Sharma 1

Kaamya Y. Sharma

SCILET – Kavya Bharati

24 June 2013

Forgotten Women’s Songs - The Barahmasas as a Vernacular Phenomenon

In the Kiskindha Kaanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, there is a spell where Rama waits

and pines for Sita in Mount Prasravana. The translated passage goes thus:

“Rama and Lakshmana settled in a long, wide cave at the top of the mountain. But

though they lived on such a pleasant and beauteous mountain, Rama was not happy. He

thought constantly about his abducted wife who was dearer to him than life. He would lie

down every night, but the beauty of his surroundings made it impossible for him to

sleep…One day, Rama said, “The rainy season has begun. Look at the sky covered with

mountainous clouds! It is as if the sky drank the ocean’s essence through the rays of the

sun and after holding it in her womb for nine months, now puts it forth! You feel as if you

could climb to the sky on this ladder of clouds and place a garland of flowers around the

sun. The sky is like a pining lover, the gentle breeze his sighs, the evening clouds, the

sandal paste upon his chest, the white clouds the pallor of his face…Cranes are drawn to

the clouds by desire and fly around them in formation…Sleep comes slowly as a river

moving to the ocean, but the crane rushes to the cloud and the woman runs to her

lover…”” (Sattar 344-345)

The story of Rama is often said to elicit the Karuna Rasa or the pathetic sentiment

in the reader but it is interesting to look at the epic as being more specifically about Viraha or
 Sharma 2

separation from one’s beloved. As a recurring trope in the Ramayana, Rama is separated from

his father and mother, Lakshmana from his wife Urmila, Rama from Sita, and the people of

Ayodhya from their beloved Rama and so on. Viraha thus forms the fractal thread upon which

the epic builds itself in a self-referential manner. It would be interesting to study the depiction of

Viraha, a word that is common to a lot of the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, in the South

Asian ethos. In the aforementioned passage from the Valmiki Ramayana, Rama is the Viraha

who suffers grief against the backdrop of the monsoons. Those elements of the monsoon which

traditionally induce happiness are inversely catalogued as tropes of despair here. The epic simile

of the clouds is the leitmotif of this passage and is a natural image often associated with Viraha.

The idioms and phrases that characterize the telling of the Valmiki Ramayana have percolated

into the folk and literary consciousnesses of people. There is a narrative of connectedness and

shared ends and means (in terms of style and method) between canonical and folk forms of South

Asian literature and what better example of this than the high and universal incidence of the

depiction of Viraha in our myth and storytelling.

The Barahmasas are a widespread intermediary genre that contained themselves in the

vernacular languages spoken across North India. They fell in the cracks between high and

popular literary culture, oral, manuscript and print culture. These poems, by linking themselves

to geo-organic tropes and cyclical ways of understanding time, carry a certain universal, trans-

temporal quality that evokes Rasa as universal, aesthetic emotion.

The Barahmasa, or ‘Song of Twelve Months’, is a medieval lyric genre that defines itself

by three basic conventions – the employment of a woman’s voice, cataloguing of images

pertaining to the seasons and the Viraha trope or lamentation of a woman separated from her

beloved. It is a poetic convention that typically carries twelve stanzas, each descriptive of a
 Sharma 3

certain month of the year in sequence. It is believed to have developed from an older, more

primitive seasonal poem called the Caumasa, which described four months of the rainy season as

opposed to twelve months. A genre characterized by remarkable fluidity and flexibility, these

poems are prevalent across North India in a multitude of vernacular languages such as Gujarati,

Rajasthani, Avadhi, Braj, Urdu, and Hindi. They have been employed in a purely enumerative

fashion or for didactic religious purposes or as part of larger fictional narratives.

The Barahmasas, despite their close resemblance to the Sanskrit poetic tradition of

Sadrtu-varnana (description of the six seasons), are considered to have their origins in a purely

popular, folk tradition. They are unique for their peculiar combination of the encyclopaedic

tendencies of such traditions as the Sadrtu-varnana and the pathetic element of Viraha or the

lament of separation.

1. Types of Barahmasas

Charlotte Vaudeville, an Indologist who has worked on the Barahmasas, provides the

following classification:

 The religious Barahmasa

 The farmer’s Barahmasa

 The narrative Barahmasa (part of an epic poem)

 The Viraha Barahmasa, concerned with a wife’s longing while separated from

her husband for twelve months of the year

 The ‘trial of chastity’ Barahmasa (8)

The narrative Barahmasa could either be part of a longer narrative work (while not

necessarily being narrative of itself) or it could be an independent poem. The Chandayan,

 Sharma 4

Mrgavati, and Padmavat are famous examples of Avadhi verse novels containing Barahmasas.

They are usually not sung by the eponymous or central female characters but by the wife who is

abandoned by the husband for the main heroine such as Nagamati’s Barahmasa in Muhammad

Jayasi’s Padmavat. In the Barahmasa of Test, a young wife’s chastity is put to trial for twelve

months when her husband is away. The temptation takes place in the form of a dialogue between

the Virahini and a Dooti (mediator) or the Virahini and Sakhi (female companion). The

Barahmasas are thus a dialogic genre sometimes, involving a conversation between the Virahini

and a peripheral, instrumental character.

Barahmasas have also been appropriated by different religious sects for their specific

didactic purposes. The Jain Barahmasas predominantly centre around Prince Neminatha, a

Yadava cousin of Krishna’s, who abandons his fiancée Rajimati on their wedding day in the

interests of holy renunciation. The Jains were the first to use the Barahmasa in this didactic

manner. The Viraha-Barahmasa here takes this form: some occurrence/happening causes the

hero to renounce worldly pleasures; the heroine who is attached to the hero pines in vain for

twelve months and at the end of this period, is converted to the ascetic way of life. Viraha is

employed as a poetic device to highlight the evils of worldly attachments from which the only

redemption is in renunciation.

Vinayachandra Suri’s Neminatha-Chatuspadika is a Jain barahmasa that is absolutely

dialogic and goes back and forth between the Nayika, Princess Rajimati and her Sakhi who acts

as devil’s advocate in the poem. While Rajal meditates and dwells only on her love for her

husband who has deserted her on their wedding day, the Sakhi keeps exhorting her to take

comfort and solace elsewhere and forget Nemi. True to the Jain tradition, Rajal or Rajimati
 Sharma 5

ultimately transcends her earthly love for a more enhanced Siddhi state of mind. This is captured

in the 35th and 36th stanzas thus:

35. In the month of Ashadh, Rajal had taken heart,

To the roar of thunder and lightning she pays no heed –

She, Ugrasen’s daughter, utters these words:

“Let me practice Dharma, let me serve at my Husband’s feet.

36. Rajal meets her friend, who reproaches her, saying:

“Can one chew black pepper as if it were chickpea?

Hold your tongue, my dear, and don’t talk such nonsense:

Hard indeed is the way of asceticism – and you are so delicate!” (Vaudeville 104)

To this, Rajal replies saying her soul no longer craves pleasure and that she sought refuge only in

her spouse. The poem ends with her becoming a Siddhi and forsaking all earthly pleasures.

The Sufis tended to look at the Viraha in a different manner. The Sufis’ liking for Viraha

stemmed from their comparing it to the Persian notion of ‘Ishq’ – ‘an inextinguishable fire, a

mortal torment consuming those whom it possesses, bearing them inexorably towards death’

(Vaudeville 38). This is divine in origin and therefore it is the contemplation of Viraha rather

than the transcending of it that emancipates the soul. The Virahini of the Viraha-Barahmasa here

becomes a Virahi or a hero who suffers the tortures of separation from the supreme Ideal.
 Sharma 6

2. Viraha Barahmasa

The farmer’s Barahmasa and the religious Barahmasa are considered the oldest versions

of the Barahmasa. The didactic Barahmasa is a later development of the enumerative or

descriptive Barahmasa, which merely catalogued seasonal and cultural elements.

Viraha is a trope that has been used extensively in South Asian art and aesthetics. The

speciality of the Viraha Barahmasa is characterized most accurately by Vaudeville in this

passage,

“In the Viraha-Barahmasa, the list of the twelve months is not merely a framework

for one content or another. There is always a link between the heroine’s feelings

and the description of nature during the month in question. This combination of the

descriptive element with the pathetic element in an inseparable whole is a basic

feature of the Viraha-Barahmasa, the objects or phenomena described having a

symbolic meaning or an affective resonance which is immediately comprehended

by the peasant mind: the clouds of the month of Asadha, the night calls of water

birds; others having a sexual connotation – the Holi game, the ripe mango whose

juice runs in vain, the swing, and so on” (15-16).

The western origins of the Barahmasa are hypothesized to have resulted from large

sections of the male population in provinces extending across Gujarat and Rajasthan being

engaged in trading and military service. This entailed their being away from homes for long

periods of time and only returning for the rainy season, the time that women celebrate, bless and

long for. If the husband is late in returning, then the wife laments his tardiness and her solitude
 Sharma 7

against the foil of happier homes where couples are reunited. The husband in later Viraha-

Barahmasas is almost always a merchant trader who is away on work in other provinces.

The abstract notion of Viraha or separation is given form and life in particular ways in

Nagamati’s Barahmasa in Jayasi’s Padmavat. Viraha is variously described as a god, an

elephant that tramples upon the Virahini’s heart, a war-lord who assembles his troops and comes

charging in his chariot, frequently as Fire that devours the Virahini’s soul, a hawk that circles her

flesh waiting to eat it, as Death himself, as Wind that tosses the Virahini hither and thither, as a

never-ceasing parrot, as the love God who taunts deserted lovers, a ravenous crow that gnaws on

bones and so on. The images are invariably harsh, abusive and punishing. The personification of

Viraha in this manner is evocative of the fact that the Virahini is suffering a fate beyond her

control. Her emotional torment transmutes itself into descriptions of physical pain by the

employment of these images.

3. Time and Seasonality in the Barahmasa

The Barahmasa format of twelve stanzas for twelve months is simple yet alters our

perceptions of time minutely. Apart from the more obvious notion that time is cyclical and

seasonal rather than linear, time is recorded organically by changes in geographic and

topographic landscapes and emotionally by the lament of the Virahini. The Barahmasa is a time

reckoner in that it catalogues time in multiple ways such that it becomes a relative construct and

made tangible, for instance, in the context of the number of days for which a ritual is undertaken,

by the ripening of a fruit, by the arrival of rains and so on. The seasonal and topographic changes

become synaesthetic with time and this synaesthesia is a continuum that seeps into the emotive

mood of the lyric itself. The idea of pain and longing over seemingly long periods of time are
 Sharma 8

metonymically evoked by the onset of gales or rains, or barren winters, or the singing of mating

birds and frogs.

Time is also organic to region in the manner that it is described here. The passage of time

for the heroine is contingent on the blossoming of the Champa tree and onset of the monsoons.

The immediacy that each stanza brings to the reader by its description of ritual and minute

observations about natural life is in stark contrast with the overarching tone of suffering in the

poem. The Virahini is frozen in her attitude of Viraha and suffering against a backdrop that

changes according to season and calendrical time. Depending on the nature of the backdrop, the

Virahini is either in sympathy with her surroundings or painfully alienated from them. For

instance, in Nagamati’s Barahmasa during the month of Baisakh:

Baisakh has come, so great is the heat

That my sandal-scented corselet burns me:

The sun itself, feeling the heat, turns towards the Himalaya

But Virah turns his chariot straight at me!

In that dreadful fire, I am consumed – O my beloved, overshadow me,

Come and put out those live coals:

At your sight, your wife will find relief,

Come and turn this inferno into a flower-garden!

I am parched like the grain in the parcher’s oven:

 Sharma 9

Parched again and again, I can’t escape the hot sand! (Vaudeville 72-73)

There is a continuity of image here from the heat of Baisakh to the glowing hot sun to the

Virahini burning with insatiable lust to the practice of parching food-grains in India, all

evocative of burning and unquenched thirst. The Virahini finds empathy in her environment and

interprets all seasonal changes as reflective of the torment in her soul. Contrastingly, in the

month of Chaitra in the same Barahmasa,

In Chaitra, they all sing “Basant” and “Dhamari”

But to me the whole world seems to lay waste!

…............................................................................

Now the mango blossoms have given place to the fruit:

Remember your house, come back, O blessed One!

Now the trees are radiant with myriads of shades,

Now the bee has come back, remembering the Malati flower-

To me these flowers are like so many thorns

And their sight stings me like the bite of red-ants!

Heavy are the fruit of Youth on the branch of the orange-tree

And that parrot, Virah, cannot be chased away!

As the homer rushes back to its dove-cot,

 Sharma 10

So rush home, my beloved,

For your wife has fallen into another’s power

And you alone can save her! (Vaudeville 72)

The seasonal images here serve to produce the effect of contrast as the heroine uses the

fecundity of her surroundings as a foil for her own sexual barrenness. Recurring motifs are the

cries of frogs, peacocks, and Papiha-birds, the piu-piu cry of the Koil-bird1, the Saras bird

calling out nostalgically for its mate etc. It is mating season everywhere but in the Virahini’s

household. The idea of the Virahini’s youth as something that is rapidly declining or being

wasted away in pining occurs recurrently in the Barahmasa:

The lake of my heart is drying up, little by little it shrinks,

Soon it’ll crack and burst into pieces (Vaudeville 73)

…..................................................................................

Another example is Ilahi Bakhsh’s Bikat Kahani, that describes the month of Baisakh thus:

Nightingales make merry in the garden chirping loudly and noisily.

The happy partridge struts and coos, flirting happily with the fir tree.

While the ring-dove cooing aloud sets my poor breast on fire.

Oh anywhere I hear the cuckoo’s cry; it’s a dagger piercing my poor heart.

When the turtle dove raises its sudden cry, it takes away this poor woman’s heart.

1
Piu also meaning beloved
 Sharma 11

These calls and cries have made me distracted; the memory of my beloved is burning me.

(Orsini, “Barahmasas in Hindi and Urdu” 163)

The scarlet rain-insect or lady-bird is another image associated with the rainy season that

extends metaphorically to the tears of blood that the Virahini weeps. The environs of a

Barahmasa are thus deployed to bring out the emotive affect of the Nayika. The Barahmasa is

anthropocentric in that the surrounding flora and fauna forming the atmosphere of the poem are

metaphors for the Virahini’s plaint.

The stanzas are marked by a notion of month, season and constellation (to give a sense of

the days that pass by in each month). Nagamati, in particular, makes references to stars and

months in more senses than merely that of time; these have associations that serve to highlight

her sexual longing. For instance,

When the constellation Ardra appears, the earth receives the seed-

But to me, a wife away from her husband, who will pay honour? (Vaudeville 64)

In a footnote, Vaudeville mentions,

“Ardra, the 11th among the 28 nakshatras, “constellations of the year”, is the first

constellation of the rainy season. There is a pun here on Ardra (written adra in the

text), the nakshatra which presides to the sowing of the seed in the fields, and

adara, “honour”. The sense may be: “Who will give me the seed?” or “Who will

honour me?” by allusion to the fecundation of the wife by her husband’s seed at the

onset of the rains” (64).

 Sharma 12

Mentions of Pushya, Punarvasu, Magha, Agasti and Purva abound in the poem. One may

imagine that such a Barahmasa in performance would also be useful as a mnemonic to

remember the constellations and seasons of the year, more so for its association with organic and

natural imagery. It is important to note here that while the Barahmasa convention is adhered to

in these poems, the context created by the mention of ritual and seasonal changes is entirely

specific to the region that the poem comes from. Thus it is that Nagamati’s Barahmasa carries

mention of the oven-hot wind Lu that blows over the Thar Desert region in the month of

Jyeshtha while the Barahmasa-varnana in Old Marathi describes the Shravani-purnima or

Narali-purnima as it is known in Maharashtra.

A predominant recurrent motif associated with the months of Asadha (the build-up to the

monsoon) and Sravana (the monsoon month) is that of clouds thundering and lightning striking.

Let us compare, for instance, this section from three different Barahmasas. This is Nagamati’s

Barahmasa:

Ashadh has come, clouds rumble in the sky,

Virah gathers his troops and beats the war-drum:

Gray, blue-black or white, armies of clouds rush up

And the flocks of white cranes in the sky look like floating banners.

On all sides, flashes of lightning glisten like naked swords,

And menacing clouds shower rain-drops hard as arrows. (Vaudeville 64)

Afzal, the famous Urdu poet who is credited with introducing the Barahmasa to Urdu by

his poem Bikat Kahani, depicts the onset of rains in the month of Savan or Sravana thus:
 Sharma 13

Savan has come with drums and kettledrums; without my love I have no company.

Black clouds overcast; the army of birah has attacked me. (Orsini, “Barahmasas in Hindi

and Urdu” 158)

Uzlat, another Urdu poet who took his cue from Afzal, expresses the same in his

Barahmasa in the following terms:

Asarh came, and armies of clouds; gale after gale blowing swords of ice.

Tears of stone fell, ruins galore; hail crushed my heart to pieces. (Orsini, “Barahmasas in

Hindi and Urdu” 161)

Looking at the corresponding description from Rajal’s Barahmasa:

In the month of Shravan, the clouds roar loudly

And my body is burnt in the fire of Separation

Flashes of lightning, to me, are like devouring monsters:

O my friend, how shall I survive without Nemi? (Vaudeville 98)

This dramatic element creates a delicate balance between the immediacy of images of

thunder and lightning and the long-term sorrow and memories of a Virahini.

4. The folk tradition of the Barahmasa in the context of Sanskrit poetics

The idea of a Virahini takes us to the canonical Natya Shastra, the 4th century treatise by

Bharata on the performing arts. While expounding on characterization, Bharata discusses the

Nayika Bhavas in some detail. The Nayika Bhavas characterize the heroine based on age,
 Sharma 14

experience, temperament and her present situation with respect to her lover. In performance, the

presenter of a song could employ these indices for the heroine and subtly transform the lyrical

and emotional import of the words. Thus while it is the Virahotkhandita, or one grief-stricken by

separation from her lover, who is the dominant motive/motif of the Viraha Barahmasa, she could

be portrayed as an inexperienced ingénue (Mugdha), or as partially experienced in love

(Madhya) or as married and loyal to the husband (Sviya), apart from other types. Compositions,

in effect, need not reflect only one state of mind; it is in the unique conjunction of mood,

atmosphere and context that poetic effect is achieved.

It is useful, in this context, to look at V. K. Chari’s definition of Rasa as evocation and

literature as emotive discourse in his book ‘Sanskrit Criticism’. Chari states, “if one emotional

pattern is exhibited over and over again and is echoed and re-echoed in all parts of the work, that

pattern would then become the dominant theme and dictate the tone of the entire work” (62). The

challenge that Sanskrit Criticism poses to the larger discourse on literature and literary theories is

its problematizing of the binary between intellectuality and emotion. Rasa theory does not

alienate the operations of the intellect in its quest for emotive effect. Rather, the intellect is built

into the structural components of emotive mood in the manner of a convenient double bind.

Poetic expression, according to Chari, is “coextensive with intelligent discourse and often takes

the form of assertions, denials, questions, explanations, and so on. It uses all the structures of

logical reasoning, sometimes in perverted ways, although poetry is not, as a rule, mere pseudo-

logic” (73). The conjunction of all the factors and expressions outlined is provided in such a way

that aesthetic unity is contingent without being tyrannically so. The epistemic uncertainty of

postmodern scholarship and its lack of a centre (either deliberate or apologetic) are proven

unnecessary in the face of this manner of canonizing and defining literature.

 Sharma 15

The Barahmasas typify this convention of poetry in the folk or literary idiom depending on

the occasion for which the song is sung or written. They fulfill the conjunction of Vibhava (cause

or occasion of emotion), Anubhava (bodily expression of emotion) and Vyabhicharibhava

(emotion that feeds the dominant emotion or Sthayibhava) and evoke Rasa in their unique

manner. Looking at the following excerpt:

From the day Asarh began, I’ve been dejected, everybody repairs their homes,

Inside my girl friends have spread their beds.

Your memory haunts me, my love, my heart flutters, lightning scares me, Indra thunders,

My friend, rivers and canals overflow, the sea is full.

The sight of clouds scares me, treacherous frogs croak,

Without my love I’m disrespected, my wrap is soaked in tears,

All around peacocks cry, black clouds thunder, you cannot

See the sky.

Refrain:

I feel like eating poison and dying.

Thus says the lovely woman, listen husband, the bed is ready, no trouble at home.

My love, don’t leave me to go away. (Orsini, “Hindi and Urdu Barahmasas in Print” 49-50)

This forms the first stanza of Allahbaksh ka Barahmasa. While the dominant mood or

Sthayibhava is firmly established as sorrow caused by Viraha (separation) which is the Vibhava

or occasion, Vyabhicharibhavas like jealousy, shame, anxiety and despair act as supplements to

the principal emotion. The mention of the month at the outset of the stanza, followed by a

description of routine such as people repairing their homes and spreading their beds against the
 Sharma 16

backdrop of seasonal indications such as thunder, lightning and croaking frogs (a sexual motif)

provides the Uddipana-Vibhava or enhancements to the bleak and sorrowful mood of the

heroine. The Anubhava is naturally absent in the written form of the poem, but in performance, it

would be demonstrated using all the signs and body language typically associated with a

Virahini. The Viraha Barahmasa is hence a most apt example of poetry that follows a certain

logical structure while emoting in a monologic or dialogic voice and hence reflective of

canonical poetic theories such as the theory of Rasa. What is also worth noting is the easy

adaptability of the tone of this poetry to performance, for the lament of the heroine unfolds much

like a dramatic soliloquy, harking back to Abhinavagupta’s definition of poetry as essentially

drama, a verbal enactment of the emotions (Chari 3).

The Rasa framework comes with its own historical contingencies and the categories it

outlines are products of cultural and spatial time. The idea of Rasa has become reified and

confined to Sanskritic pedagogies and epistemologies in spite of its presence (defined or latent)

in folk traditions, making it a culturally exclusive space. That Rasa is achieved due to a deep

mutual sympathy between the text, audience and the performer (who liaises between the two) is

its biggest advantage and limitation simultaneously. It requires a shared understanding of lived

experience and the corresponding semiotics that become its own tyranny. This framework also

leaves openings for elitist ideas of authenticity to constrain what ought to be a free space. Hence,

while Rasa forms a crucial counterpoint to the vast prevalence of epistemic uncertainty in

postmodern literature and ethos, it is important to resituate it within and question it against this

epistemology. Studying vernacular works such as the Barahmasas that reflect this understanding

of Rasa will serve to revive these dying traditions while simultaneously imbuing them with

humility and fluidity in knowing.

 Sharma 17

Barahmasas in Print

Though the Barahmasas remained a largely orally disseminated genre for many

centuries, they enjoyed a period of unprecedented popularity in entertainment publishing in the

19th century. The commercial publishing industry infiltrated the areas of enactment,

performance, mime, story-telling and song by introducing books of pleasure into print. These

books were often published like lithographs to maintain a manuscript look and retain aesthetic

value. This manner of publishing also seems to have allowed for a lot of cross-script

transcription and transliteration, thus indicating a fairly hybrid production of songs and idioms.

This budding print culture sought to provide the embodied pleasures of orality by providing a

bridge between semi-literate audiences and texts in terms of script and presentation and manner

of dissemination. These little songbooks were often sold as wares by story-tellers at fairs and

markets who used them to further their own vocation. The Barahmasas enjoyed the fruits of this

naissance in the 1860s and 70s and some of them saw as many as nineteen reprints in fifteen

years. While previously circulated as part of manuscript culture and orally in a world of

commercial popular singing, the introduction of the Barahmasas into print broke down the

boundaries between male and female public and private spheres respectively. The female

population as a potential reader market emerged as a powerful phenomenon that is difficult to

overlook. The woman in the song was either a Virahini, separated from her husband or a

Suhagin, beloved of her husband and happily united with him.

The Barahmasas thus not only informed the liminal spaces between languages and

dialects of North India but were also part of the crucial transition of oral and manuscript cultures

to a more universally accessible print culture. Though this commercial-publishing market died
 Sharma 18

out by the 1880s, they were responsible for extensive interaction between Hindi and Urdu

literary traditions.

It is appropriate, in conclusion, to elaborate on the performative potential of this poetic

convention. The Barahmasas cut across languages, dialects, court and popular literary traditions,

print and oral media. They are suited for dramatic performance as well as performative ritual like

songs sung at festivals and weddings. They are, in this sense, a truly liminal genre.

The Barahmasas are not original in the Western sense of the word. They thrive on motifs

and similes that are as old as the Valmiki Ramayana. They are a celebration of habit and routine

and the cyclical way of life. It is in the lack of the element of surprise in each stanza, in the

comfort of mnemonic familiarity that its potency as a domestic ritual song lies. This genre has

long since not seen any new composition but it is nevertheless relevant in the vernacular literary

history of South Asia.

 Sharma 19

Works Cited

Chari, V. K. Sanskrit Criticism. New Delhi: Motilal Banarssidas , 1993. Print.

Orsini, Francesca. "Barahmasas in Hindi and Urdu." Ed. Francesca Orsini. Before the Divide:

Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010. 142-177. Print.

---. "Hindi and Urdu Barahmasas in Print." Ed. Francesca Orsini. Print and Pleasure: Popular

Literature and Entertaining Fictions in Colonial North India. Ranikhet: Orient Blackswan

Private Limited, 2009. 49-81. Print.

Valmiki. Ramayana. Trans. Arshia Sattar. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2012. Print.

Vaudeville, Charlotte. Barahmasa in Indian Literatures. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986.

Print.