Abstract
Ramprasad Sen was an eighteenth-century Bengali Hindu Shakta poet and saint. His Ramprasadi bhakti poems written in Bengali, which are mainly devoted to the Hindu goddess Kali, are still popular in Bengal. Krishnananda Agamavagisha, a tantric scholar, had a significant impact on Sen. His devotional songs were an amalgamation of the aesthetics and stylizations of Baul music and kirtan. Vidyasundar, Kali-kirtana, Krishna-kirtana, and Shaktigiti are some of his literary works.
The practitioners in the Shakta tradition are equally uninterested in exhibiting a cosmic mother figure as they are in constructing a cosmic father figure. The objective of spirituality here is to realize the totality of truth, not to engage in projection and delusion. The Goddess shows herself as a consort, teacher, mother or even a warrior through Ramprasad’s lyrics.
These are actual realms of experience that her disciples can enter. She is a divine creation, evolving energy, timeless consciousness, and transcendent reality, besides being an everyday woman in a tantric sense. She represents the feminine essence within both male and female individuals, as well as an awareness rooted in nonduality and bliss.
Tantric philosophy emphasizes the interaction of energy and awareness and strives to harness and transmute diverse energies, including sexual and spiritual energies, for enlightenment. In this tantric functionality of direct fruition, the objective itself is considered the path, wherein worshippers of the goddess experience intensity and freedom from the invisible interfaces of spiritual egotism.
This paper seeks to trace and deconstruct how Sen, in his Bhakti songs, utilizes the ontological unity of a unified self that tantric philosophy espoused, where nonduality is achieved by the notion of avoiding any truncation of individualistic actuality, be it the distinction between human and divine or between relative and absolute.
Introduction
Bharatvarsha has a rich cultural and spiritual heritage of mystics, who, in their respective incarnations, have illuminated the multiple paths to divinity in the form of songs and poems. Tulsidas, Mirabai, Surdas, Tukaram, Jayadev, and Vidyapati are some of the best-known mystics from the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, while popular in the southern part of the Indian subcontinent are mystics such as Sri Tyagraja, Ramalinga Swamigal, Shyama Sastri, and Muthuswami Dikshitar.
Sadhak Ramprasad Sen was one such mystic. Anybody who is remotely familiar with Bengali language and culture would presumably have heard Ramprasad’s “Shyama Sangeet” (Songs to the Goddess Kali). Just like the other melodious mystics, Sen’s songs also had one thing in common with them: to quench the thirst of the finite being of an individual with the nectar of the supreme consciousness of the Infinite. Such was the Sadhak’s legacy that his Bhakti poetry spawned not only films and TV shows in Bengali, such as Sadhak Ramprasad (1956) and Ramprasad (2023), but also a separate genre of songs in the form of “Shyama Sangeet”. Some popular performers of this genre are Pannalal Bhattacharya, Dhananjay Bhattacharya, and Anup Ghoshal.
The great master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, would often go into a trance while singing Sen’s songs. As the monk Swami Budhananda (1982a) writes, “the language, mood, bhava, imagery and humour of Ramprasad’s songs suited Sri Ramakrishna’s spiritual temper so well that he remained a lifelong singer of Ramprasad’s songs.”Ramprasad Sen was born to a Tantric Baidya family, either in 1718 or 1723, in the village of Kumarhatta (earlier known as Halisahar). The earliest documentation that was carried out by scholars and historians often lacked content regarding Sen’s biographical details. Much of the historical evidence about Sen is contested in the sense of Western historiography.
The earliest biography of Sen to surface was Ishwar Chandra Gupta’s edition, which was published in 1853. Ishwar Chandra Gupta (1812–1859) was a Bengali poet and editor who’s most well-known now for his invaluable contributions to the documentation of poets like Ramprasad Sen, Bharatchandra Ray, Haru Thakur, and Ramnidhi Gupta.
The academic Malcolm McLean (1998a) argues that the “problem concerning Gupta’s biography is the absence of any corroborating mention of Ramprasad in some notable early works on the religious life of eighteenth-century Bengal. This is strange if he was as well-known in his day as he is reputed to have been, especially as he is said to have been associated with the court of Raja Krishnachandra of Krishnanagore, from whom he supposedly received his title Kabiranjan.”
Though McLean later goes on to admit that Gupta’s biography, developed over “twenty-five years” (1998b), adds much to the contemporaneous understanding of Ramprasad Sen as it was one of the earliest documentations of the tradition as it was in 1853 by Gupta, He takes cognizance of a letter published by Gupta from a native from Sen’s village who agreed with what Gupta had documented regarding the biography of Sadhak Ramprasad Sen.
The details about immediate relatives are given by Sen himself at the end of his work, Vidyasundar. His father’s name was Ramram Sen, who was a Baidya (an Ayurvedic physician), whereas his grandfather’s name was Ramesvar. Ramprasad’s mother was called Siddheshwari, who happened to be the second wife of Ramram. From his first wife, Ramram had a son called Nidhiram, and from his second wife, two sons, Ramprasad and Vishwanath, and two daughters, Ambika and Bhavani.
Gupta’s biography and the usual folklore around his early life say that Ramprasad was sent to a Sanskrit tol, where he mastered the vyakarana (grammar) and kavya (poetry) within a short span of time. Though Ramram was more interested in his son following him in their ancestral occupation, Ramprasad didn’t show much interest in Ayurveda. His materialistically oriented father then sent him to learn Persian and Hindi, which he believed would help Ramprasad in the future since Bengal was then under Muslim rule.
Ramram was worried about his son’s spiritual proclivities; thus, as was common in Indian households then, Ramprasad was also married at the age of twenty-two to a woman called Sarvani. They had two sons, Ramdulal and Rammohan, and two daughters, Parameshwari and Jagadishwari. Ramprasad and his wife were given deeksha (initiation) by their family guru. Soon, the family guru passed away, and after some time, Ramprasad chanced upon the great Bengali tantric sage Krishnananda Agamavagisha.
Agamavagisha is most well-known for two things: first, for introducing the worship of Goddess Kali to the Bengali populace, and second, for writing “Brihat Tantrasara“, which is a well-known treatise on the social worship practices of the many Dasamahavidya goddesses referenced in numerous Tantra Sadhana literature. By combining 170 Tantra Sadhana scriptures from the Shaiva, Ganapathi, Shakta, Vaishnavite, and Solar communities, he was able to create this work. Swami Budhananda (1982b) writes of their spiritual encounter, “At first glance, Agamavagisha saw Ramprasad to be an extraordinary man with a great spiritual future. Then followed a period of instruction in the intricacies of Tantric Sadhana. After a time, the Guru left and the disciple became absorbed in sadhana”.
Eventually Ramprasad got a clerical job (for thirty rupees per month) in the wealthy house of a certain Durgacharan Mitra of Garanhata. Yet he couldn’t contain his spiritual longing anymore, and songs of longing to the Divine Mother would pour out on the account books where he was supposed to write figures of accountancy.
One such poem was “O Mother! Give me your treasurer-ship” which had the following lines:
“O Mother! Give me your treasurer-ship,
I’m not grateful, O Shankari.
I cannot stand all and sundry
looting the treasure of your feet”
(Budhananda, 1982c).
One of Ramprasad’s colleagues dragged him to the master to expose his (mis)deed of mystical fervor. Upon hearing Ramprasad’s poems, Durgacharan Mitra “was moved by his clerk’s piety and impressed by his literary genius. He granted Ramprasad leave to return to his native village and promised the poet that he would be paid his salary every month in order to continue writing” (Hixon et al., 2004a).
Another legend from Ramprasad’s life is that he used to often go neck-deep in the holy river Ganga and sing melodious songs devoted to the Divine Mother. These songs would often surge from the hridaya-Ganga of Ramprasad, where hridaya-Ganga refers to the river of devotion within his heart. During one such occurrence, Maharaja Krishnachandra of Navadwip was passing him by on his boat. Mesmerized by the poetic quality of his songs, he would make the boat stop and listen to his songs till Ramprasad would emerge from the water.
Ramprasad and Tantra
It is quite crucial to understand the intricacies and subtleties of Tantra sadhana if one wants to make sense of the coded language that Sen often used in his compositions. The Shakti, which creates, maintains, and dissolves the universe, is the only way to understand the ultimate or absolute reality, known as Brahman, whose realization is the sum and substance of human life.
Shakti can be worshiped, but Brahman cannot. The Sadhaka learns through Shakti worship as a medium that ultimately, Brahman and Shakti are the same, just as fire and its smoldering power are. The goal of Tantric sadhana is to achieve this realization. Man could not access this Shakti if it was not already within him, who is present in both the macrocosm and the microcosm. As per the doctrine of the Shaktas, writes Swami Swahānanda (2012a), “Shiva is the unchanging consciousness and Shakti is its changing power, appearing as mind and matter. Shiva-Shakti is therefore Consciousness and its Power”. Where the former is God as they exist and the latter is our perception of them.
The Kubjika Tantra (9th century) stresses that “It is not Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra who create, maintain and destroy but Brahmi, Vaishnavi and Rudrani. Their husbands are but as dead bodies” (Swahānanda, 2012b). The perception of the Divine Mother occurs in two forms: either a form of unparalleled beauty or in the form of terrible, in which she is strikingly fearful. Goddess Kali is the emanation of the latter form. A sadhaka can truly perceive her all-encompassing grace when they do “nothing but complete self-surrender at the feet of the Mother, who is variously known as the ‘death of the old man’, mano-nasha (destruction of the mind) or chitta-vritti-nirodha (stilling the wave of mind)” (Swahānanda, 2012c).
The Divine Mother is the Lord of Maya; thus, she is Mahamaya. Where she binds as Maya and she liberates as Mahamaya when she wants to. The Divine Mother has three forms: the first being para (supreme), which is beyond anybody’s perception as per the Vishnu Yamala; the second being sukshma (subtle), consisting of mantras; and finally, sthula (gross), where she takes a form for the benefit of the meditation of the Sadhaka. The Bhairavi Stotra says that some devotees might perceive her as Sukshma, while others may see her as Sthula, but the devotee regardless sees her as the Ocean of Infinite Grace.
The Kularnava Tantra elucidates how “The body is the temple of God. Jiva is Sadashiva. Let him give up his ignorance as the offering that is thrown away and worship with the thought and feeling, ‘I am He.” (Swahānanda, 2012d). Therefore, in the worship of Shakti, karma is the ceremonial embodiment of the jnana-kanda teaching and is intended to bring it about. Nothing in it goes against the knowledge of Brahma. This philosophy gained a lot of traction in Bengal, where Shaktas make up the majority of the upper-class Bengalis.
Ramprasad’s poetry is derived from the Kularnava Tantra, which happens to be an ancient source of logic and philosophy that serves as the foundation for much of Sen’s poetry and Bengali Shakta-Tantric practice. According to biographical evidence, Ramprasad spent many years engaging in “kundalini yoga meditation” (McDermott, 2001). This belief is bolstered by Ramprasad’s own writings, some of which were derived from the Tantric scriptures that give vivid descriptions of Kali.
Man can recognize the Adyashakti as his fundamental essence in this way. Every person possesses Kula-Kundalini, a delicate, dormant version of the Shakti that is manifested in the universe. One can discover the identity between the Shakti, with which one’s very own being is charged, and the Adyashakti itself by awakening this Kula-Kundalini via the recommended techniques. Furthermore, this Adyashakti is ultimately the same as Brahman.
Ramprasad demonstrated the effectiveness and veracity of this Hindu scripture by engaging in Tantric sadhana and achieving knowledge of Brahman. The Bengali sage Ramakrishna Paramhansa followed suit after him. Tantric sadhana is the most practical and optimistic form of sadhana among all those promoted by Hinduism, both in theory and in practice.The unregenerate human being of flesh and blood with countless cravings is taken lovingly from his current position in this sadhana.
The plan of sadhana, termed as pancha-makara, appropriately acknowledges and caters to his desires. The pancha-makara, or the five ‘M’s’ are: Madya (wine), Mamsa (meat), Matsya (fish), Mudra (parched grain), and finally, Maithuna (sexual intercourse). Only “left-hand path” tantrics (vamacharins) literally practice components that break societal customs, while “right-hand path” tantrics (dakshinacharins) reject these and instead advocate a metaphorical path for these five articles.
Shaktas have four sampradayas (lineages): Kasmira, Kerala, Gauda, and Vilasa. The three stages of evolution that man undergoes in tantric sadhana are pashu (animal), vira (heroic), and divya (divine), which correlate to the three gunas called tamas, rajas, and sattva. Man’s gross being is made up of these three gunas. The sadhaka advances from pashu-bhava to divya-bhava by arousing the Kundalini Shakti by sadhana, with the aid of image worship, and with the aid of pancha-makara possessions.
Swami Budhananda does a comparative analysis of the divya-bhavas of Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Ramprasad Sen: “In Ramprasad’s case we do not hear about his sadhana in pashu-bhava. It is said that for about eight to ten years Ramprasad did his sadhana in vira-bhava with the articles of pancha- makara. And through these practices he attained to the divya-bhava. In Sri Ramakrishna’s life we find that the entire tantric sadhana was done in the divya-bhava. However, the ultimate realizations of both through this sadhana were the same, namely, that Shakti and Brahman are essentially identical” (Budhananda, 1982d).
Tantric Imagery in Ramprasad’s Bhakti Poetry
Ramprasad’s poetry can be broadly classified into two categories: the spontaneous outpourings of a mystic (compositions that burst out with spouts of inspiration from Ramprasad’s mind) and the compositions deliberately written by a mystic (such as Kaviranjan Vidyasundar, which he wrote after being commissioned by Maharaja Krishnachandra). Where the former possesses characteristics of mantra, the latter possesses characteristics of kavya.
Kundalini, which is described as energy that resides within the body and is typically located at the base of the spine in tantric scriptures, is the source of kundalini yoga. Kundalini is thought to be dormant in conventional tantric systems until it is awakened (as in the case of doing yoga) and directed upward through the central channel in the course of attaining enlightenment.
The chakras are essentially seven in number: Muladhara (located at the bottom of the spine), Svadhisthana (located below the navel), Manipura (located at the solar plexus), Anahata (located at the center of the chest behind the sternum), Visuddha (located in the bottom of the throat), Ajna (located within the eyebrows), and Sahasrara (located at the crown of the head) – where each of them has “different number of petals, with letters of the alphabet engraved on them, and is assigned a resident god, goddess, animal, element, one-syllabled mantra, and sound to be enjoyed as one passes through it” (White & McDermott, 2000a). These centers are strung on a subtle pathway known as the sushumna.
Tantric sadhaks often meditate at special spots that have spiritual power. Ramprasad would meditate in a garden near his house called the panchavati, which consisted of Ashvatha, Amalaki, Ashoka, Vilva, and Vata trees. He would make a panchamundi asana (seat of five skulls of a frog, snake, rabbit, fox, and man) and go into the most severe form of meditation on auspicious days such as Ekadashi, Purnima, and Amavasya. The fabled panchavati continues to survive to this date, where Shakta worshippers often come to pray to Goddess Kali.
Usually, Shakta poets refrained from explicitly mentioning the pancha-makaras or meditating at graveyards undertaken by Shakta Tantric practitioners. For example, Ramprasad’s “The World-Mother’s police chief goes strolling in the dead of night” is one of those rare Shakta poems, which is explicitly centered on the rituals of cremation-ground.
The poem, “That black woman full of virtue” contains lines such as:
“She Who Destroys Everything.
Servant Ramprasad says:
Remover of deep dense darkness,
the black, long-haired Goddess always dwells in my heart-lotus.
Victorious in this life and the next, I spit on Time.
My words are extreme
but for me
death is stilled.
I have entered God”
(White & McDermott, 2000b).
Shiva is also referred to as the Great Lord (Mahadeva), the slayer or bewitcher of Lust (Kama), and the enemy of the demon Tripura (Tripurari). Kali defeats demons in the battlefield before triumphantly standing on Siva’s chest. She is gorgeously radiant as a sixteen-year-old, and a vision of her brings forth liberation from the maya. This focus on the imposition of Kali in the heart (or the eye of the mind from the point of view of kundalini yoga) is congruent with how poets like Ramprasad were described by their biographers as being deeply immersed in meditation.
Similarly, another such poem, “Taking the name of Kali, dive deep down, O mind”, contains lines like:
“Taking the name of Kali, dive deep down, O mind
Into the heart’s fathomless depths,
Where many a precious gem lies hid.
But never believe the bed of the ocean bare of gems
If in the first few dives you fail;
With firm resolve and self-control
Dive deep and make your way to Mother Kali’s realm”
(Budhananda, 1982e).
This poem further elucidates how intense meditation is required for a sadhaka to succeed in his practice, and even if they fail initially, they have to try again with a strong resolution of mind. “Intense and constant meditation is necessary for entering into Samadhi” (Sivananda, 1994). Where Mother Kali’s realm is the last stage of yogic practice by entering into the realm of supreme consciousness or oneness with the Divine Mother.
One of Ramprasad’s poems which gregariously features imagery of Kundalini Yoga is “Tongue, call out‘Kali! Kali!’”:
“Tongue, call out
“Kali! Kali!”
Mind, my Syama Ma
sits in a six-wheeled chariot with three reins
fastened to the muladhara.
Endowed with five powers, Her charioteer
drives Her from country to country.
Her horse
charging ahead with the chariot
can cover ten krosas in a single day –
though when the chariot breaks down
he can’t even move his head.
Going on pilgrimage is a false journey, Mind;
don’t be over-eager.
Bathe at Tribeni; cool yourself
in your inmost chamber.
When your body’s finished, decomposing,
Prasad will be cast away.
So, Mind, seize the moment;
time’s running out:
call the Two-syllabled One
as best you can”
(White & McDermott, 2000c).
The Ajna chakra is where the ida, pingala, and sushumna, as three subtle channels, converge in a plait between the eyebrows. This poem claims that this convergence, known in Bengali as the Tribeni Sangam (the meeting point of three distributary rivers, Ganga, Jamuna, and Saraswati, which is branched off of the river Bhagirathi Hooghly), is a spiritual Kashi (Benaras) and that a customary bath in its waters offers the highest levels of spiritual purification and immanence.
Ramprasad provides a few exemplary examples, one of which is a lengthy metaphor about pilgrimage where the final destination isn’t a real place. Here “the horse of the mind pulls the six-wheeled chariot of the body (a reference to the first six lotuses of kundalini yoga), with the soul for a charioteer and the two- syllabled Goddess, Ka-li, as a passenger” (White & McDermott, 2000d).
This poem also, interestingly, acts as an affirmation of the lore of Goddess Annapurna in Ramprasad’s life. Goddess Annapurna, besides being recognized as the Hindu Goddess of food and sustenance and as an avatar of Parvati, also happens to be “the presiding deity of Kāśī” (Arundhati, 2001). Once, while going on about his daily routine, Ramprasad was stopped by an exceptionally beautiful young woman who wanted to hear him sing. He asked her to wait and rushed to take his bath. Upon returning, he couldn’t find that woman again. Soon, his eyes fell on the wall of the temple hall, where it was written:”I am Annapurna, came to hear your songs, cannot wait any longer now. Go to Kashi and sing before Me” (Budhananda, 1982f).
Ramprasad, who was torn with remorse, started marching towards Kashi at once. As he reached the Tribeni Sangam, he fell asleep under a tree near the bank of the Ganga. He got an instruction from the Goddess Annapurna in a dream to sing from there and not to proceed further. Hearing her voice saying, “Stay here and sing for me. (…) Varanasi is not the only place where I live; I pervade the whole universe” (Harding, 2004).
In one of his poems, “Will such a day ever dawn”, he specifically mentions the opening of the Anahata chakra in the lines: “When will the lotus of my heart be blossomed/Darkness of mind will be dispelled/And I shall rot on the ground/Uttering the name of the Mother?” (Budhananda, 1982g)
Another such direct reference instead of abstruse metaphors of kundalini yoga imagery is prevalent in the poem, “The Black Goddess with the rodent’s teeth”, which contains the following lines:
“The Black Goddess
with the rodent’s teeth
swings on the lotus platform of my heart.
Mental winds swing Her day and night.
Eternal brahman, Black Shyama,
She’s tied to the beautiful Susumna rope
strung between ida and pingala.
How She gleams
Her body coated
with blood-red dyes.
Lust, delusion, and the rest
take one look – and bolt.
He who sees the Mother swing
gets the Mother’s lap.
So declares Ramprasad
boom booming these words
like a drum”
(White & McDermott, 2000e)
The poem not only talks of the Ida and Pingala but also goes on to show how a parallel between popular Indian festivals and kundalini yoga can be drawn effortlessly by Ramprasad. For example, “Dol, the Vaisnava fair in which Krsna and Radha are rocked back and forth on a swing and showered with red powder by their devotees, is used to describe the motion of Kali seated on the platform of the heart lotus, held by the ropes of the three subtle channels” (White & McDermott, 2000f).
Although the Sahasrara chakra, where the kundalini mates, is the chakra that receives the most prominence in Ramprasad’s literary oeuvre, two odd evocations perfectly capture the aspirant’s fulfillment in this situation: being drunk on divinity and the moonlight. He composed poems that were written by a poet experiencing the bliss of being drunk on the nectar of divinity. McDermott (2000g) explains it from the point of view of kundalini yoga: “The nectar or honey in question drips from the citrini, a narrow channel within the susumna, the entrance to the final ascent for the kundalini at the sahasrara. Generated by the blissful sport of Siva and Sakti in union, it is the drink for which the aspirant thirsts”.
The kundalini shakti itself has been visualized as a snake by Hindu and Buddhist yogis. Ramprasad’s poem, “My Mind, what sort of intelligence is thus?” is a poem that skillfully employs the imagery of snakes, as demonstrated in the following extract:
“My Mind,
What sort of intelligence is thus?
You never learned to catch a serpent,
and now you wander
in search of tricks!”
(White & McDermott, 2000h)
This excerpt can also be read in another light, where Ramprasad obliquely points out the fallacies of a mind that isn’t extremely focused and instead wanders a lot, thus being subsequently unable to grasp the multitude of potentialities that come with the full awakening of kundalini. An unfocused mind is instead happy with the tricks that their mind plays instead of immersing themselves completely into the Supreme Consciousness of the Divine Mother.
The Muladhara chakra is symbolic of the unawareness experienced by a sadhaka, whereas the Sahasrara chakra is emblematic of the awareness of being one with the Supreme Consciousness. McDermott believes that when the Shakta “poets exclaim that they have arrived in a city where the moon always shines, dripping nectar; where there is neither night nor sleep; and where opposites cease, they are referring to the topmost cakra” (White & McDermott, 2000i).
Ramprasad continues to have a rich legacy in Bengal, where poetry and Maa Kali’s worship often go hand-in-hand. “Shyama Sangeet” of Ramprasad cuts across the restrictions of class amongst people as it is “broadcast over the radio and sung on the streets and in the homes and temples of Calcutta by a cross-section of people-children, the elderly, housewives, businessmen, scholars, the illiterate, monks, householders, and the youth of all classes” (Hixon et al., 2004b).
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White, D. Gordon., & McDermott, R. F. (2000h). Raising Snakes in Bengal: The Use of Tantric Imagery in Sakta Poetry Contests. In Tantra in Practice (p. 181). essay, Tantra in Practice.
White, D. Gordon., & McDermott, R. F. (2000i). Raising Snakes in Bengal: The Use of Tantric Imagery in Sakta Poetry Contests. In Tantra in Practice (p. 172). essay, Tantra in Practice.
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Conference on Tantra & Tantric Traditions
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