The Autobiography of Sant Bahinabai (2023)
Edited, translated, annotated and introduced by Chandrakant Kaluram Mhatre
Sant Bahinabai (1628–1700) endured prolonged domestic violence from an early age after being married off as a toddler to a thirty-year-old widower. The abuse continued even when she was three months pregnant. What makes her life and work extraordinary is that she gave voice to these experiences in her poems, producing what is perhaps the first autobiographical account by a woman in India. Her writings stand among the earliest literary testimonies of domestic violence and contain some of the most powerful critiques of patriarchy in premodern Indian literature. A contemperory and follower of Sant Tuakaram, she has also documented Tukaram's persecution at the hands of the caste-supremacists, which she herself witnessed during her stay in Dehu. Bahinabai also translated the Vajrasuchi Upanishad, an anti-caste Sanskrit text, into Marathi, making her one of the earliest known women translators in India.
Featured Poem
काय पाप केले पूर्वील ये जन्मीं
Source Text
काय पाप केले
पूर्वील ये जन्मीं
आता पुरुषोत्तमी
अंतरले
लाधले नरदेह
स्त्रियेचेनी रूपे
असंख्यात पापे
फळा आली
आधिकार नाही
वेदार्थ श्रवणी
गायत्री ब्राह्मणीं
गुप्त केली
करू नये मुखे
प्रणवाचा उच्चार
बीजाचा संचार
ऐको नये
बोलो नये बोल
पराचिया संगे
भ्रतार तो अंगे
जमदग्नी
बहिणी म्हणे होतो
जीव कासावीस
नये देवाजीस
करुणा माझी
●🙙🙛●
Target Text
What sins committed
During previous lives
That I am separated now
From the Lord?
Borne as a human though,
In the form of a woman:
Seems to be culmination
Of uncountable sins.
Deprived of the right
To studying scriptures;
Gayatri1 is hidden away
By the brahmins.
I must not articulate
The sounds of Omkar;
Must not hear at all
Chanting of mantras.
I must not speak a word
With another man:
My husband is an incarnation
Of Jamadagni.2
Baheni says mind
Gets smothered;
The Lord too shows me
No mercy.
●🙙🙛●
1. A sacred chant from the Rigveda in praise of the divine light of the Sun that illuminates the intellect. Access to its recitation was traditionally restricted, with non-Brahmins and even Brahmin women prohibited from chanting it.
2. An ancient sage known for his violent temper, who ordered his son Parashurama to behead his mother Renuka for looking at another man.
SELECTED PoemS
My father belongs / To the great Maunas clan
मौनस गोत्र माझ्या / पित्याचे वरिष्ठ
(Read)
With parents and brother / Returned afterwards
पिता माता बंधु / समवेत बिऱ्हाडी
(Read)
Mambaji Gosavi / Said to my husband
मंबाजी गोसावी / भ्रतारासी म्हणे
(Read)
Now if we say / Caste makes the brahmin
आता याती लागी / म्हणावे ब्राम्हण
(Read)