NEEDLE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

With palms pressed together in respectI praise the lotus feet and magnificent girth ofthe Lord Dakṣiṇ Rāy Master of the Southern Regions …Against Baḍa Khān Gāji the Great Sufi WarriorYou waged war throughout the territory’s canals and channelsbut in the end you became close fast friends.—from the opening verse of the Rāy Maṅgal of Kṛṣṇarām DāsWhen the Hindu demigod Dakṣiṇ Rāy and the Sufi warrior Baḍa Khān Gāji meet in the field of battle with armies of tigers God must intervene in the form of Satya Pīr to broker peace. The two fight again this time for Gāji’s reunion with his beloved princess Cāmpāvatī. Then in Rāy’s battle with Bonbibī the ruling matron of the Sundarbans it is Gāji’s intervention that saves him from the latter’s wrath.Satya Pīr who always watches over his disciples aids Madansundar’s quest to find his lost merchant brothers. And Khoyāj Khijir (Khwaja Khizr) helps Gāji find the needle at the bottom of the sea affirming his status as a jindā pīr a ‘living’ saint.Translated by award-winning scholar of early modern Bengali literature Tony K. Stewart this collection of tales from the Sundarbans brims with fantasy and excitement. Tigers talk rocks float waters part and men magically grow into giants in these pīr kathās or stories of miracle-working Sufi saints. Bound together by the different characters’ pursuit of living honourably and morally in a difficult corrupt world these classic compositions from the 16th and 17th centuries also demonstrate how popular romances helped add ‘a natural Islamic substrate to local culture’.Vividly retold Hindu and Muslim traditions of Bengal converge in these enchanting tales on timeless themes of human morality social culture and survival in the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans.