THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD: TALES OF HIERARCHY AND POETIC COMPOSITION FROM MODERN RAJASTHAN

THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD: TALES OFHIERARCHY AND POETIC COMPOSITION

FROM MODERN RAJASTHAN

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass

Colorado State University

In this article I examine Bhat myths and legends concerning kings and bards. Bhats arelow-status praise-singers from the Indian state of Rajasthan. In exploring these tales,I examine my informants’ ideas about an issue which has long been seen as a centralconundrum of Indian caste theory: how best to characterize the status of those withpriestly standing in relation to those classed as warriors and kings. In their stories, Bhatsdemonstrate the ways in which high-caste persons such as kings are utterly dependenton bardic services – thus rendering performers like themselves central, and kings periph-eral. With respect to the debate about whether kings or priests rank first in South Asianschemes of rank and primacy, Bhats themselves think in terms of a third class of persons:bards. Further, I suggest that, in arguing for the social centrality of linguistically talentedbards, my informants display a consciousness that is particularly attuned to the discursiveconstruction of social hierarchies. Finally, I seek to explain why Bhats, who are bards offormer untouchables now living in an ostensibly modern, casteless democracy, still speakso persistently of kings and royal bardship. My answer to this is that, in fabricating fictiveroyal bardic identities, present-day Bhats are able to appropriate roles and statuses nowabandoned by the former elite bards of post-Independence Rajasthan.

In an oft-repeated Sanskrit myth, the four Hindu varnas are said to haveemerged from the dismembered body of the primordial man, Purusa.Brahmins (priests) arose from his mouth, Kshatriyas (warrior-kings) from hisarms, Vaisyas (merchants and farmers) from his thighs, and Sudras (servants)from his feet. Further, each group’s profession and status related naturally to its point of bodily origin: the elevated Brahmins, as mouths, taught;Kshatriyas, the arms, were masters of arms, defending the land; Vaisyas, thesturdy loins, sustained the social body with trade and farming; and Sudras, asmere lower appendages, served under the other groups.

My Bhat informants, semi-nomadic bardic entertainers of low status fromRajasthan, know this myth well, even making oblique reference to it fromtime to time. (see Figures 1-4.) They are also well aware of its hierarchicalimplications, often inverting it in a way that suggests the special perspectiveof members of a peripatetic service community: ‘You can’t get anywherewithout the feet – the Sudras are the ones!’1

This reversal of time-honoured varna statuses, however, is simple, even crude,and does not do justice to Bhat play with this trope. My informants possess

© Royal Anthropological Institute 2004.J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 10, 261-285

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Figure 1. Udaipur Bhats. Photo: Jeffrey G. Snodgrass.

more subtle devices for transmogrifying leaden persons into gold. Forexample, Bansi Lal Bhat, my adoptive father, narrated the following to me:

One day the five fingers of the hand were fighting and arguing over who was the‘biggest’. They went to the local magistrate to argue their case. The little finger said tothe judge, ‘It is on me that rings are worn. Be it a 5-rupees or a 1,000-rupees ring, itis on me that it will be found. I am therefore the greatest!’ The finger next to it thensaid, ‘No I’m the most important. Whenever a tilak [Hindu mark of blessing] is appliedto the forehead, it is done with me. I am thus superior!’ The index finger, the pointer,then asserted, ‘No, I’m the biggest. Whenever someone is lost then I point the way.’ Thethumb then interjected, ‘No, I’m the most important. When a document needs to besigned, a testimonial created, it is on me that the ink is applied. I am the one who putsmy print on the paper – I am the most important!’ Finally, the largest finger, the middlefinger, spoke up, ‘No, I’m the biggest. A simple movement like this [Bansi Lal made awiggling gesture with this finger signifying, “I screw a female from your family”], andthen we’re all in a fight!’

Like the metaphor of Purusa, Bansi Lal’s trope locates society in the humanbody, except that now society is organized like a hand rather than like the

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Figure 2. Bhat nomads on the outskirts of Udaipur. Photo: Jeffrey G. Snodgrass.

Figure 3. Bhat bravado: celebrating a child’s wedding. Photo: Jeffrey G. Snodgrass.

body as a whole. Nevertheless, in a way that is reminiscent of the myth ofPurusa, Bansi Lal suggests that each finger represents a different Hindu varna.The little finger, as the ring-finger associated with wealth, signifies merchants.Its neighbour, an applier of religious tilaks, stands for morality (dharam) and isthus equivalent to Brahmins. The pointer, a symbol of practical knowledge

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and getting things done, points to Sudras. The thumb, a symbol of law,represents Kshatriyas. And, as an additional social category, the middle finger,a manipulator of symbolic gesture and thus representative of language, islinked, I would argue, to bards – and thus stands for Bhats themselves.

Bansi Lal’s tale relies on corporal metaphors for the social body and thuswould seem to naturalize varna functions in the same way as the myth ofPurusa. Still, this Bhat rendering of the social body destabilizes the moretypical, and more dominant, varna status hierarchy. In this telling, the middlefinger, through a simple obscene gesture, brings a threat of violence onto thehand as a whole thus subduing the other fingers’ noisy claims. In this Bhatreading of the varna hierarchy, language (bards) bests money (Vaisyas), moral-ity (Brahmins), and law (Kshatriyas). The story’s central trope, the image ofbickering fingers, reinforces this point about the power of language. In thistale, far from being understood as the product of a secure and stable socialorder rooted in the assured primacy of either priestly or kinglike beings,hierarchy is treated as a raucous argument composed of competing claims and counter-claims.

As if to reinforce the narrator’s points, the Bhat audience listening to BansiLal’s tale, reinterpreted it in a number of different ways. In one version, a Bhatsuggested that if the index finger can helpfully point one in the right direc-tion, it can also menacingly, and even wrongfully, accuse others of crimes –(pointing) ‘He did it!’ Likewise, if the thumb can testify on others’ behalf sotoo can it, again, accuse others of wrongdoing – (mimicking placing a thumbprint on a document) ‘No, he did it!’ In this second version of the tale, a Bhat


Figure 4. Bhats with author. Photo:Véronique Pache.

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indicates that status is not fixed and singular but double – simultaneously supportive and menacing, high and low.

Indeed, Bansi Lal’s daughter, Gita Bai, recounted a version of this tale inwhich, by means of an obscene gesture, the middle finger did bring down athreat upon the hand as a whole. But Gita described how, in response to thepotentially ensuing violence, the entire hand clenched itself into a fist in orderto defend itself. In this counter-tale, Gita transforms a competitive striving forsuperiority into a message of harmony and co-operation. She thus challengesher father’s point about the social centrality of language, despite having useda story, and indeed a compellingly and even competitively wrought one, todo so.

In this article, I examine a number of Bhat tales – one a myth and one alegend in Bascom’s (1965) terms – about kings and bards. Bhats, with whomI conducted three years of fieldwork between 1991 and 1998, originate in Rajasthan’s western desert region, referred to as Marwar, an area rich inartistic traditions and home to a variety of relatively small semi-nomadic caste groups associated with performance. These performing communities –be they musicians, poets, comedians, snake-charmers, professional mimics,actors, or genealogist-historians – are typically ‘attached’ to either high- orlow-status patrons in a much-eroded but still-extant village economy calledjajmani. Bhats, for example, when not wandering, traditionally perform for aformerly untouchable, or Dalit, caste of leather-workers referred to as Bhamb-his (see Figures 5, 6).As multi-talented bards, Bhats keep Bhambhhis’ genealo-gies and histories, but they also poetically praise and entertain their patrons


Figure 5. The Bhats’ Bhambhi patrons. Nagaur District, Rajasthan. Photo: Jeffrey G. Snodgrass.

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Figure 6. Bhat sipping tea, an interlude at a Bhambhi patron’s wedding. Nagaur District,Rajasthan. Photo:Véronique Pache.

with jokes, music, stories, and dramas. But one also finds high-status bards inRajasthan – often referred to by the title Charan – who provide their ser-vices to persons claiming kingly or warrior status.These elite bards, who willbe discussed in more detail shortly, have now largely abandoned their formerprofessions. By contrast, shortly after Independence in 1947, and seeminglybuilding on modest gains in status during the colonial period, my Bhat infor-mants expanded their clientele by finding new audiences for their perfor-mances among wealthy Rajasthani merchants and military officers in themajor Indian metropolitan centres. In more recent times, Bhats have also takento performing puppet dramas for local and foreign tourists as well as for gov-ernment officials in five-star hotels and folklore festivals (see Figure 7). Myinformants, in fact, have now settled more-or-less permanently in urban areasthroughout India where they are supported by their new skills – thus escap-ing, at least in part, a degrading traditional status. For financial and emotionalreasons, however, Bhats return periodically to their natal villages, in particu-lar to perform genealogies and poems of praise on the occasion of theirBhambhi patrons’ weddings. The narrators of the stories discussed here arefrom about fifteen closely related Bhat nuclear families currently living in tentson the outskirts of the Rajasthan town of Udaipur.2

In exploring Bhat tales of kings, and specifically the issue of how Bhatsrank such persons against other castes such as Brahmins, I respond to whathas been called the ‘central conundrum’ of Indian sociology – the questionof who is superior, the king or the priest (Dirks 1989a: 60; Heesterman 1978;

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Trautmann 1981: 285). Debates concerning this issue touch on the most classicissues of Indian anthropology – the relationship between kings and Brahminsin the ‘traditional’ Hindu polity and, more generally, the way in which Indianslink politics and religion, power and status.3

To show how my informants’ answer these questions about rank, worth,and value – which are couched within their stories and must be interpreted– I utilize a poststructuralist critical language and specifically the concept ofideological and discursive ‘centring’ and ‘decentring’ (Derrida 1978). Forexample, Bansi Lal, in his tale of bickering fingers, draws attention to the linguistically constructed dimensions of caste hierarchies, as well as to the confrontational way in which such hierarchies are established. Each of the fingers attempts to establish itself as supreme and thus, in the language ofDerrida (1978), as a social ‘centre’ – a point from which the value of the otherfingers can be established and judged. Our narrator, however, suggests that theonly finger with a right to social pre-eminence is the middle finger – as a


Figure 7. Bhat puppets, magician, and dancer. Photo: Jeffrey G. Snodgrass.

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master of gesture and thus symbolic of language – thus ‘decentring’ and indeedsilencing these other fingers’ noisy claims. Here, Bansi Lal makes a case forthe supremacy of Bhats as skilled poets and praise-singers.Thus in the debateabout whether kings take primacy over priests or vice versa, what we see hereare narrative contexts in which Bhats put forward the claims of a third classof persons, that of bards.

To put this another way, I seek to show that the Bhat narratives exploredin this article convey a striking concern with the power of language; what Iwill also attempt to establish is that this concern arises from a distinctiveunderstanding of social hierarchies as the products of discursive construction.Bhats, who are themselves professional story-tellers, understand that the imag-ination plays a critical role in establishing whether it is kings or priests whostand at the centre of the social order. In these Bhat narrative worlds, then,claims of social centrality are shown to be fictions of a kind that can be dis-mantled by counter-fictions. That is, from certain Bhat points of view, theremay be no easy answer to the central conundrum of Indian sociology.Whetherone is accepted as socially central or not might critically depend, among otherthings, upon the talent and verve of one’s bard.

Finally, I address a second local conundrum, which is why Bhats, themselvesbards of former untouchables now living in a modern electoral democracy,speak so incessantly of kings and the bards of kings. I suggest that the solu-tion to this second conundrum resides in the manner in which Bhats resolve,or do not resolve, the first. Specifically, Bhats put their ideas about the sig-nificance of bards, and thus the power of fiction, into practice in their ownlives. More specifically, I see my Bhat informants as fabricating fictive his-tories which allow them to take on prestigious identity-markers which wereformerly the province of a very different group of people, the high-statusgenealogists who once served the royal lineages of the pre-IndependenceRajput realms.

Ram’s clever bard

According to Narayan Bhat, Bansi Lal’s brother-in-law, the bard of the Hindugod Ram once found himself in the territory of his demon enemy, Ravan.Called before this demon, the bard was ordered to devise a poem insultinghis king and master.This put this praise-singer in a quandary.To remain loyalto his lord, he needed to refuse this request. A refusal would result in tortureor even death at the hands of Ravan, but to betray his master was equally terrible. Thinking for a moment, the bard composed the following Sanskrit verses:

ku karmi ku dataku kanya hi chahe

This poem can be translated:

Evil-doer, evil-giver,Evil daughter, such is my master!


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These couplets refer to Ram as an evil person and, likewise, to Ram’s wife,Sita (the ‘daughter’, or kanya, mentioned in the poem) as equally degraded.Ravan was pleased, for Ram had been belittled and thus betrayed by his ownbard.

This betrayal, however, was apparent and not actual. In the phrase ku karmi,ku means both ‘evil’ and ‘destroyer’. Karmi, similarly, has a double reference.It means ‘doer’ and also ‘accumulated acts’. Ku karmi can thus be rendered‘evil-doer’, but it can also be translated ‘destroyer of karma’. Thus the hiddenmeaning of this phrase is no insult. It refers to a superior being who destroysa person’s accumulated deeds and misdeeds and thus liberates that person fromthe chain of rebirth – a powerful figure indeed, and an equally powerful turnof phrase.

Yet this does not exhaust the meanings of ku. In the term ku data, ku canalso signify ‘land’. Ku data can thus be rendered as both ‘giver of evil’ and‘giver of land’.The latter phrase refers to a generous patron who provides forhis bards and other clients, and also to the very creator, and thus ‘giver’, ofthe earth.This phrase too, from this alternative perspective, is thus not an insultbut a tribute and accolade. The phrase ku kanya similarly has an additionalhidden meaning. Kanya means ‘virgin’ or ‘daughter’. Ku kanya, if ku is againread as ‘evil’, can thus signify ‘evil daughter’, an insult to Ram’s wife Sita whowas charged with sexual infidelity by her husband Ram and others. But, basedon the meaning of ku as ‘land’, ku kanya can also mean ‘daughter of the land’,an epithet of respect for Sita, referring to the fact that she was originally foundin the earth and that her name literally means ‘furrow’. Finally, hi chaye standssimply as ‘the one wanted or desired’. Consequently, the entire couplet canbear the alternative translation:

Shatterer of karma, giver of the land,Daughter of the earth, you are so desired!

Thus in this alternative bardic reading, every phrase of the poem is not aninsult, but an expression of homage.This clever turn of phrase, in turn, allowsfor a wily escape for the story’s bardic hero.

The wandering minstrel of this story is reluctant to betray his lord andmaster Ram.This is in part a reflection of the bard’s dependence on his lord-father Ram, as well as his love and devotion. But the fact that two warrior-kings – one a god and the other a demon – battle for control of a bard’sutterances is a tacit indication of the value and importance of praise-singers.Though certainly powerful in their own right, both gods and demons standin need of these specialists to bear witness to their greatness – or, in this case,to proclaim the depravity of their rivals.

The story also points to another reason for this struggle. In this tale, iden-tities constructed in language cannot be trusted. Words are bent to producemultiple, and even contradictory, meanings. An apparent insult to Ram cantherefore alternatively be interpreted as praise. In theory, praise can also betwisted into insult. Here, Bhats suggest that words possess an aural form thatexists apart from, and stands in merely arbitrary relation to, any particular ref-erent. Thus, depending on discursive context, expectations, and tactics, thesound ku can be linked either to the idea of evil and depravity (thus insult-


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ing Ram) or to the notion of a destroyer of one’s accumulated karma as wellas that of a bestower of land (thus praising this divinity). The demon Ravan,by contrast, expects truthfulness and univocality in language.When Ram’s bardclaims that he will insult his master, Ravan awaits, and then perceives, an insult.Not recognizing the ‘play’ of language – the way in which sounds can bedecoupled from their referents – Ravan is tricked by a bardic performanceand thus made to appear foolish. Presumably Ram, though a god, will beentranced by a performance from which the opposite interpretation is drawn,seeing only praise where there is also insult. In this Bhat tale, only bards standapart from any fixed linguistic meaning. Only they see the trickery, andimplicit lack of transparency, of words. Patrons, the story implies, would bebetter served by having such clever persons as allies rather than enemies.

A legendary, if degraded, king

To reinforce this Bhat view of things, and indeed this Bhat linguistic ideol-ogy, I turn to a second story, which was also narrated by Narayan Bhat, a wrystory-teller and something of a trickster:

This is a story about Man Singh,4 the king of Jaipur, and his bharet [bard]. On the birthof a son, King Man Singh called his bard before him. The bharet pleased the king withhis flattering words, and the king thus rewarded him with an elephant. The bharet, onreceiving this gift, thought to himself, ‘The king has given well, but he hasn’t given methe seat and canopy to put on top of the elephant, which would allow me to sit com-fortably and properly steer this beast. If he would just give me this one thing, then Iwould be happy!’

Meanwhile, the king recognized that his bard was disturbed. He asked, ‘Bard, I havejust given you an elephant worth 1 lakh rupees [100,000 rupees], why do you look sosad? You should be laughing and celebrating! What is wrong? What more do you want?’

The bard replied to his king, ‘Respected sir [Hukamji], what can I say? You have givenme an elephant, but you have not given me the seat which would allow me to ride it.On hearing this, the king got very angry, ‘What? Don’t you feel ashamed of asking formore? How can you beg for something after the gift I have given? Beggar [mangat], aren’tyou “full” [daba]?!’

At this, the bard himself became enraged. ‘What, you have called me a beggar?! Hey,king, I don’t need your elephant! Take your elephant and shove it up your ass!’

Now, shortly thereafter, Man Singh was invited to a wedding in the city of Jodhpur,in the kingdom of Marwar, which is the home of the royal Rathor clan. Man Singhdebated about whether or not to attend. He thought to himself, ‘All the other kings –from Kota, Bikaner, and Udaipur – will be accompanied by their bards. Only I will bealone.’ But Man Singh knew that his angry Bhat, if called to accompany him, mightinsult him in front of the other nobility.

In the end, Man Singh decided to attend the feast without his bard. He loaded up hisentourage of servants, guards, and courtiers, about five hundred to a thousand people alltold, thinking to himself, ‘There are so many with me, why would I miss this one man?’

Arriving in Jodhpur, Man Singh and his party erected their tents and planted theirflag. Unbeknownst to the king, his bharet had also decided to attend, pitching his tent atnight and taking it down each morning so that he would not be seen.

On the last day of the wedding, all the kings were gathered together listening to theirbards recite praise-poetry. The king of Jodhpur, out of joy for his daughter’s marriage,was particularly generous with his bard, distributing much dan (alms) and thus winningrespect from his brethren. On hearing these words of praise, Man Singh thought tohimself, ‘These kings’ bards have made them bigger. They have brought us down low. Ifour bharet were only here, he could fight for us, he could bring us back up high [uncha]!’


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[At this point, a servant, seeing his lord’s distress, tried to get the Man Singh’s praise-singer, whom he had spotted, to come and join the king. After much wrangling, theservant is harshly insulted, which he reports to Man Singh.]

Shortly thereafter, Man Singh saw his bharet approaching the gathering of kings and became terrified, ‘Why is my bard coming?! He will hurl insults [bandai] at me infront of everyone!’ At this point, the eyes of Man Singh and the bharet met, and the bardsaw the fear in the eyes of the king. Man Singh secretly raised four fingers, meaning thathe would give his bard four elephants if he was honourably praised. [The various bardsstood in succession and for the benefit of the newly arrived bard repeated their tarif –praise – of their patrons.] The kings all conversed excitedly among themselves, revellingin the exalted speech of the bards. Finally, only two bards remained in this poetic com-petition, the praise-singers of Man Singh and of his host, Amar Singh Rathor. Expecta-tions were high, as these bards were famous throughout the land.

First, the host’s bard stood and recited a poem of praise to his patron:Garud the eagle, the fortress LankaThe sun rising over Samer mountain, a mere ornament on your turbanSweeter than the sandalwood of BrijYou, oh king, of the Rathor line![Garud khaga, gadha LankaSamer pahara morBrij desh chandan bararaj kuli Rathor]

[Here, Amar Singh Rathor’s poet suggests that his king is superior to a host of superior things: to Garud (the bird vehicle of Vishnu); to Lanka (the mythical fortress of the demon Ravana); to the sun rising in the morning over the mythical mountain ofSamer (a place where the sun is seen to originate); and to the sweet-smelling sandal-wood from Brij (the home of Krishna).]

The audience excitedly shouted their praise, and in turn the bharet of King Man Singhfrom Jaipur stood, noisily cleared his throat, and recited:

Riding on Garud, smashing LankaSkin of redolent sandalwoodYou keep the universe upon your fingernail Raghu Nath [i.e. Ram] of the solar dynasty![Garud chalan, Lanka toranchandan bas swangke nak upar dharti thaharaRagh wanshi Raghu Nath]

[In these verses, Man Singh’s bard tops his rival’s metaphors: Man Singh is compared notmerely to Garud, but to Vishnu riding atop his bird-vehicle; he is said not only to possessthe strength of Lanka, but to be capable of smashing this mythical fortress and home ofthe evil Ravana; he is not only said to be sweeter than sandalwood, but literally to possessskin of sandalwood; finally, the king does not merely hold the sun on his turban but, asa member of the ancient solar dynasty from which the god Ram [Raghu Nath] himselfis said to originate, is the sun itself.]

The other lords declared: ‘Wah, wah [bravo]! Look! He made Man Singh the greatestof all! The highest of kings! Man Singh holds the very universe on his fingernail, andthus he holds all our lives in his hand. A simple flick of his nail and we will all perish!’All agreed that the bard of Man Singh was the winner because he had successfullytrumped the metaphors of the host’s bard. Man Singh then turned excitedly [ josh a gaya]to his bard, shouting, ‘Wah, wah bharet!’ Congratulating him warmly and profusely, herewarded him with the promised four elephants.

In this story, Man Singh possesses something of the lordly grandeur of thedivine king Ram, as manifested particularly in his legendary wealth andlargesse.Yet in ordinary conversation, I have also heard Bhats speak disparag-ingly of the great Man Singh. Some say that he was a dishonourable man,


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and that, having become a general under the Mughal emperor, Akbar, he hadbecome a servant of Muslims and had betrayed his Hindu faith. Bhats espe-cially dwell on the fact that Man Singh traded in his own daughters’ flesh –marrying off his Hindu daughters to Muslim kings for political advantage.Man Singh, this king from the much-less-distant past, is thus the butt of manya Bhat joke. In fact, Narayan’s tale hints at this king’s less than kingliness –and thus at his less than mythic, and hardly even legendary, status. For example,Man Singh displays a vulgar concern for his own name, and is unable tocontrol either his own petty emotions or his retainers.

Yet far from dwelling on Man Singh’s shortcomings, Narayan’s story featurespoems that elevate him to a king among kings – even a god among gods. Infact, all the bards featured in Narayan’s story do the same for their patrons. Intheir praise-poetry (which has been heavily edited here for reasons of space),they compare their patrons to divinities as well as to unconquerable forts,enduring features of the landscape, intoxicants that cool passions and bringpeaceful repose, places free of decay and disease, and eternally flowing rivers.

This story, then, reinforces and builds upon the view of bardic language –and of bardic potential – in the tale of Ram.The kings of this story are ruledby human desires and engaged in petty disputes. Bardic praise, however, makesthem appear to be god-like beings beyond desire and the world. Likewise, asin the story of Ram’s bard, Bhats point to the ‘play’ of language. In an attemptto demonstrate their superior creativity, bards ingeniously build upon themetaphors of their praise-singing rivals.

This use of language, far from diminishing bardic power, magnifies it. Thekings featured in Narayan Bhat’s story long to be portrayed by their bards aspossessing idealized strength and composure. Such idealized poetic imageswould seem to establish these kings as superior to their royal rivals. But inacknowledging their concern with games of reputation and their need forbardic champions, kings, at least as imagined by Narayan, become even moreindebted than Ram to praise-singers. Unable to establish their names throughreal acts of generosity, bravery, and leadership, these kings would appear to bevery dependent on their bards’ linguistic skills. As a result, the bards of ManSingh’s world wield tremendous power over kings – it is no wonder that theyare rewarded with elephant after elephant – which brings us back to thatclassic Indian conundrum as seen from the Bhat point of view.

In praise of praise-singers: or, resolving an Indianconundrum the Bhat way

The question of the relative status of priests and kings has long been a centralconcern of Indian studies. Louis Dumont (1962; 1980), for example, initiatedan important debate on this issue. In his account of the traditional Hindupolity, Dumont saw spiritual and temporal authority as two distinct and oppos-ing spheres, with the spiritual (brahma) residing in the person of the priestlyBrahmin, and the temporal in that of the Kshatriya. This term refers to thearchetype of the king or warrior; the Rajasthan region’s Rajput rulers are keyexamples of this generic category.5 Dumont also argued that spiritual author-ity and temporal power were not merely separated, but that the power of


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kings was ‘encompassed by’ the ritual authority of the Brahmin.This has beenwidely understood to mean that the moral standing of kings is lesser than thatof the pure, priestly Brahmin.

Bhats rarely speak of purity and pollution, that ideological constructionwhich Dumont (1980) posited as the central organizing principle of tradi-tional Hindu society. When they do speak of such matters – as in referenceto my questions about their meat-eating – my informants speak in a distinc-tive register and frequently with the intent to overturn, and even scoff at,Brahminical assumptions about the body. As Bedamiji, my Bhat mother putit, neatly encapsulating an alternative discourse on the qualities of meat, ‘Meatis only impure [ashudh] for those who don’t eat it. For us, it is very pure[shudh]. It gives us life and power [shakti].’

It makes sense that Bhats mock Brahmins given my informants’ own posi-tion as bards of the low-status Bhambhi caste group. Historically, Bhambhis –also referred to as Meghwals and Balais – scavenged animal carcasses, workingthem into shoes, satchels, sacks for drawing water from wells, and harnessesfor beasts of burden.6 Such work involves the handling of decaying animalflesh and thus entails close contact with dangerous processes of death andbodily decomposition; it is this which has made leather-working a pollutingactivity in the eyes of higher-caste Hindus. Bhambis are therefore widely con-sidered to be collectively impure or even ‘untouchable’ by virtue of theirhereditary association with this unclean occupational speciality. Discriminationagainst persons of so-called untouchable caste is defined as a criminal offenceunder the Indian Constitution, but those of low or ‘Scheduled’ caste may stillbe disadvantaged in various regards in everyday life, especially in rural areas.Those bards who accept gifts and even food from patrons of low or rituallydegraded caste are widely considered to share in their uncleanliness. Indeed,such Bhats are doubly degraded in that they are economically dependent onan already defiled community.

Dumont’s formulations have been widely challenged. Dirks (1987; 1989),accepts that power was ‘encompassed’ by status, morality, and the ‘ritual imag-ination’ in some, though perhaps not all ‘traditional’ Hindu polities. But herejects the idea that Hindu religious values were only, or even largely, a matterof an opposition between the pure and the impure. Nor does he accept thatthe Brahmin was the prime focus of status and worth in the Hindu moral order.Rather, in his ethnohistorical study of the ‘little kingdom’ of Pudukkottai inpresent-day Tamil Nadu, Dirks argues that kings gained religious significancefrom the central role which they played in royal sacrifices and other redistrib-utions. Here, kingship derives its authority from an alternating religious andmoral discourse – one of ‘royal honour’ (mariyatai, antastu) rather than priestlypurity – and thus is in no way devoid of sacred significance.As first in rank ofthe various servant-protectors of sacred deities and the social body, kings andnot priests were therefore the ‘central ordering factor in the social organisationof caste’ in pre-modern Padukkottai (Dirks 1989: 59).

As the details of this article suggest, Bhats give more credence to kinglyrather than priestly claims to status. Hardly a day went by without one ormore of my Bhat friends, replete with food and even greater quantities ofdrink, regaling me with tales of Rajasthan’s past glories and long-dead kings.These conversations often conveyed much that Dirks and his fellow ‘neo-


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Hocartians’7 would probably expect to hear in such a setting, often turningon a view of kings as the measure of all human greatness. During my timein Rajasthan, Rajputs were frequently praised for their martial prowess,bravery, moral and ethical code, protection of the poor and helpless (forexample, from foreign, and typically Muslim, invasion), and maintenance oflaw and order. Above all, kings controlled land and resources. Gift-giving – acentral theme in the legend of Man Singh – allowed kings to enhance theirname (nam) and demonstrate their honour (ijjat or man).

In accepting gifts from lords, client castes such as bards demonstrate theirdependence upon, and thus their ‘weakness’ (kamjori) before, their patrons. Asthe tales considered here demonstrate, a bard’s hierarchical position in societyis understood in terms of proximity to kingly centres of wealth and power.Bhats, as clients of Bhambhis, are several steps removed from kings. Still, theypraise their Bhambhi patrons – as Bhats described them, ‘little kings’ in theorbit of ‘big kings’ – in a language of economic generosity drawn from theideology of kingship. It would thus seem that Bhats conceive of patron-kingsas central, and of dependent service communities like bards as marginal andperipheral to social life.

Yet Bhats are not prepared to concede that they are in any sense the inferiors of those whom they serve, whether these are gods or human patrons.The bard who sings in praise of the divine Ram provides this deity with therecognition to which he is entitled, thus allowing the world to perceive hisgreatness through all time. Similarly, in the story of Man Singh, we see thatit is for bards to vest a king with confirmation of his good name, and thatthis is a task which they may perform even for a ruler whose kingly quali-ties are defective or degraded. This is an active exercise of bardic power, notmerely a matter of passively reflecting or acknowledging a patron’s name andtitles.The Bhat story-teller’s implication is that Man Singh would have foundit difficult to rule effectively without his clever praise-singer at his side, everready to help him in waging the wars of reputation which were, and still are,such a crucial feature of Rajasthan political life.

In ‘taking patrons’ names’ – that is, in praising them and maintaining theirgenealogies and histories – Bhats argue that they give their patrons meaning(matlab) and history (itihas), and that they make them happy (kushi ) and evenimmortal (amar). In the past, bards possessed the power to make or breakkingly reputations, to guard or besmirch kingly honour, and thus literally toforge royal identity. As curators of collective memories, skilled praise-singersvested kings with noble lineages stretching back to the sun or the moon. Ifthey felt that their services were not adequately valued or rewarded, they hadthe power to tell the world that their lords were mere pretenders and theirtitles false or illegitimate. Bhats, then, do not conceive of bards as inferiordependents of kings. Rather, my informants think of patrons as dependent onbardic services. In these terms, a patron’s gifts are not a sign of lordlysupremacy. Rather, they are a tribute and thus an implicit acknowledgementof bardic value.

In this respect, what Bhats say about their work of praise-singing is signifi-cantly at odds with the formulations of Dirks and other ‘neo-Hocartians’,suggesting instead a more radically constructionist, and thus radically moreunstable, view of kingly power and authority. Bhats do suggest that Kshatriyas,be they Ram, Man Singh, or any run-of-the-mill village noble, can be dis-


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cursively established as a centre in a particular linguistic performance. Ram issaid by his bard to be a generous patron from whom life and sustenance flow.Man Singh, too, is rendered a great god, seemingly the centre of the universe,who ‘takes the world on his fingernail’. Nevertheless, Bhats point to the factthat such centrality is imagined. As such, kingly claims to centrality can beimaginatively ‘decentred’. Ram can be revealed to be an ‘evil-doer’, whodeserves no more allegiance than the demon Ravan; Man Singh can be shownto be that which he seems to fear, little more than a strutting impostor totallydependent on his praise-singer. The king, then, is not really the centre ofsociety or the world in any deep or absolute sense. Rather, at least in thestories explored in this article, he is a fiction of a kind – an unstable creationsprung from the bard’s rich imagination. In these terms, bards, as guardians ofkingly reputations, history, and even truth itself, stand at the centre of the tra-ditional Hindu polity – which brings us to our second conundrum of whythe bards of former untouchables speak so incessantly of these elite persons.

Two classes of Bhats

Scholars have paid particular attention to two bardic communities inRajasthan whose identity and status are not always clearly distinguished –Bhats and Charans. (In this paragraph, I closely follow Vidal [1997], esp. 91-2). Rajasthan’s Bhats typically claim descent from Brahmins who long agocomposed Sanskrit verse in praise of kings, as well as maintaining royalgenealogies (pidhiavali ), inscribing them either on stone tablets in temples orin their ‘books’ (bahi ). Bhats, though no longer speaking Sanskrit and some-times more akin to landed nobles,8 nevertheless identify closely with Brahmin-priests because of their connection to learning and literacy. By contrast,Rajasthan’s Charans, the equivalent of wandering minstrels, do not generallyclaim a connection to ancient Vedic traditions nor to priesthood. Immersedin Rajasthan’s oral traditions, Charans commemorated the battlefield deeds ofkings and nobles, typically in an archaic dialect of Marwari which coalescedin the fifteenth century CE and is today referred to as ‘Middle Marwari’. Likethe priestly Bhats, Charans received land-grants from their kingly patrons inexchange for their services and were thus akin to a landed nobility. 9 Never-theless, many Charans were primarily herders and only poets ‘on the side’.Charans were also known to ride into battle with their lords, composing versein order to stimulate their kingly patrons into heroic action. Charans, partic-ipating in battle as they did, thus themselves often claimed Kshatriya asopposed to Brahminical status.

My informants, though referring to themselves as ‘Bhats’, did not tradi-tionally perform for nobility and thus have little actual connection to eitherof these two elite bardic communities. My informants, as discussed, serve theformerly untouchable Bhambhis, which brings up an interesting question: whynarrate tale after tale celebrating the deeds done by the elite bards of kingswhen you are in fact the clients of lowly leather-workers? Or, to phrase thismore generally: why speak of kings when you have little to no connectionwith actual kings and, moreover, in an age when kings no longer exist?10

To answer these questions, I could point out that my informants, whom Iwill now refer to as ‘low-caste Bhats’ or ‘my Bhat informants’ to distinguish


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them from elite or royal Bhats, report entering and sometimes even winningfreelance poetry competitions sponsored by local nobles. Similarly, I wouldsuggest that the descendants of former dynasts, though no longer formallyacknowledged as rulers, are still figures of great power in Rajasthan, oftencontrolling massive land-holdings and also wielding much power in the elec-toral arena (Peabody 1997: 563). It is thus not surprising that low-caste Bhatsdwell so much on the great figures of Rajasthan’s noble Rajput lineages, giventhat their real and imagined influence still looms so large in this region offormer princely states.11

Revelatory of a more proximate explanation, however, local people oftentold me that there were no longer any bards in Rajasthan. By this, thesepersons meant that elite and landed bards tied to kings had abandoned theirtraditional profession, now tending their flocks and lands or turning to newprofessions like medicine or law.12

The destruction of the elite bardic service tradition was the result of a seriesof long-term changes in the Rajasthan region over several centuries. In addition to their panegyrical services, elite bards once served as messengersbetween kings and some of the groups from whom they drew their allies andmilitary recruits, including the so-called ‘tribal’ populations of remote forestand hill areas. Bards could travel with ‘priestly immunity’ in areas where noone else could venture safely (see Vidal 1997, esp. ch. 4). Similarly, the homesof Charans served as sanctuaries where noble rebels could lodge their goodsand families in times of war and insurgency. Following the establishment ofBritish colonial rule, the ‘pacification’ and subsequent demilitarization of theRajasthan region drastically reduced the demand for bardic messengers andnegotiators.

Well into the colonial period, however, Charans continued to perform oneof their other long-standing functions, which was to serve as witnesses orguarantors to commercial transactions and financial contracts. Some alsocarried on as providers of a related service, which was to act as guarantors ofthe security of caravans conveying goods in transit. These too were activitieswhich fell into decline under British rule, with the colonial law courts andpolicing system supplanting many of the Charans’ former guarantor activities,and the railways replacing most if not all of the old caravan routes.Yet anotherof the Charans’ long-standing traditions was rendered obsolete by coloniallegal campaigns against ‘violent’ and ‘barbaric’ social practices, of which themost notable was sati (widow immolation). Charans had traditionally guaran-teed the security of contracts and the safety of goods in transit through thepractice of traga (threats of self-mutilation).13 When the British bracketed thispractice with such ‘uncivilized’ activities as sati and the form of ritual self-mutilation known as ‘hook-swinging’ they deprived the elite bardic groupsboth of income and of an important source of status and influence: it wasbecause they could claim that their bodies were Brahman-like and sacrosanctthat they could secure compliance from clients by means of the threat to usetheir trademark daggers in acts of self-harm.These pressures on the status andfunctions of elite bardic groups reached their culmination in the post-Independence period: new legal moves to reduce or abolish so-called feudallandholding systems deprived many families of the properties and incomeswhich their ancestors had received as a mark of their privileged royal service.


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Other forms of hereditary service income which had once benefited the elitebards were also progressively eroded with the decline of so-called patron-clientrelations ( jajmani) and the growth of an increasingly commercialized ruraleconomy.

All this helps to explain my informants’ many references to the elite bardsof former kings. With the coming of electoral democracy and the erosion ofthe old ties of service and clientage which had once prevailed between lordlypatrons and their royal bards, my informants have found ways to take overperformative spaces which were once completely closed to them. ManyRajputs have converted their residences – both the mansions known as hawelisand fully fledged kingly palaces known as mahals – into tourist hotels, guestshouses, and restaurants. And low-caste Bhats now fight amongst themselves toperform puppet dramas which typically celebrate the exploits of knights fromRajasthan’s medieval period in these spaces.Thus, for example, my Bhat infor-mants narrate the epic of Amar Singh Rathor – a minor seventeenth-centurynoble from their home district of Nagaur in western Rajasthan, who is saidto have served under the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan. Such performancesallow these formerly untouchable Bhats to catch the eyes of tourists. Indeed,some of my Bhat informants earn thousands of rupees a month by sellingtheir puppets to tourists. This is much more than the small sums they wouldhave received as quasi-hereditary bards to their former Bhambhi patrons.

In short, elite bards were squeezed by a variety of historical pressures, even-tually abandoning much of their traditional work. Not least among these wasthe fact that the British might have seen royal bards – as arbitrators of disputes,witnesses to contracts and agreements, protectors of hostages, educators of kingsand their offspring, composers of history, and indeed establishers of truth – ascompetitors of a kind and thus sought to eliminate them (Vidal 1997). Myinformants have not filled the many past roles of the landed Charans and high-caste Bhats.They do not work as notaries; nor do they protect caravans.Nevertheless, my informants do narrate historical epics in the old style to avariety of audiences. Foreign and domestic tourists are certainly chief amongthem, as are the organizers of state-sponsored folklore festivals. But, Bansi Lalalso spoke of winning the favour of the Maharaja of Udaipur with a puppetdrama performed in the Lake Palace Hotel,14 about this king’s freedom-fighting ancestor Maharana Pratap’s sixteenth-century battle at Haldighatiagainst a Mughal army led by the very same ‘traitorous’ Man Singh of Jaipur,to whom I referred earlier. Similarly, Bansi Lal relates these same epics to anew set of patrons with lordly aspirations.These are members of the so-called‘tribal’ population known as Bhils, a group long associated with untamed forestways, but nowadays inclined to claim descent from Rajput dynasts.15 In short,the ‘real’ bards seem long gone. But a variety of Rajasthani persons, be theythe descendants of former kings or ‘tribals’, continue to advance identity andstatus claims that can be bolstered with genealogical recitations. As a result,Bhats continue to narrate, and indeed market, history in the old style.

In fact, my informants did not immediately reveal to me, and never didreveal to many of their new Udaipuri neighbours, their connection to theformerly untouchable Bhambhis. Instead, they identified themselves initially asthe bards of kings (Rajputon ke bhat). It was only after some months that Ibegan to piece together a story that seemed to be both more complex and


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more interesting. I never felt that I had fully unravelled all the circumstances.But what I was told – both by informants and by a local folklorist, KomalKothari – was that at some point in the post-Independence period, theregion’s Bhambis held a number of meetings which they vested with theauthority of a caste council or panchayat. The outcome of these deliberationswas a formal decision to call on all Bhambis to renounce the occupation ofleatherwork and take up farming and weaving instead.The aim was to elevatetheir status in the eyes of other Rajasthan people, a process for which theterm ‘sanskritization’ was coined by Srinivas (1989).16 Many Bhambhis refusedto comply, having found leather-work to be a reasonably profitable occupa-tion. The Bhambhi caste group ( jati ) therefore split into two sections, eachof which banned intermarriages between members of the two divisions onpain of expulsion or ‘outcasting’.

It was eventually revealed to me that my informants used to refer to them-selves as Nats – loosely translated, ‘Dancers’, related to the Hindi and Sanskritwords for ‘to dance’ (nachna in Hindi) (on Nats as the traditional bards ofBhambhis, see Kothari 1991: xi). However, those bards who continued toperform for the newly sanskritized Bhambhis took on the high-status name‘Bhat’. This title, which I had taken to be my informants’ traditional caste( jati ) name, is thus a post-Independence appropriation. Splitting with theirNat brethren, my informants renounced their dancing and acrobatics. Theyalso took more fully to puppetry – an art form that entered their commu-nity at the beginning of the twentieth century though my informants some-times claimed it had been known to them for thousands of years. Myinformants also refer to themselves as ‘Kathputli-Bhats’ or ‘puppeteer-bards’(kathputli literally means ‘wooden doll’, from kath or ‘wood’ and putli, meaning‘doll’ or ‘figure’).17 Significantly, these ‘Nats-turned-Bhats’ also refer to one oftheir caste’s ( jati ) fourteen clans ( gotras) as ‘Charans’, a title that was appro-priated at a more distant point in the past. During their post-Independencemigrations to various Indian cities, my informants often crafted new identi-ties for themselves, replacing names and titles associating them with Bhamb-his with more exalted status and occupation.18

My informants, then, have not merely encroached on work previously per-formed by elite Bhats and Charans – for example, the narration of epic history.Rather, taking advantage of new opportunities for social and economic mobil-ity in the post-Independence period, they have attempted to appropriate thesecommunities’ actual titles, statuses, and identities. It must be said that thesemoves have not always been consistent or successful. And as the newly made‘Bhats’, my informants – now claiming to be both Brahmins (as descendedfrom learned and priestly Bhats) and Kshatriyas (as related to the Charan poetswho accompanied their lords into battle) – seem perfectly at home in newplaces of work owned by the wealthy descendants of former kings. Peddlinghistory in Rajasthan’s palaces, mansions, and other ‘traditional’ spaces, my Bhatinformants argue that they are simply re-establishing in modern Rajasthantheir ancient position as the bards of Hindu royalty. Such a strategy wouldonce have been highly dangerous, inviting violent retaliation from membersof the elite Charan and Bhat communities. Nowadays, however, these high-status groups have turned their attentions elsewhere, and people like my infor-mants have more scope to undertake manoeuvres of this kind.


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Indeed, my Bhat informants gain still other advantages by claiming descentfrom the bards of kings. For example, in the early 1990s, events surroundinga disputed mosque-temple in the now famous North Indian pilgrimage townof Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh) started to heat up. Hindus claimed that the Mughalemperor, Babur, built a mosque in Ayodhya in 1528 (the mosque is referredto as the Babri Masjid) over a previously standing temple marking the birth-place of the Hindu god Ram. On 6 December 1992, after much lobbying bythe BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party or ‘Indian Peoples’ Party’) to rebuild the‘original’ temple, a Hindu mob destroyed the Babri Masjid. This destructionwas followed by anti-Muslim riots that left thousands of persons – mainlyMuslims – dead. As this outburst of violence between India’s various religiouscommunities is among the most significant political events of the post-Independence period, it is not surprising that Bhats have become involved inthe conflict. Specifically, just after the destruction of the Babri mosque inAyodhya by Hindu nationalists, my informants were hired as political ‘admen’by the BJP to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment and encourage constituents to‘Vote BJP!’ That is, local BJP political bosses, who often visited Bhat slumhomes when they were canvassing for votes, hired Bhats to develop newpuppet dramas to promote the BJP cause among other poor slum-dwellers.In their meetings with BJP politicians whose Hindutva or ‘one-nation-under-Ram’ platform now dominates Rajasthani and indeed Indian politics, Bhatsrepresented themselves as staunch and loyal Hindus to the core – pointing, asthey do in Rajasthan’s tourist hotels, to their community’s abiding links tolocal Rajput kings such as Maharana Pratap and thus to the glories ofRajasthan’s Hindu past. That is, Bhats emphasize their ancestral connectionwith Hindu kings and devotion to Ram in order to associate themselves moreclosely with the BJP platform and thus to appeal to this party’s leadership.These claims are clearly a political ploy, given that these same Bhats hide theirown community’s mixed Muslim-Hindu roots – four of the fourteen Bhatclans claim descent from Muslim founders – in order to secure work as BJPpropagandists. Indeed, again using puppet drama, Bhats strive equally ferventlyto spread a message of religious brotherhood for the BJP’s political rivals suchas the Congress party (for Bhat political propaganda work, and their dualHindu-Muslim roots, see Snodgrass 2004c).

We can now bring together discussions of the two key questions addressedin this article – the question of how Bhats characterize the relationshipbetween priesthood and kingship as markers of caste primacy, and the ques-tion of why the formerly untouchable Bhats speak so persistently of kings androyal bardship in ostensibly modern and casteless India. Other scholars havecontended that bards, as assurers of truth, maintainers of collective memories,and establishers of royal identity, served as the ‘kingpin’ around which tradi-tional society turned (see e.g.Tambs-Lyche 1997: 318). Bards, rather than kingsor priests, can thus be understood from certain perspectives as the ‘centre’ ofthe traditional Hindu polity – thus providing one compelling answer to thefirst question addressed in this article. My informants, however, have seizedthe former roles of the elite Bhats and Charans. Claiming to speak authori-tatively for kings and the Rajasthani past, the formerly untouchable Nats-turned-Bhats, ensconced in everything from tourism to folklore exhibitionswith nationalist and regionalist agendas, now present themselves as dedicated


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guardians of local Hindu identity. My Bhat informants place neither kings,priests, nor elite bards at the centre of society. Rather, they centre societyaround their own interloping selves – a fitting testament perhaps to the bewil-dering inversions of democratic Rajasthan, and a logical if not altogetherstraightforward resolution to the second question.

Conclusion: poor players strutting on life’s stage

Elite bards in pre-Independence Rajasthan were undeniably political actors:they used praise and genealogy to establish the authority and legitimacy ofkings. The Bhats who were former acrobats also politically ‘resist’ dominantstructures of value that render them marginal, and thus manifest what has beenreferred to as a state of ‘dominance without hegemony’ (the phrase is takenfrom the title of a well-known article by Ranajit Guha [1997]; see also Chatterjee 1989; Gold & Gujar 2002). In past centuries, bards were widelyrecognized as moral and even sacred persons: after their death, some womenof Charan descent (Charanis) were revered as goddesses and protectors of theregion’s Rajputs (Tambs-Lyche 1997: ch. 7). And my informants, who werethemselves ‘worshipped’ by their Bhambhi patrons, often framed their politi-cal actions in ethical terms – oppression by elites, my informants sometimesargued, morally justified resistance by themselves and their low-status patrons.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that my Bhat informants elevatebards over kings. In doing so, these Bhats, though clearly able to speak in apolitical register, do not themselves ground society in the political. Further,these low-status praise-singers shift the debate concerning the superiority ofkings and priests to the related issue of the relative rank of kings and bards.In removing priests from this classic Indian conundrum, my Bhat informants,though again able to manipulate moral discourse with considerable skill, de-emphasize the religious dimensions of social relations.19

Indeed, like many South Asian communities, my Bhat informants do notrecognize a hard-and-fast distinction between politics and religion – forexample, they see kings as beings whose sacred powers equip them to sustainboth their land and its people.20 Of greater importance to the arguments pre-sented here, I have suggested that my informants emphasize neither the politi-cal nor the moral dimensions of social hierarchies, be they separated orcombined. Rather, in pointing to the manner in which my Bhat informantsinsist on the linguistic prowess of bards – and in particular bardic skill in com-posing praise-poems and authoritative genealogies – I have sought to under-line the sense of the poetic which is central to the way in which myinformants see themselves.

I have framed my informants’ concerns in terms of the notion of ‘centres’and ‘margins’. It has been widely recognized that South Asians use a numberof different reference points in constructing both the hierarchical relations oftheir social order, and the wider cosmic setting in which these relations aresituated. These value systems establish their own distinct ideological centres,each of which may be thought of as an unchallengeable source of truth,meaning, and status. Rajputs generally make their claims of superior status interms of kingship and patronage. Brahmins, on the other hand, often, thoughnot invariably, focus on ideas of purity and pollution as the ultimate source


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of value and thus the key to social hierarchy. Further, in establishing centres,persons in these caste communities also create social margins. Patron-kingspush dependent client communities to the social margins. Brahmins, likewise,tend to judge degraded persons such as Bhats and their Bhambhi patrons tobe peripheral, and even ‘other’, to society.

What I have tried to show through an exploration of their tales is that myinformants see these distinctions between centres and margins as a kind offiction or invention. Phrasing this in the language of poststructural criticaltheory, I suggest that, as praise-singers, low-status Bhats are masters of a tacticwhich one might refer to as the ‘decentring’ of dominant systems of socialvalue. What this entails is the systematic reversal of dominant groups’ con-ceptualizations of the world, so that what might otherwise seem marginal anddegraded becomes central and superior. In their tales, my informants are effec-tively arguing that, although they are economically dependent on patrons andritually polluted in comparison to Brahminical priestly groups, bards still havethe power to make themselves central to social and moral order through theexercise of their skills of language and representation. Indeed, Bhats furtherargue that bards, because they wield such power over language and represen-tation, are in some regards superior to both kings and priests.

Other scholars, too, have seen Indian social relations in multidimensionalor ‘perspectival’ terms. Notions of rank and status do not necessarily arise froma single discourse of value. Depending on the context and situation, actorsmay think of caste identities in many different ways, often with the effect ofgenerating very different accounts of how particular groups are to be relatedor ranked in any given social setting (e.g. Bayly 1999: 19; Burghart 1978;Malamoud 1981; Peabody 1997; Raheja 1988; 1990). Following Burghart(1978), I too see that the key question here is how actors may seek to resolvethe paradoxes which arise from their handling of different codes, each imply-ing a different definition of hierarchy.

In this article I have sought to identify one of a number of possible waysin which such divergent claims to superiority may be regulated. Focusing onthe social practices of bards, I have explored the ways in which they use theirskills as praise-singers to validate particular claims to social and moral cen-trality. Through their artfully delivered linguistic performances, they establishcertain centres or hierarchies as being ‘encompassed’ by others.

Furthermore, in giving prominence to the Bhat praise-singers’ own reflec-tions on their work, I have tried to show that as poets, story-tellers, and evenproviders of their own ethnographic self-descriptions, my informants arethemselves aware of the same processes which have been documented andtheorized by academic specialists. Many of the Bhats I know were explicit indrawing attention to the ways in which their use of language has the powerto establish and confirm status hierarchies, even if these points were madeindirectly, through the telling of their stories.21

Finally, in my attempt to address a key conundrum of Indian sociology fromthe perspective of my Bhat ethnography, I have sought to reformulate thelong-running debate about competing status hierarchies as a discussion of lin-guistic representation. More specifically, I have drawn attention to my infor-mants’ ‘double-talk’, and their reflections on the unstable nature of linguisticconstructs, as for example in their portrayal of Ram as both ‘evil-doer’ and‘breaker of karma’. My aim here has been to show that when Bhats think of


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hierarchies, they do not see them merely as multiple and contested, but per-ceive them as social fictions of a very particular kind. The stories which Idocument here therefore indicate the presence among my informants of a‘critical imagination’ (Holston 1999) through which relations of caste are sub-jected to probing forms of scrutiny and thereby revealed to be both con-structed and contingent. Hence, to borrow a phrase used to characterize thelinguistic strategies of the Elizabethan theatre, my informants’ ‘purpose ofplaying’ does ‘not lie in the explicit advocacy of specific political positions butrather in the implicit but pervasive suggestion that all such positions are situ-ational, provisional, and motivated by the passions and interests of their advo-cates’ (Montrose 2000: 41). In other words, whether high born or lowly, weare all but poor players who strut and fret their hour on the stage of life.

To return to the phrasing of this article’s opening myth, the behaviour ofmy Bhat informants is akin to that of the forces that tear apart the primor-dial human, Purusa: they literally dismember the dominant and apparently naturalized constructs of the social body. At the same time, however, there isa double sense in which these low-status Bhats act as ‘rememberers’. Per-forming their tasks as both genealogists and historians, they remember in thesense of keeping the past alive, and they also ‘re-member’ in the sense of recon-structing or reconstituting, that is putting something back together after it hasbeen divided or disassembled. In both senses, then, Bhats use words to recom-pose the world.

My informants’ stories of primeval bodies and bickering fingers, then, likethose of bards and kings, do not concern caste relations or social hierarchiesper se. Rather, turning self-reflexively back on themselves, these tales are imagi-native commentaries and even meditations on a perennial Bhat obsession –that of poetic composition.There is therefore both a ‘politics and a poetics oftransgression’ (Stallybrass & White 1986). My Bhat informants, given theirrootedness in local performance traditions, distinctly emphasize the poetical.

NOTES

1 As I use the terms, collections of intermarrying exogamous clans ( gotras) form endogamouscastes ( jatis) whose members in turn stake claims to belong to one of the four ancient Vedicvarnas. Thus, for example, fourteen intermarrying Bhat clans ( gotras) form a caste ( jati ) whosemembers, though considered by many to be formerly untouchable, claim not only to be Sudrasbut, as we shall see shortly, also Brahmins and Kshatriyas. On the Purusa myth, and generallyfor the interrelation of varna and jati, see Bayly (1999: 8-19).

2 Five Bhat sisters and a brother, all in their early to mid-50s, constitute the core of this smallBhat community. Most Bhats originate in the western Rajasthani districts of Nagaur and Sikkar,where thousands currently reside. For Rajasthan’s performing communities, see Bhanavat (1971),Kothari (1994), and Samar (1972). On the Bhat community, see Snodgrass (2001; 2002a; 2002b;2004a; 2004b; forthcoming).

3 Bayly (1999: 14-24) suggests, building on the work of scholars such as Burghart (1978),Das (1982), Dumont (1980), and Heesterman (1985), that the world-renouncer constitutes athird element to this conundrum, a point which is beyond the scope of this article.

4 Man Singh, a Rajput king who lived from 1550 to 1614 and who accepted service underthe Mughal emperor, Akbar, is still a famous figure in contemporary Rajasthan and the subjectof much widely known bardic lore in the region.

5 ‘Rajput’, which combines the Hindi raja (king) with putra (son) to make ‘son of a king’ or‘prince’, is used to describe Rajasthan’s former feudal lords.


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6 Rajasthani castes typically have three names: one respectful, one neutral, and one demean-ing (Kothari 1994: 205). In this case, Bhambhi is the most neutral of the three terms. Meghwalis used by Bhambhis to make a higher status claim – specifically, that they are descended fromthe Hindu saint, Megh. Balai, on the other hand, connotes degrading leather-work.

7 Dirks find inspiration in Hocart’s (1950) thoughts on caste, which emphasize the rituallycentral roles of kings.

8 For their services, bards were awarded tax-exempt territories.9 For further details on the bards of kings, see Dirks (1998a: 67), Enghoven (1975 [1920-3]),

Quanungo (1957; 1969), Russell (1969 [1916]), Tessitori (1919), Tod (1978 [1829-32]), andZiegler (1976); on bards as intermediate in status between Brahmins and Kshatriyas, see Tambs-Lyche (1997: ch. 7).

10 On the bards of low- and middle-status communities, see Chambard (1963); Kothari(1994); Raheja (1988); Shah and Shroff (1959); Tambs-Lyche (1997: 154).

11 On ‘Rajputization’ in Rajasthan (that is, the mimicry by tribals and others of Rajput beliefand practice), see Unnithan-Kumar (1997).

12 For similar statements, see Tambs-Lyche 1997: 174.13 My informants said that their ancestors made similar threats when faced with stingy

patrons. For further details concerning these practices, which are referred to as traga, see Bayly(1999: 87) and Tambs-Lyche (1997: ch. 7).

14 Jag Niwas ( Jag’s residence), now commonly referred to as the Lake Palace, was built in the1740s by Maharana Jagat Singh II on a 4-acre island in Udaipur’s Lake Pichola.The palace wasconverted to a tourist hotel and restaurant in the early 1960s and is now run by the Taj Groupof Hotels.

15 In past centuries, too, Rajasthan ‘tribals’ apparently recruited bards to create or confirmtheir claims of royal ancestry (see Bayly [1999: 45]).

16 Caste panchayat meetings are now sometimes thought to be a myth created by colonialethnographers. Here, I am simply reporting accounts of local Rajasthanis, rather than theirclaims of royal ancestry (see Bayly [1999: 45]).

17 On the history of Bhat puppetry, see Bharucha (2003: ch. 9) and Jairazbhoy (n.d.). Myinformants’ narration of their history diverges significantly from these two accounts.

18 My Bhat informants are still referred to as acrobats of the Bhambhis or Balais – that is, asBhambhion ke Nat or Balaion ke Nat – in their home district of Nagaur. As discussed in note5 (above) for Bhambhis, many Rajasthani castes have alternative respectful and derogatorynames. The Bhat case is unique, however, in that these titles reflect a true dual identity ratherthan titles that are used to demonstrate either respect or disrespect in the same geographicalarea. That is, Bhat puppeteers do not identify themselves as the acrobats or even the bards ofBhambhis in other parts of Rajasthan or India. On this point, see Bharucha (2003: 31, 208-9).

19 On the bard-priest rivalry, see Tambs-Lyche (1997: ch. 10).20 For a similar perspective, see Burghart (1978), Dirks (1987; 1989), Hocart (1950), and

Raheja (1988; 1990).21 On the ‘sociological’ insights of Indian minstrels, see Beck (1982).

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Department of Anthropology, C-209 Andrew G. Clark Bldg., Colorado State University, Fort Collins,CO 80523-1787, USA. [email protected]


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THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD: TALES OF HIERARCHY AND POETIC COMPOSITION FROM MODERN RAJASTHAN

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