises
And I will explain everything, so that you, knowledgeable audience, may understand.

raciluma ei kathā ādye lekhā pāi |
I composed this discourse after obtaining [the knowledge] from the scriptures.

āgama vicāri kahe hīna Alaola ||
The humble Alaol speaks after reflecting upon the treatises.34

Alaol, like other Bengali poet-translators, used the verb bhāṅgiyā kah-, which literally means “saying after breaking”, to talk about the process of translation. Without going into the details of Alaol’s approach regarding translation, let us just notice the didacticism of the poet, who presents himself as an intermediary between his source and the audience. We shall see that he was not only an interpreter of texts, but also of the performance in its various artistic dimensions. In this case it seems that his source-texts were Sanskrit sangitashastras.35 The didactic dimension of these fragments further appears in Alaol’s answer to the audience:

hīna Alaole kahe śuna guṇigaṇa |
uttarera padduttara śunaha ekhana ||36

The humble Alaol says: “Listen connoisseurs!
Listen to the answer I now give to [your] question”.

Shastras and the Panchali Tradition

We saw that performance is present in Alaol’s texts through conventions connected to the panchali tradition. Yet by writing a treatise he also expressed a more specific interest in sangita (lyrical arts). What did the term sangita mean for the poet and his milieu? We will see that this technical term borrowed from Sanskrit treatises provides the relevant epistemological tools to define Alaol’s paradigm of performance. Shubhankara, the author of the Saṅgītadāmodara, one of the explicit sources of Alaol on lyrical arts, gives the following definition:

tālavādyānugaṃ gītaṃ naṭībhir yat tu gīyate |
nr̥tyasyānugataṃ raṅge tat saṅgītakam ucyate ||37

The song performed by female artists accompanied by rhythmical instruments38
and dance is called sangita.

The term sangita provides the widest artistic paradigm—it contains the arts of instrumental music (tala-vadya), dance (nritya), and gita. Gita is further divided into two elements, dhatu and matu (music and text), providing another useful theoretical tool.39 Dhatu and matu also appear in another important definition, that of the vaggeyakara (the author and composer).40 It is worth pointing out that by using shastric technical terms to talk about performance, Alaol did not demarcate a “high” tradition separate from that of the regional panchali but rather applied the science taught in Sanskrit shastras to the regional artistic domain.41 We therefore witness the rapprochement of the regional Bengali medium with the Sanskrit epistemological framework in the context of performance. This move becomes clear when Alaol states it himself in the digressions that follow some of the performance scenes depicted in his poems. Damodara in his Saṅgītadarpaṇa (Bnf Sanscrit 771, f. 32a) provides the following definition of the author and composer:

vāgvarṇasamudayas tu mātur ity u[cya]te budhaiḥ |
geyaṃ dhātur dvayoḥ kartā prokto vāggeyakārakaḥ ||42

The combination of the letters of words is called matu by wise men, what ought to be sung is dhatu, the one who composes both is called “author and composer”.

According to this definition, Alaol was a panchali vaggeyakar, a panchali author and composer. Even if he used the regional medium for his compositions, he declared himself a specialist of lyrical arts as taught in contemporary Sanskrit treatises, and he analyzed his own activity of Bengali poet with the tools provided by the Sanskrit tradition. Hence it is legitimate in his case to study his poems using the terminology of the Sanskrit treatises he was familiar with.

I will now try to demonstrate that the above-mentioned performance paradigm obtained from the definition of sangita and gita can help us define the three kinds of poetical performance present in Alaol’s texts. The first kind of performance combines instrumental music, dance, and singing, the second one is the musically tuned declamation of a narrative part, and the third kind of performance is the commentary on a text that has been previously read to the audience in the sabha.43 These three categories are refered to by Alaol himself when he declares that he taught patha (reading), gita, and sangita to the children of the nobles of Mrauk-U.44 According to this paradigm, the musical aspect (dhatu) dominates in the text or in the various episodes contained in a panchali when, for example, a gita is inserted inside a narrative section, while the textual element (matu) will be dominant in highly ornate sections, such as the nakha-sikha, and even more in scholarly digressions. The bulk of the narrative parts constitute the middle of this paradigm in which the text is central but requires a musical tune when performed. Here is a pattern using this framework and the technical terms used by Alaol himself to designate the lyrical, narrative, and speculative dimensions of his literary compositions:

Table 16.1: The performance paradigm of Alaol’s poems

The terms used in this Table are found in Alaol’s technical vocabulary. Similarly to any other panchali, it includes both the sangita, involving text, music, and dance, and the narrative part characterised by a musically tuned declamation. Alaol adds the scholarly digressions and other sophisticated parts in which he stresses eloquence and technical aspects of “speech”. Bakhana means “commentary”, and the three compounds indicated underneath are the three main themes of the refined discourse as conceived by Alaol—on the savour of poetry, the essential principals, and mundane ethic.

Mise en Abyme of Sangita:
Alaol as a Gandharp

In Alaol’s texts we find illustrations of the three kinds of performance of panchali: complete theatrical performance, narrative performance, and technical speech or didactic discourse. By analyzing one description of a sangita performance from Alaol’s Padmāvatī, we will see how the poet blurs the limit between the performance that is depicted in the story and the panchali that is actually taking place in the sabha of his patron. In this mise en abyme, Alaol also plays the role of an artistic mediator between the show and the audience. In the following passage in lachari, that is to say a song composed in the tripadi metre which is accompanied by dance steps performed by the gayen, Jayasi’s text is the model for Alaol’s poem and gives the Bengali poet the opportunity to describe a sangita performance:

|| rāga dīrgha chanda lācārī ||
tabe rājā ratnasena / vicāri bujhiyā mane / vaśya maraṇa āche tattve |
yedina ānande yāya / jīvana suphala pāya / sukhabhoga bhālamanda śarte ||
bhavitavye thāke yei / avaśya haiba sei / vidhi-bale nāhika eḍāna |
ajñāne bhāvaya dukha / [jñānete bāriba sukha]45 / sadānanda [sārete] pramāṇa46 ||
eteka bhāviyā citte / ratnasene ānandite / rājadvāre raci nr̥tyaśālā | 5
haraṣita sarvajana / nācaya nartakīgaṇa / pañcaśabde kari eka melā ||
chaya rāga hāṅkāriyā / chatriśa rāgiṇī laiyā / madhusvare kaila ālāpana |
dakṣiṇā[ty]a aṅga bālā / nānā kāce nāce bhālā / sādhanā hastaka sulakṣaṇa ||
kahite nr̥t[y]era kathā / bahula bāḍaya pothā / nā kahile śānta nahe mane |
alapa nā kahõ yabe / baliba paṇḍita sabe / ei kavi saṅgīta nā jāne || 10
maneta kariyā kalpa / kahimu kiñcita alpa / bujhaha rasika dhīra jane |
rasasindhu guṇīśvara / śrīyuta māgana vara / ājñā pāi Alaola bhaṇe ||47

Then Raja Ratnasena intensely reflected
upon the undeniable power of death.
When time passes in joy and bliss, one plucks the good fruits of life;
the experience of pleasure depends on the good and bad things [that we do].
What is part of our destiny will surely happen;
there is no way to escape the power of Fate.
One worries in ignorance, whereas knowledge increases happiness;
testimony lies in Sadananda’s [Vedānta]sāra.
Thinking thus in his mind, Ratnasena in order to enjoy his self
built a dance hall at the door of the royal palace. 5
Everyone was cheerful and the dancers danced
accompanied by the festive harmony of all kinds of instruments.
Striking up the six musical modes with their thirty-six raginis,
they started singing the prelude with sweet voices.
Beautiful young women from the South skillfully danced in various fashions,
displaying their mastery of hand movements.
If I talk about dance, the book will expand too much,
If I don’t, I won’t find peace in my mind.
If I don’t give a short explanation, scholars will say,
“This poet doesn’t know lyrical arts!” 10
Hence I decide to explain all this briefly;
O wise connoisseurs! Listen carefully!
Alaol speaks on the order of this Ocean of sensibility, the master of all qualities,
the noble and excellent Magana!

In these lines, Alaol exposes various aspects of an artistic performance—from the motivations of the patron to set up a nrityashala to the critical preoccupations of the court poet who must show his erudition in order to remain credible in front of the assembly.48 Again, Alaol slips from text to context. The courtly performance described in the poem mirrors what is actually taking place in the sabha of Mrauk-U. The shift from the narrative to the lyrical form, or from prasanga to sangita, concretely takes place through the metrical change from payar to lachari tripadi; thus when a sangita performance is described in the poem, it is also actually performed in Alaol’s sabha.

The evocation of dance in the original poem impels Alaol to intervene and provide the assembly with his comments. This attitude is a specific feature of the gandharva (Sk.) (>gandharp/gandharb in Pers.), a key figure of artistic performance dealt with somewhat differently in Sanskrit and Persian treatises.49 For instance, in the Saṅgītaratnākara, composed by Sharngadeva in the thirteenth century, one of the most influential treatises on sangita frequently referred to by the Saṅgītadāmodara and the Saṅgītadarpaṇa, the gandharva is briefly mentioned as one type of vaggeyakar (author-composer) who masters both deshi, i.e. regional, mundane technique, and marga, i.e. eternal, divine technique. No further precision is given regarding his role in the sabha during the performance. The definition of the gandharva as a knowledgeable intermediary between the performers and the audience is furnished by the Ghunyat al-munya, a Persian treatise on Indian music and dance composed in fourteenth-century Gujarat.50 Though Alaol never refers either to the function of gandharva/gandharp or to this treatise, typologically speaking this definition seems to match perfectly Alaol’s function in the sabha as it transpires in his poems:

mu‘arrif-i surūd ki ānrā gandharp gūyand ; waẓīfa-yi ū ān ast ki har rāg u surūd u raqṣ̄ ki maṭlūb-i ṣāḥib-i majlis bāshad, istifsār kunad, wa bar51 ṭawā’if-i mazkūr bagūyad, wa dar athnā-yi surūd u raqṣ chūn bāngī yā shaklī nīk ṣādir shawad taḥsīn kunad, wa nām-i ān bāng u shakl bagūyad ki īn rā īn chunīn gūyand—ū bāyad ki bar majmū‘-i anwā‘-i surūd wa ashkāl-i raqṣ muṭṭala‘ bāshad.52

He is the conductor of music,53 also called gandharp. The duties assigned to him are to inquire about the specific raga, the type of music and the type of dance the Master of the Assembly desires to have, and to tell the above mentioned group [of musicians and dancers]. In the course of song and dance when any tonal flourish or a beautiful dance-figure is accomplished, he approves it and specifies [what has been performed]. He is expected to know everything about all forms of song and all figures of dance.

Now let us come back to the excerpt of Padmāvatī quoted before. The poet says he will highlight some topics related to sangita, and in the verses that immediately follow he provides a detailed exposition of technical features related to the subject. The first thing he mentions is the organisation of a performance with its inaugural benediction and the invocation of Ganesha and other deities. He also indicates that the name of the musical mode should be pronounced (rāga ucāriyā) and the various things performed described by their name (yateka sādhanā hena kahi nāma laiyā).54 One cannot fail to recognise here the figure of the gandharp defined in the fourteenth-century Persian treatise from Gujarat. This is not an isolated case: Alaol does a similar exposition regarding sangita in Saptapaykara. There again he uses the pretext of a dance performance in the narrated story to display his mastery of the subject and fulfill his function of gandharp.55

Conclusion

Alaol’s care in displaying his knowledge on sangita shows that the topic was an unavoidable part of the courtly culture of his time. In this essay I have argued that thanks to the context in which Alaol’s poems were performed, the paradigm of performance and composition of his texts extended simultaneously towards greater textuality and increased attention to the lyrical parts. One of the consequences of this move was the insertion of scholarly comments by the author. The author acted as an intermediary between the audience and the text performed. This feature is salient in the scenes of sangita performances that occur inside the story Alaol is rendering into Bengali.

In the broader historical and cultural context, this interest in the technical aspects of sangita in a court milieu promoting vernacular literature was not restricted to Mrauk-U. Two leads have to be further explored in order to understand the cultural atmosphere in which this literature came into existence. The first one is the Jaunpur and Indo-Afghan courtly cultures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. More than any other branch of Sanskrit knowledge, sangita was actively investigated by the scholars of this period who worked at royal and secondary courts. The Lahjāt-i Sikandarshāhī is a good example of the thorough scholarship of Indo-Persian authors in the field of lyrical arts. Similarly, Jaunpur became a major centre of patronage during this period. In the Awadhi romances from the same eastern region that were composed from the early sixteenth century, like Qutban’s Mirigāvatī (1503), performance was an aspect of the poetry itself, and the authors frequently included passages in which the technical vocabulary of sangita was used.56 Alaol testifies to the continuity and transformations of this literary tradition. He went further into the explanatory details and he cited his sources. The treatises mentioned by the Bengali poet of Mrauk-U are extremely relevant in the context of the courtly culture of the regional kingdoms of Northeast India. To mention just a few examples, Shubhankara was quoted very often by authors in Mithila, Nepal, Assam, and Bengal, and Narada’s Pañcamasārasaṃhitā is said to have played a central role in the formation of the lyrical tradition at the court of Manipur in the late eighteenth century. The king of Orissa Sarvajna Jagannatha Narayanadeva (r.1648-1664) also quoted from both treatises in his Saṅgītanārāyaṇa.57

The next step will be to observe how the poets put the content of these technical texts into practice and combined the Sanskrit ethos with their regional tradition. The technical literature circulating in the regional courts was very specific, and it is possible to identify this corpus with great accuracy. In Alaol’s case we saw how one can describe the pattern of composition of his poems with the technical vocabulary provided by the handbooks available to him. The complex relation between the content of the Sanskrit treatises, the fragments of Alaol’s own technical texts, and the information provided by his poem still await further study.