Earthsongs and Music of the Minstrels in Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay’s ‘Rasakāli’ and ‘Harāna Sura’

This study focuses on the interrelationships between the human and the cosmic self in selected short stories of the Jnanpith-Award recipient Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay (1898–1971). It presents a text-intensive reading of two stories―‘Rasakāli’ and ‘Harāna Sura’―that depict the changing nature of the Vaiṣṇava figure, living through a clash between tradition and modernity, in the high literary traditions of the twentieth-century short-story genre. The cultural milieu of Bengal within which Bandyopadhyay lived and wrote such compositions was shaped by the variegated and dynamic Vaiṣṇava tradition of devotion to Śrī Kṛṣṇa. This paper explores the distinctive language of Bandyopadhyay’s Vaiṣṇava characters. These stories are remarkable for their earthy texture and intricate symbolism, yet they have a serio-comic vision. Bandyopadhyay’s short stories, based on Vaiṣṇava practices, depict a vibrant, popular, and enduring tradition that extends beyond faith and is intricately woven into the quotidian fabric of Bengali rural life and aesthetics.