Summary findings of the Charitro Pakhyan

[amardeep]

Gurfateh

 

I gave it a go and started summarising our analysis of the charitars so far. Interesting to see that we have been going on with this for almost a year and a half now and we are only at charitar 30!! I will update this and add new charitars in the upcoming weeks.

 

 

Frame story Charitar 2

There is an old named King Chitar Singh , who is married to a (celestial?) fairy who he is deeply in love with. After some years she passes away and he is madly in love with her. He has paintings made of her, and sends them throughout India to find someone similar in appearance. A royal princess named Chitar Mati from the kingdom of Orissa is similar to the maiden. The King attacks the kingdom of Orissa, assassinates Chitar Vati’s father and then wins her over through conquest. This young lady later on gets sexually attracted to the son of the old King, the son’s name is Hanwant Singh. She plays a charitar on him in order to be alone with him, - the charitar being that she makes sure, that he will remain illiterate such that his teacher does not teach him anything. The Rani tries to seduce the prince but he refuses to have sex with his step mother (the queen). She then later accuses him of sexually assaulting her. The old King blindly believes in her lies and decides to execute his son, by death penalty. The Minister in the court knows the truth and tries to change the king's mind through a series of Charitars.

 

 

Overall: A long conversation follows between the king and minister. It is a long array of messages that the minister is slowly by slowly trying to impart to the King. In essence, each charitar has a message regarding the king’s situation. Our analysis so far has showed the following messages from each charitar that the minister is trying to tell the king:

·         #2 Main charitar: the frame story of CP is similar to frame stories in the classical Sanskrit Panchtantar, which was also translated by the Guru’s court poets. Katha by Giani Harbhajan Singh says that the rani tried to keep him illiterate in order to have her own son become the successor to the kingdom. This shows that there is some oral traditions attached to the written text that we also need to be aware of. We speculate whether the rani has a grudge against the king because he has killed her entire family and forced her to marry him.

·         #3 - The wise minister attempts to show the King that he is being deceived. In story number 3 it states "that a young woman is captivated by a young man, whilst an old man is captivated by a young woman". This is the exact situation in hand. The young queen was captivated by the King's son, whilst captivating the King's heart herself. So as the wise minister explained in this story, the young woman just said some words to her old lover to keep his infatuation with her brimming, whilst hiding the truth. The old man because of his infatuation with the young woman didn't question her motives and believed her.  In essence: Don’t blindly believe in what you are being told just because you are in love.

·         #4 – The minister is trying to say to the king, that some women can easily deceive a man with their looks and charm and men will act stupid by falling into traps of lust. The story has a greater focus on showing how stupid men can be, rather than how deceptive women can be. The person in this charitar is described as having only 1 eye – this means he is being fair, upholding justice an equality which are all the qualities of a good and kind King. The wise minister has told the King that the woman in the charitar has covered her husbands "one eye" therefore making him unable to uphold fairness/equality/justice . In the charitar it talks about noise, - noise is a representation that everything is not as it seems, but because the eye is covered the husband is not questioning it, even though he should know better. The wise minister is trying to tell the King, your vision of justice has been covered by the queen and you should be more questioning of her.

·         #5 - In this charitrar, the wise minister is trying to tell the King that The Yogi although he had a lot of power (like the King) and displayed it to the girl (as the King did) the girl was not content (as was the Queen) and when she saw that there was a young man (the King's son) more suitable for her  she forgot about the Yogi and her heart became attached to the young man. Basically, The wise minister is trying to tell the King, that a young woman's heart will settle for a more suitable young man over an old man.

There are similarities in this tale with the original tale: The Jogi abducts Sehaj Kala in this Charitar. We also know that Raja Chitar Singh's marriage with Chitarmati was kind of a forced marriage, i.e she was won in a war. She did not marry the king according to her own will. Maybe the wise minister is trying to tell Chitar SIngh that the way the Jogi kidnapped Sehaj Kala (and forcefully kept her) is not very much different from own case of marriage with Chitarmati. The King needs to figure out whether or not, Chitarmati is actually happy with him or not. In other words, is she suitable to be a queen or not. Next, in this tale, the Prince rescues Sehaj Kala from the Jogi. Again, the wise minister might be trying to convey to Chitar Singh that you are suppose to protect and save people, not wage a war (which results in the death of thousands) over a woman, who just happens to look like your wife. The Prince (even though not the King) understood his role and rescued the lady without any bloodshed, while you have not really been a good statesman.

 

 

Now at this point we start to nice, that the stories begin to be similar in many aspects to earlier stories, with only minor differences. A lot of repetition. The characters are repetitive but it's the subtle differences in the text that are revealing snippets of information to the reader. Take into consideration the background to the text. The King is about to execute his son. So the Wise Minister has to tell him without being confrontational about it, otherwise he could share the son's fate as well. So he is telling the stories with small vital pieces of info to get the King thinking. These minor differences need to be highlighed as there is lots of info in the differences between each charitar.

 

 

·         #6 -this Charitar is unique. This Charitar involves a King (who is a brave person), but he falls for a citizen of his kingdom and commands her to come to his court to have sex. He gets rid of her husband and brings her to the court. The lady was a citizen subject of the King and he was suppose to treat her like a daughter, not force her to have sex just because he has the power to do so. He is brave yes but he is blinded by lust, - corrupt.. Similar to the main story, he kills his opponent and marries his daughter. He should be protecting her, not marry/rape her.  The charitar deals with boundries for kings: are they allowed to do whatever they want with their subjects or conquered lands? In this charitar, the king in the story is being criticized for taking rash decisions – something Guru Gobind Singh also critisises Aurangzeb for in the Zafarnama.

 

#7 - The charitar speaks of authority and knowledge and how people can sometimes defer complete judgement to people perceived to be experts, regardless of their actual abilities.  In this story, the Minister is telling the King, that the woman has identified some ailment(representing weakness) in her first partner (representing the King). She has called the Vaid, telling the first partner she is concerned with curing him (helping him). In reality she humiliates him by performing bizarre remedies. The sentence from the charitar "The treatment must match the dissease" could be a reference to the main story of the king punishing his son way out of proportions...

#8 - The wise Minister is telling the King, subtly that the Queen is trying to burn the house down to hide her misdeeds. As the son is the crown prince, the royal dynasty will end without a dynastic heir if the king ends up executng him (ie he will end up burning down his own house).

         #9 -   About ego boosting that blinds your intellect. The female gives the man a a task which was very easy, and then she praises him for accomplishing a difficult task hereby fooling him. His ego is boosted and he does'nt see what is going on (ie he becomes blinded). The message mighe be: Just as the Raja in this story has been reduced to a position of an animal, - so too have you (the main king in the frame story) been reduced in your status as a king. Instead of being engaged in royal and governmental duties (as kings are supposed to), you have engaged yourself in trivial drama involving your own family and dynasty that you are about to destroy..You are reduced as a king - the dirt of this world is being thrown at you and you are eating it

 #10 - For the first time we see a charitar that continues, and we get to see the same characters from different angles/shots/life story events.It seems the wise Minister is telling the King that not only did the maid, out of revenge destroy her mistress but she also destroyed the King. The reference here is to his Queen not only having the King's son executed under a false charge, but also destroying the King himself by eliminating his heir to the dynasty, meaning the destruction of the dynasty. Also a feature of the 2nd part of the story is how the maid managed to play the characters off against one another to achieve what she wanted.

 

 

It is written by Pandit Sharda Ram in 1866 in his Sikha ka Raj Ka Vithiya:

"The Guru wished to compose a scripture by which the Sikhs could learn politics, martial skills, and by such intelligence be able for war. On that day, a large scripture was completed in september 1696. It was called the scripture of the tenth sovereign."

[to be continued]

Edited May 12, 2018 by amardeep

[paapiman]

@amardeep - Excellent work. Keep it up.

 

Bhul chuk maaf

[amardeep]

Two things that came to mind: 

1) our methods of analysis are far more advanced the further we get into each charitars.  In the first few charitars our methods are not that great. It’s as if the CP teaches and trains methods of analysis and interpretation

 

2) the notion that you have a story within a story is quite difficult for the mind to a absorb and keep control of.  When is the sub story giving a general message to the audience ? When is the message merely related to the king in the frame story ? Also you have to constantly keep the info of the frame story in mind and interpret and mirror all sub stories on the basis of the frame story. Balancing and juggling with these two stories at all times and remembering the details along the way is quite challenging and requires/forges a sharp intelligence.  

[amardeep]

Updated with four more charitars.