During the performance, I asked another guest, who understood Mewari, one of the five dialects of Rajasthan, if he could check Mohan Bhopa’s rendition against a transcription by John D. Smith, of Cambridge University, of a version performed in a different part of Rajasthan in the 1980s. Give or take a couple of turns of phrase, and the occasional omitted verse, the two versions were nearly identical, he said. And there was nothing homespun about Mohan Bhopa’s language, he added. It was delivered in incredibly fine if slightly archaic and courtly Mewari diction.
In Yugoslavia, Milman Parry had been excited by the way that his poets recomposed and improvised their work as they recited it: each performance was unique. Yet, from what I could gather of the Rajasthani epics, they were regarded as sacred texts, their form strictly fixed. Bhopas such as Mohan were no more free to tamper with the text than, say, a Catholic priest was free to alter the words of consecration at the holiest moment of the Mass. In this sense, they were still like Homer’s epics, for both the Iliad and the Odyssey invoke the gods at the beginning.
Mohan sang one of the most famous episodes: the Story of the She-Camels. This follows the wedding of Pabuji’s favourite niece, Kelam, to his friend the snake deity Gogaji. The wedding guests give fabulous gifts: diamonds, pearls and “a fine dress of the best Deccani cloth to wear,” carriages and strings of gold bells for Kelam’s horses, herds of “excellent white cows” and “swaying elephants.” Then comes Pabuji’s turn. Instead of producing a gift, he makes a vow: “I shall plunder she-camels from Ravana the Demon King of Lanka,” he says. The wedding guests all laugh, because no one in Rajasthan had ever seen a camel and they were not quite sure whether such a beast existed. Gogaji, Kelam’s husband, is asked, “What kind of wedding gift did Pabuji give you?” and he replies:
O mother, Pabuji’s wedding gift wanders and grazes in Lanka.
Who knows whether it is like a hill?
Who knows whether it is like a mountain?
Who knows whether it has five heads or ten feet?
But he has given me a kind of animal that I have never seen.
This episode was, incidentally, one which particularly interested Komal Kothari, because it linked the Pabuji epic with one of the great classical Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana, in which the hero, Lord Ram, also goes to Lanka to fight Ravana, although in the case of the Ramayana the hero is trying to rescue not camels, but his kidnapped wife, the goddess Sita, whom Ravana had abducted and was in the process of trying to seduce. For Kothari, the episode was an indication of how, when dealing with epics, distinctions between “classic” epics and “folk” epics had little meaning. They were, he believed, two tributaries of the same great river. The passage is also especially sacred to the Rabari cattle herders, who regard it as their myth of origin.
After Mohan had sung for a couple of hours, there was a break while the rani’s guests headed off for dinner. I asked Mohan for whom he normally performed—the local landowners, perhaps? He smiled and shook his head. No, he said, it was usually camel drivers, cowherds and his fellow villagers. Their motives, as he described them, were less to hear the poetry than to use him as a sort of supernatural veterinary service.
“People call me in whenever their animals fall sick,” he said “Camels, sheep, buffaloes, cows—any of these. Pabuji is very powerful at curing sickness in beasts. The farmers send a message for us to come, and we go and recite—always at night, never during the day: it is almost a sin to read the phad after sunrise.
“Pabuji is also good at curing any child who is possessed by a djinn,” he added. “On completion of the performance at dawn, the parents light a jyot. Seven times they put a holy thread around the flame, put seven knots in it, then they place this tanti [amulet] around the child’s neck. No djinns can stay after Pabu has come in this form.”
“So does Pabuji enter you while you perform?”
“How can I do it unless the spirit comes?” Mohan said. “You are educated. I am not, but I never forget the words, thanks to Pabuji. It would be impossible to recite the epic without some special blessings from Pabuji. As long as I invoke him at the beginning, and light a jyot in his honour, all will be well. Once he comes, he forces us on to recite more, and dance more. We feel the force of him there, demanding we give everything we have. There is no trance—it is not possession. But wherever we invoke him and perform, then we feel him. And so do all the demons and evil spirits—they just run away. No ghosts, no spirits can withstand the power of this story.”