Songs on the Road, Songs for the Road

From the Liberating Humanities and Arts Faculty of NHCA

In the last eight years of his life, from 1982 to 1990, Shrii P. R. Sarkar composed a corpus of 5019 spiritual songs, which he called Prabhát Saḿgiit. These songs express his love for the beauty of the natural world, visions of social justice, and the intimate relationship between the human devotee and the Divine Beloved. Prabhát Saḿgiit lyrics and melodies embrace the human sentiments of longing and joy that are vivid elements of devotion. The following article by Ayesha Irani, the lead faculty member of the Liberating Humanities and Arts discipline for the Neohumanist College of Asheville, brings us closer to this experience of these exquisite songs.

By Ayesha Irani

On January 5, 1984, Shrii P. R. Sarkar left Anandanagar to travel extensively through North India, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh before returning back to Kalikata some time after April 10. Anyone who has traveled on India’s terrible roads in the 1980s can understand the hardship that he went through over four long months on the road. For all who traveled with him on this long tour, those were indeed unforgettable days.

Today, we can trace his travels through the trail of songs he left behind; the place of composition of each being noted under every song in the printed editions of Prabhat Samgiita. In January 1984, just after Dharma Mahácakra at Anandanagar when Shrii Sarkar would give a special set of discourses, he went straight to Deoghar, the very place where he had first given Prabhát Saḿgiit on September 14, 1982. This next year, at the beginning of his long tour, he composed songs 1141-56 at Deoghar. Thence, he traveled on to Patna (songs 1157-1168), and onwards to Betia (1170-93), then Gorakhpur (songs 1194-1203), Allahabad (1206-19), and Kanpur, (1222-54), Agra (1255-80) and Delhi (1281-1304), Jammu (1310-34), Bilaspur (1335-37), Jaipur (1338-59), Kota (1360-94), Gwalior (1401-20), Banda-Chattarpur (1421-28), back to Allahabad (1430-32), then Varanasi (1434-53), and finally, to Daltonganj (1454-76), all places he stayed for several days on this long road trip. By the time he returned to his beloved Madhumálaiṋca residence in Lake Gardens, Kalikata, via Tatanagar four months later, he had composed a total of 364 songs.

In the case of many of the sites he visited, their topography, natural features, and history became the pretext for him to gift us a new song from his inexhaustible store. In Jammu, for instance, he composed songs on the Himalayan rivers and terrain. In Agra, the first song (No. 1255) he composed was to the famous blind saint-poet Súrdás in a melody germane to Súrdás’ own tradition of kiirtana. The next (1256) was about the Taj Mahal, the world-renowned monument that the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built to his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. In the future, the people of these places will hold on to these songs as local treasures, tokens of his love for all time.

Thus, while he sped onwards by car from one destination to another, the river of song gushed alongside him. On this long trip, there are some special songs that he composed, quite literally, while on the road from one place to another. His cavalcade would suddenly be brought to a halt, and the “gána party”—those he had designated to capture his songs—would scramble around him to learn and notate a new song. What wonder and excitement filled those heady days of being on the road with him!

Song 1307 is particularly poignant. On February 29, he seems to have halted momentarily at the ancient site of Kurukśetra in today’s state of Haryana on his way from Delhi to Jammu. Kurukśetra, as is well known, is the site of the great battle of the Mahábhárata, where the Pánd́avas had to fight their cousins, the Kauravas, to regain their rightful claims to kingship. Lord Krśńa himself led the Pánd́avas on to victory at this site. The song goes thus:

Though Kurukśetra literally means “the field of the Kuru clan,” Shrii Sarkar imbues the epithet with new meaning:

What is Kurukśetra? The root verb kr + the imperative hi: that is, imperative mood, second person. Kuru means “do” – the imperative mood. Kurukśetra means the field that is always saying: “Do something, O man, do something. Don’t sit idle – do something. Be engaged in [[work]]”. That field is kurukśetra. So what is kurukśetra? This world is kurukśetra. You have come, you have to do something. (1)

Here too, in this song ostensibly written at this historical site of Kurukśetra, he moves from the particular to the universal—the earth itself now becoming the great battlefield of action, wherein there is no room for idleness. Krśńa, the bearer of the discus, a deadly weapon which he wielded with consummate skill, is remembered in a hallowed place which overflows with memories of the great warriors who died in this field. As the great archer Arjuna’s charioteer, Krśńa held his quiver, but more importantly, the entire strategic plan for the gruesome battle that unfolded there over eighteen days. This war was masterminded by Lord Krśńa himself in order to unite the inimical kingdoms of India so as to create a united Mahábhárata, a Great Bhárata (India).

One can only imagine the momentous nature of Shrii Sarkar’s visit to this legendary site. And yet, as he says in the last stanza, there is no time to halt, “no way to halt along the path.” This was true for himself, who was then on the way to Jammu. And, in a more philosophical sense, we, ordinary beings cannot linger either, lost in the past, for, like it or not, we “advance by the attraction of the divine.” This truth of “moving on,” caraeveti, is emphasized in many of his songs. Here it is as though the very earth of Kurukśetra is declaring this truth. The song, then, is his tribute to Kurukśetra, to Krśna, and to the sage Krśńa Dvaepáyana Vyása who wrote the great epic, the Mahábhárata.

As is widely known, the Bhagavad Gītā (The Song of the Lord), an excerpt from this epic is the eternal song of truth sung to the despondent Arjuna by his charioteer Lord Krśńa to inspire him to fight this grim battle for the protection of dharma. Today, the Bhagavad Giitá has been translated into fifty-nine world languages. Some day, not too far into the future, I see a time when Prabhát Saḿgiit will be translated into many more world languages than the Giitá. I am deeply grateful to a team of pioneering translators who are working on translating Prabhát Saḿgiit into their mother tongues. Our group of international translators are currently translating into Chinese, Hindi, Odiya, Punjabi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. By their efforts, Prabhát Saḿgiit will become more widely known to the peoples who speak these languages, and the literatures of these languages will be enriched by these spiritual songs.

If you have interest in translating Prabháta Samgiita into your mother-tongue, please write the Humanities and Arts Faculty of the Neohumanist College of Asheville:

(1.) Source: Dharmakśetra and Kurukśetra. Published in: Ananda Marga Karma Sannyása in a Nutshell [a compilation]; Ánanda Vacanámrtam Part 5; Discourses on Krśńa and the Giitá [a compilation]. Release: Electronic edition version 9.0.20