Pioneer of Modern Age - Chanda Jha

PREFACE 

This short monograph on Chanda Jha is intended to intro- duce him to readers who have no access to Maithili, a language spoken by more than 3 crores of people in Bihar. Since the cultural, political and literary background of Chanda Jha has not received adequate treatment up till now I have ventured to deal with it as best as was possible within the limited space available to me. I am conscious that I have touched upon too many pro-blems, however briefly, only in the hope that scholars in Maithili and outside will deal with them in greater detail later on 

I have tried also to give English rendering of the verses or songs of Chanda Jha Conscious as I was of my imperfection in translation, I have also given the original verses in Roman script for such readers as may be interested in knowing the original. 

Since most of what I considered technical terms have been explained by me in the body of the book, I did not consider it necessary to add separate notes on them 

I take this opportunity to express my gratefulness to Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi who asked me to write this monograph. I also acknowledge my gratefulness in particular to Dr. B.B. Misra, Dr.Jatashankar Jha, Maithili Akademi, Patna from whose works I have quoted and to Sri Prabhas Kumar Choudhary of Pindarucha, who procured for me a copy of the photograph of Chanda Jha. 

— Jayadeva Misra 

"PIONEER OF MODERN AGE" 

There can be little doubt that m some ways Chandranatha Jha, Chanda Jha as he was called, was a pioneer in the field of Maithili literature. He was born in the early part of the nineteenth century By this time, several of the Indian provinces were already aglow with the light of English education. In this connection the first name that comes to our mind is Bengal. 

Bengal was perhaps the earliest and the potent beneficiary of English education and yet it is a fact that the Mithila region, which is a part of Bihar, and for that matter, was a part of Bengal, did not know then what this English education was like. 

The first man belonging to the Mithila region who could earn a living outside Bihar on the basis of English education was per- haps Dr. Ganganatha Jha. He was born m 1871. Roughly speak-ing, about 1870 the old prejudice against English education began to wear off. But by then Chanda Jha had already become 39 years old, i.e , past the age when he could avail himself of an opportunity to learn English. 

Against this backdrop, it is a marvel how Chanda Jha could imbibe western spirit and was able to do all that he did. Apart from his valuable contribution to Maithili prose, which was then 

non-existent except in such forms as letters, memoirs, business documents, in the field of verse writing, besides producing hosts of songs, lyrics, bhajans etc., he gave us his Mithila Bhasha Ramayana, a full-fledged mahakavya on the classical pattern. 

We have to bear in mind that about the time Chanda Jha lived, Mithila region was steeped in classical culture, untram-melled by western influence. There was a clear lack of inclina-tion to understand the common man or his language. But Chanda Jha seems to have understood both in a great measure. 

Throughout the gamut of his writings there is as much a ten-dency to voice the feelings of a man in the hamlet as there is an inclination to use the idioms of his life. Indeed, there was hardly 

a subject or topic in the life around him which was considered by him so low or mean as not to attract his notice and receive literary treatment at his hands. 

Chanda Jha belonged to village Pindaruch in the district of Darbhanga This was a village full of zamindars. As a Kuhn, his great-grandfather, Lala Jha married the daughter of Nityanand Choudhary, a prosperous man, and came perhaps to settle in the village. But by the time Chanda Jha came on the 

scene, the relationship had become distant The great-grand-father of Chanda Jha or his grandfather, Ranjan Jha, probably the former, who came to settle in the village must have been held in high esteem by the children of Nityanand Chaudhary not only as a close relation but also as one belonging to a family higher in social status than their own. But gradually the old esteem wore off leaving young Chanda Jha face to face with the stark reality of having to live in the midst of rich people distantly related to him. But the inferiority of his economic status could not kill the independence of his mind and he freely lampooned the zamindars if and when a need for doing so 

arose. There are quite a few verses of his in which he has criti-cised the zamindars and their henchmen. Some of these verses are current in the neighbourhood of Pindaruch even today. But 

now only a few persons in the locality can readily identify as to who the persons thus criticised were. Some people say that the poet was not judicious in his criticism and directed it towards 

quarters where it was least deserved At any rate, this was the mam reason why Chanda Jha had to leave his original 

home at Pindaruch to go to Tharhi, falling under the present Madhubani district to which his father-in-law Bira Misra belonged. 

From what we know of Chanda Jha it is clear that in spite of the fact that he did not have any training except in Sanskrit and served systematically under one rich patron or another, he was possessed of quite a generous but sensitive heart. He could react to a disagreeable situation as readily as he could undertake a labour of love, if it satisfied him emotionally. Chanda Jha 

rebelled against constraints imposed by rich or influential people 

first at Pindaruch and later on at Tharhi, but he could readily 

take all pains to serve the cause he held dear to his heart. One 

such cause was certainly the service to his mother tongue. 

In Maithili literature we have special reasons to attach im- 

portance to Chanda Jha. He was not only a poet of proved 

literary merit but also a writer who made significant contribu- 

tion to Maithili prose. But for him, we could not have the transla- 

tion of the Purusa-pariksha in Maithili. True, his prose is chaotic 

in form with more or less a tendency to substitute, wherever 

possible, one Sanskrit word in the original by another word in 

Maithili, little caring as to what shape the sentence would finally 

take, but all the same the attempt was worthwhile considering 

the fact that it was the first major attempt in the direction. It is 

also true that in writing poetry as well he suffered from a dis- 

advantage in the sense that he did not have at his disposal a 

medium rendered pliable enough to suit a composition of a 

sustained order. It is a fact that before coming to compose an epic 

like the Ramayana, he had tried his hand at such stray writings as 

satire, lampoon, bhajan, and indeed, all this had given him a sort 

of confidence, but after all, they were random attempts hardly 

calling forth any genius for coordination and taking note of 

vicissitudes of life. It was a new venture he was undertaking now 

and it required of him to draw upon all his reserve of ingenuity 

and knowledge of Sanskrit classics. 

No doubt, he had before him in Maithili the examples of 

such masters as Vidyapati and Govindadas a but considering his 

classical training, it is doubtful how far he had acquainted him- 

self with the traditions of vernacular literature So far as the 

writings of Manabodha and Nandi pati are concerned, we have 

to bear in mind that they differed from the writings of Chanda 

Jha materially. Manabodha and Nandipati employed the language 

almost as they spoke it. There were few occasions either for the 

poets to write in any sort of dense style or for the readers to 

seek It. It was a sort of unsophisticated writing addressed to a 

sort of unsophisticated readers. Perhaps it suited their aim all 

right confined as it was to tickling the heart of the common man 

by recourse to simple, though telling, narrative of the familiar 

Krishna episodes. Manabodha and Nandipati, it seems, never 

3 

aimed at any literary distinction as is clear from their adherence 

to a low literary tone, avoiding a classical style, even Tatsama 

words, to the best of their abilities. Within their limits their works 

have evident merit, but by their very nature they would not 

go very high. But Chanda Jha had ostensibly a high aim both 

as a classicist and as one who had taken up deliberately a high 

task. It was more or less a densely structured composition 

Chanda Jha was attempting now. In the new venture every 

word was not expected to yield full meaning at once. It was to 

be used in a big context, and one was required to read sentence 

after sentence, indeed page after page, in order to grasp the 

underlying meaning. With his classical background it was 

expected of him to produce a work that could answer the 

classical norms established through centuries of practice In this 

way his whole reputation was at stake. The fact that he was 

asked by Maharaja Lakshmishwar Singh to compose the 

Ramayana added to his responsibility. The Ramayana, when 

completed, was not only to satisfy the writer or his patron, who 

could very well distinguish a good work from a bad one, but 

also a galaxy of classical scholars in the court and outside. For 

all this evidently he was not prepared from before. But it is 

to the credit of the poet that by dint of his natural gift of ex- 

pression he accomplished a task that looked pretty impossible 

in the beginning. 

Taking into consideration Chanda Jha’s social and cultural 

background, it is natural that the bulk of his writings should have 

a religious overtone. In a society full of religiosity, he could not 

have fumbled for long in order to fix upon Siva as an appro- 

priate subject-matter for his devotional songs. This special type 

of song, traditionally known as Nachari or Maheshavani 

describes the incongruous and yet fascinating behaviour of Lord 

Siva, particularly in relation to his family life and household. 

The mind of the simplest section of the Mithila society had 

attuned itself to it. The Nacharis and Mahesavanis had long 

popularised among the people the wayward but extremely kind 

image of Lord Siva, who, though himself a destitute, could 

bestow the choicest blessings on his devotees As the common 

belief went, whenever in distress, one had only to seek His 

4 

mercy in order to be relieved of it This picture of Siva suited 

Chanda Jha well as he himself was a victim of misfortunes 

throughout his life. Here again if he suffered from the lack of a 

suitable medium of expression, he more than compensated for it 

by charging his utterance with peculiar fervour and piognancy. 

The troubles from which Chanda Jha suffered were partly 

man-made and partly providential The pin-pricks of zamindars 

of his native village Pindaruch made him leave the village for 

good. At the village of his adoption, namely Tharhi, he had also 

to leave the site where he built his original home. This he had 

to do mainly because two of his sons died there one after another. 

Situated as he was physically and mentally, he had to fall 

back upon the mercy of the all generous Siva. Although born 

of desperate and gloomy moments of his life, in some of his 

devotional compositions we have the best pieces of poetry. The 

poignancy of feelings, coupled with a peculiar felicity of ex- 

pression, have made them pure gems. It is doubtful if we could 

have such satisfying pieces of poetry except for the crucible to 

which fate had put him. 

It IS an axiomatic truth that a truly new literature could not 

be produced in a modern Indian language except under western 

influence. But it is a fact that Mithila was very late in coming 

under it. In the nineteenth century, Mithila formed a part of 

Bengal, and Bengal was one of the earliest beneficiaries of 

English education. But situated as Mithila was, it could not 

reap the harvest that was so much in evidence in the adjoining 

province of Bengal One of the reasons for this difference was 

almost the ready acceptance of new education as a repository of 

western culture by Bengal and its rather rejection, quite for some 

time, by Mithila. 

It may be of profit here to review the spread of English educa- 

tion in the eastern region with particular reference to Bengal n 

order to understand the real position of Mithila about the time 

of Chanda Jha. 

Evidently the British established their sway in Bengal, and 

for the matter of that in the whole of eastern region, following 

their victory in the battle of Plassey in 1757. But for years this 

remained a distant event and Mithila region could not feel any 

5 

impact. In 1764, Clive secured the Dewani of Bengal, Bihar and 

Orissa from the Mughal emperor and then the region came 

formally under the British rule. But even this change in ad- 

ministration had very little to do with the daily life of an average 

man who was mostly illiterate and little concerned with anything 

beyond his chores of humdrum existence. Really it was with the 

establishment of zamindari m 1790 that an ordinary man in the 

Mithila region began gradually to realise that a change of some 

consequence had taken place. But here also it has to be clearly 

remembered that it took many years for a settled government to 

come into existence due mostly to disturbances by the Napalese. 

Once the Britishers knew that they were reasonably firm at 

the saddle, they at once thought of attending to the problems of 

administration. Evidently, administration needed a reasonable 

means of communication between the rulers and the ruled and 

English could not assume this role for the simple reason that it 

was a foreign language with absolutely no base in society. No 

doubt, quite early they had an idea of spreading English among 

the Indians but they were not slow in realising that whatever 

they might do to promote it, it would remain confined to a very 

small section of society. These handful of English knowing 

persons could be important in view of their role as standard- 

bearers of western culture in numerous fields or as constitutmg 

the ‘elite’ of the new society but the administration of necessity 

was bound to concern itself with a circle much bigger than this 

It has to reach out to the ordinary people. But this could not be 

done except with the help of the language the people at large 

spoke or used in their daily intercourse. 

Unfortunately, the vernaculars of the time were not in good 

shape. In spite of the fact that most of these vernaculars had 

quite a rich past in so far as poetry was concerned, they had no 

prose worth the name. This had its effect on poetry writing as 

well. If we look at the poetry of the closing years of the nine- 

teenth century, we would at once be convinced of its looseness, 

artificiality and lack of directness in utterance. 

All this was due perhaps to the reason that the literature of 

the period, which consisted chiefly of the verses, was modelled 

6 

on Sanskrit poetry of the time which clearly partook of the 

characteristics that go generally with a decadent age.