Brajanatha Badajena's 'Chatura Binoda': An Introduction

Sailen Routray

Coat of Arms of Dhenkanal Princely State
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons 

Chatura Binoda by Brajanatha Badajena can be described as the ‘central’ prose text in the Oriya literary canon. And like all ‘central’ texts it has kept the critics sharply divided. But none can deny its significance. The title ‘Chatura Binoda’ has been interpreted to be the compilation of four Binodas. (chatuh means four in both Oriya and Sanskrit). But this interpretation of the title is slightly off the mark. Chatuh when joined with Binoda becomes Chaturbinoda in both Oriya and Sanskrit not Chatura Binoda. ln Oriya chatura means clever or sophisticated and thus, ‘Chatura Binoda’  might perhaps be better translated as 'Stories meant for the sophisticated' or the chaturas.

Chatura Binoda was written in the second half of the eighteenth century. This was a time of uncertainty and disorder in Orissa. The Mughal sun had finally set with the Marathas rampaging through much of the territory that is now called as 'natural Orissa'. There was no central authority ruling over the whole of the land. The coastal Mughalbandi areas had passed on to the Marathas, while the rest of the state was ruled by bickering petty chieftains. But despite all this disorganization, this was also a century of cultural continuity and consolidation.

Oriya literature first gained its bearings in the fifteenth century and sixteenth century after a protracted battle with the reigning Brahminical, Sanskritic orthodoxy. The likes of Sarala Das, Jagannath Das and Achyutananda Das gave voice to the aspirations of the people through the language of the people. In the process they standardized the language and produced the first canonical literature in Oriya.

But by the eighteenth century this initial impetus had already faded. Sanskrit had again crept back and had started to dominate. During this period Oriya language got heaving Sanskritized. Sanskrit words crept into the vocabulary and pushed deshi words out of polite, literary usage. Poetry came to be written in a highly ornamental and artificial language. Almost all the poetry produced in this period was written under the influence of Sanskrit riti kavyas. The plots of these long poems (kavyas) were hackneyed, the language artificial and the protagonists predominantly divine or royal. 

Brajanatha Badajena was a welcome deviation to this rule. His life spanned most of the eighteenth century. He was born around 1730 in the state of Dhenkanal in a reasonably well off, cultured, Karana, Hindu family. His family’s surname was Patnaik. The title Badajena was bestowed upon him by a king of one of the small states of Orissa on one of his many wanderings. His literary career started early and continued till his death in 1800 at Pun. Four sons survived him but his wife purportedly committed sati. 

Badajena led a long and productive life. Although his father and brothers served the kings of Dhenkanal, he could not stay put at any place for long. He was an accomplished pattachitra painter as well; he also dabbled in calligraphy on palm leaves, and paper etchings. His many wanderings in search of a living took him to places as far as Calcutta in the north and Srikakulam is the south. But he could not find a single place where he could settle down for long. He always had to come back to Dhenkanal, and it is at a village nearby that he died in penury.

All his life Badajena stood at an odd angle to the Oriya literary establishment of the times. All most all his contemporary men of letters were bilingual. But he was a polyglot with mastery over Oriya, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali and Telugu. Thus, he could have access to not only to his own literary tradition but also to all the neighboring cultural traditions, as well as to that of the pan-Indian Sanskritic one.

A Colonial Era Map of Dhenkanal State
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Probably he wrote in all these languages. But only his Oriya and Hindi works survive. Like his contemporaries he also was influenced by Upendra Bhanja and wrote ornamental riti kavyas like Kelikalanidhi and Bichakhyana (both written in the period 1755-65). He also wrote a few bhajans and lyrics. But his reputation rests on four works written in his mature years; namely Ambika Bilasa, Samara Taranga, and Chatura Binoda in Oriya and Gundicha Bije in Hindi.

Ambika Bilasa is a long poem written in the tradition of Saivite bhakti poetry. It is reputedly his best work. Samara Taranga is a long war poem written on the Motari battle fought between the Marathas and the forces of the king of Dhenkanal in central Orissa in 1781. Gundicha Bije is a long poem written in Hindi, the theme being the Ratha Yatra of lord Jagannatha.

This brings us to Chatura Binoda. It occupies a curious place in the history of Oriya prose whose history is at least as ancient as the history of Oriya poetry. But like all literatures in Indian languages, poetry bloomed first. It was poetry that standardized the Oriya language, and not its prose; this had a retarding effect on the growth and evolution of the latter.

Apart from royal inscriptions and temple records (mainly the Madala Panji) instances of prose usage are few. Narayana Abadhuta Swami’s Rudrasudhanidhi is often regarded as the earliest instance of Oriya literary prose. But critical opinion is still divided regarding the nature of the language used in Rudrasudhanidhi. If Prose is defined as an approximation of speech patterns as naturally used by men then the language of Rudrrasudhanidhi perhaps falls short of this definition.

But without any reservations Chatura Binoda can be regarded as the first proper instance of Oriya literary prose fiction. What are ambiguous are its nature and its place in Oriya literature. It is sometimes seen as a continuation of the tradition of a Sanskrit prose epics in Oriya. A few others don’t want to give it the status of ‘literature’ and treat it as a literary ‘freak’.

But then Brajanatha Badajena himself was something of an oddity. In an age in which being multilingual meant acquiring court languages like Sanskrit or Persian, he knew Bengali, Telugu, and Hindi, apart from his mother tongue Oriya, and of course the customary Sanskrit. In a century that produced numerous ritikavyas he produced the only long war poem in the language, Samara Taranga. Is it any wonder then that he should write the first work of literary prose fiction in Oriya? 

It would be unproductive as a critical enterprise to try and locate Chatura Binoda in the tradition of Sanskrit prose epics or even folktale collections. The stories that constitute this work can be located in the traditional folklore prevalent in many parts of Orissa. It is composed of four parts that are titled as  Hashya Binoda, Rasa Binoda, Niti Binoda, and Preeti Binoda. Each Binoda is separate and self-contained and is composed of a few stories. But the four Binodas are also joined together through a structural principle which shall hold true only if we see Chatura Binoda in the tradition of refashioning of folk tales.

Illustrated Manuscript of 'Lavanyabati' by Upendra Bhanja
From the Collections of Odisha State Museum
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

All the classical elements like the Ganesh vandana and the Krishna vandana according to this view are merely supplementary to the main structure and theme of the work and not integrally linked to it. In order to understand Chatura Binoda as a work of literature, we need to examine both ‘the narration of function’ and ‘the function of narration’ and to show that both of these refashion the popular and the folk material at their disposal into a work of art which transcends the limitations of a traditional folktale. Yet at the same time it manages to remain earthy and folksy in both form and texture.

Let us see how this is achieved in the collection under consideration, Niti Binoda. But before going into further details, let us look at the beginning of the story. The prince Mohananga falls for the vaishya girl Chanchalakshi and proposes to her. But since she is undergoing a penance she could not sleep with him that night. Thus, both of them propose to be awake and to help her to stay up, he tells her four sets stories. The third such set is the Niti Binoda.

Niti can mean law or mores. But here it means justice. The aim of the plots of the stories in this set, is to illustrate justice in action. And the characters of all the four stories aid this action. The narrator of the main story is Mohananga and the listener is Chanchalakshi. In the sub-stories the parrot and the mynah are the narrators and the Brahmins are the listeners. Thus, by using this device of opposition the principles of natural justice are illustrated. The stories are linked together by the questions asked by the characters, by the principle of coherence working through the stories that unifies the narratives, and by the thematic principle of natural justice.

Let us see how Chatura Binoda transcends the limitations set by a traditional folktale. According to Frye “. .. the folk tale... is an abstract story pattern. The characters can do what they like, which means what the storyteller likes: there is no need to be plausible or logical in motivation, This is not so in Chatura Binoda. Of course the birds speak. But they are merely the narrators of the stories, A couple of roving travelers would have served equally well. 

Niti Binoda like the rest of the three Binodas links the disparate stories into a unitary whole through the process of seamless and coherent narration, If we see Chatura Binoda as a continuum between folktales and other literary fictional traditions then only its true significance can be understood. Thus, even though it is not a mere compilation of folk tales, it is no close-ended literary work either. It seems as unsuccessful and unsatisfactory if and only if we view it as such (that is, as a close-ended literary work). 

But if we see it as a text in which the ‘epic’ battle of eighteenth century Oriya literature was fought, then our vision of the text is transformed altogether. Seen in this light, this text becomes the first work of Oriya non-mythological prose fiction where ‘the folk’ found a voice for the first time in literature, unadulterated by any rhetorical device, Thus, adultery becomes something passé, swear words are gleefully exchanged at times, and one popular story follows another in rapid succession. 

The key to understand Chatura Binoda lies in seeing it neither as a mere collection of folktales nor as another addition to the tradition of ‘literary’ prose fiction. One must see it as an expression of a new type of literature that takes up the abstract story patterns of the folktales and transforms them by the force of narration. ‘The function of narration’ is to force this disparate material into a unitary whole. ‘The narration of function’ serves the social aims of entrainment and exposition, The success of this text lies neither in faithfully recording folktales nor in transforming them into ‘the classical, Its significance lies in the fact that it straddles the folk-popular-classical continuum and refuses to be pigeonholed into any of the three categories.

Note: This essay was written as an introduction to an undergraduate dissertation (that was essentially a translation of the 'Niti Binoda') that I wrote as a student of B.J.B. Autonomous College (in the period 1999-2002), Bhubaneswar for a B.A. with English (Hons) degree from Utkal University. The supervisor of this dissertation was Odia poet Subash Mohanty who was recently carried away to the other shore by the COVID pandemic. The piece is raw and immature, but is offered here more or less unchanged with a few minor editorial interventions.