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Collection: Part 1 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 1
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0:00–0:05I want you to picture, just picture the rhythm of a decade's long career.
0:06–0:08Oh, right. Like the ultimate daily grind.
0:08–0:13Yeah, exactly. You wake up, you commute, you manage the regional branches of a government bank.
0:13–0:21You spend, I don't know, 30 or 40 years dealing with ledgers and loan approvals and corporate bureaucracy.
0:21–0:27Living the sort of displaced life, right? In a city totally far away from where you were actually born.
0:27–0:29Right, and the days just blur into years.
0:29–0:31And then finally, retirement hits.
0:31–0:33You get the gold watch, the pension,
0:33–0:36and this sudden massive expanse of empty time.
0:36–0:38Which is usually when people, you know, take up golf.
0:38–0:41Yeah, golf, or maybe just sinking into the couch
0:41–0:43and doom scrolling on social media for hours.
0:43–0:45But imagine if literally the day after you retired,
0:45–0:47you logged onto Facebook,
0:47–0:49not to like argue with strangers in the comments.
0:49–0:51Which is what Facebook is mostly for, honestly.
0:51–0:52Right, totally.
0:52–0:54But instead of doing that,
0:54–0:57you use it to slowly, methodically,
0:57–0:59become one of the most vital literary critics
0:59–1:00of your entire culture.
1:00–1:04It sounds almost like magical realism, doesn't it?
1:04–1:05It really does.
1:05–1:08Like the idea that the salvation of a millennium old
1:08–1:11literary tradition might come from, you know,
1:11–1:14the keyboard of a retired bank manager in Karkhand.
1:14–1:15Yeah.
1:15–1:16But then you look at the other side of this coin
1:16–1:18because we have another figure
1:18–1:19living a completely different life.
1:19–1:20Right, totally different.
1:20–1:24A broadcast radio artist, a devotional singer,
1:24–1:26a master of traditional yogic breathing.
1:26–1:28And he looks around and realizes that the songs
1:28–1:32his ancestors sang at dawn are just vanishing.
1:32–1:33To disappearing into thin air.
1:33–1:37Exactly, and he realizes he has to race against the clock.
1:37–1:40He has to archive the very breath of his people
1:40–1:42before the noise of modernization
1:42–1:44just drowns it out forever.
1:44–1:45So it's two totally different lives.
1:45–1:48One is operating in this digital realm,
1:48–1:49you know, text and social media.
1:49–1:52And the other is operating in the ancient,
1:52–1:55completely ephemeral realm of breath and melody.
1:55–1:59Right, but they are both driven by this visceral,
1:59–2:01urgent sense of preservation.
2:01–2:04And that is exactly what we are unpacking today.
2:04–2:06Welcome to the Deep Dive.
2:06–2:08We have our hands on this incredibly rich,
2:08–2:10really dense document.
2:10–2:12It's excerpts from a parallel history of
2:12–2:15Mithila and Methililiterature, Toman II.
2:15–2:18Edited by Gagendra Thakur in 2026.
2:18–2:19Yes, exactly.
2:19–2:22And the mission of this Deep Dive today
2:22–2:25is to figure out what the official canon left out.
2:25–2:27We're looking at how these two men,
2:27–2:30Hitnaf Shah and Hridayn Arayan Chah,
2:30–2:33became these unconventional parallel guardians
2:33–2:34of Mathilli culture.
2:34–2:36And to really grasp the stakes here,
2:36–2:37I mean, we need to ground ourselves
2:37–2:39in what Mathilli culture actually is.
2:39–2:41Yeah, let's set the stage for you listening at home.
2:41–2:43Right, so we are talking about the Mathilli region.
2:43–2:46Geographically, this spans parts of Bihar in India
2:46–2:48and actually extends into Nepal as well.
2:48–2:49Okay. And this isn't some fringe dialect.
2:49–2:51This is a vibrant historically profound
2:51–2:54literary tradition that dates all the way back to the 10th century.
2:54–2:55Wow, the 10th century.
2:55–3:01Yeah, this is the land of Vidyapati, the legendary 15th century poet whose work influenced, well,
3:01–3:04entire literary movements across eastern India.
3:04–3:09But the official history of this region is usually written by traditional gatekeepers,
3:09–3:10right?
3:10–3:14Like the Sijithi Academy or state-sponsored institutions, university departments.
3:14–3:18Exactly, but we aren't looking at them today, we are looking at the parallel history.
3:18–3:22And if you're wondering, you know, why you should care about a specific regional literature
3:22–3:29in India, it's because this document is a masterclass in how human culture actually survives.
3:29–3:30It's a blueprint, really.
3:30–3:31A complete blueprint.
3:31–3:32Yeah.
3:32–3:35Culture doesn't survive just because the government builds a dusty museum.
3:35–3:39It survives in the passionate, totally unpaid, obsessive work of everyday people.
3:39–3:40Yeah.
3:40–3:44It lives in a thoughtful book review typed out in a Facebook comment section.
3:44–3:45Right.
3:45–3:49song sung to a household deity in a village courtyard.
3:49–3:50By the end of this deep dive, we're
3:50–3:54going to see how ancient 14th century Indian logic,
3:54–3:58modern social media networks, and village oral traditions
3:58–3:59all just collide.
3:59–4:02To keep this 1,000-year-old literary lamp burning.
4:02–4:03Yes.
4:03–4:05So it is the ultimate collision of the ancient
4:05–4:07and the hypermodern.
4:07–4:08Let's start with the phenomenon
4:08–4:12of the late blooming writer, specifically, Hitnath Jaha.
4:12–4:15Hitnath Jaha, right?
4:15–4:18His biography is just so crucial to understanding his work.
4:18–4:22So he was born in 1956 in a village called Koylak
4:22–4:24in the Madhubani district of Mithila.
4:24–4:26But he didn't stay there, did he?
4:26–4:27No, he didn't.
4:27–4:29He got a science degree and spent his entire professional
4:29–4:30life far away.
4:30–4:34He was working as a government bank manager in Hazariba,
4:34–4:35which is in the state of Charquendt.
4:35–4:39Which is a massive geographic and cultural shift.
4:39–4:41I mean, he's going from the agrarian,
4:41–4:43deeply traditional heartland of Mithila
4:43–4:47to the industrial administrative landscape
4:47–4:48of the Chodonagpur Plateau.
4:48–4:50Very different physical landscapes, yes.
4:50–4:52And he spends his whole adult life there.
4:52–4:54That's not really the typical incubator
4:54–4:55for a cultural critic.
4:55–4:56Not at all.
4:56–4:58Usually, you know, we expect our critics
4:58–5:00to be sitting in a university lounge in Delhi
5:00–5:03or Patna debating post-structuralism over tea
5:03–5:04or something.
5:04–5:05Right, right.
5:05–5:06And the sources explicitly note
5:06–5:09that his major literary output didn't begin
5:09–5:11until after he retired from the bank.
5:11–5:12Which is so fascinating to me.
5:12–5:16Well, there is a certain skepticism in the literary world about retirees who suddenly
5:16–5:18decide to become writers.
5:18–5:20Oh sure, like Vanity Projects.
5:20–5:21Exactly.
5:21–5:26Often there's a temptation to churn out Vanity poetry or highly derivative stories just to
5:26–5:29get a spot on a stage somewhere or win a local award.
5:29–5:31But Hitton S. Jaw didn't do that.
5:31–5:35No, he completely bypassed that ego-driven route.
5:35–5:40He looked at the landscape of Mothili literature and realized what it actually needed wasn't
5:40–5:41just another mediocre poet.
5:41–5:42You needed a reader.
5:42–5:48Yes, it needed a critic, a reviewer, a historian who could take the work seriously.
5:48–5:53And the mechanism he used to do this is what really caught my eye in the source material.
5:53–5:57He didn't start submitting essays to prestigious peer-reviewed journals.
5:57–5:58No, he definitely didn't.
5:58–6:02And he didn't wait for a legacy magazine to grant him a column.
6:02–6:04He literally used Facebook.
6:04–6:09He started posting these brief, focused book notices and reader responses directly
6:09–6:10onto his timeline.
6:10–6:14And that choice of medium, I mean, it fundamentally changed the nature of his criticism.
6:14–6:15Oh, so?
6:15–6:20Well, by putting his thoughts on social media, he was testing his ideas in a very public,
6:20–6:22highly democratic forum.
6:22–6:27He bypassed all those institutional bottlenecks where an editor might reject a review just
6:27–6:29because it didn't align with a certain academic trend.
6:29–6:30Does that make sense?
6:30–6:31So he's just going straight to the people?
6:31–6:32Exactly.
6:32–6:35On Facebook, he built an audience organically.
6:35–6:39The sources mentioned that through these posts, he cultivated this vibrant network
6:39–6:46of literary interlocutors like retired IAS officers, publishers, independent scholars.
6:46–6:52Wow. I want to pause on that because it really challenges how we view social media today.
6:52–6:57We tend to view Facebook as this like graveyard of political arguments and photos of people's
6:57–7:00breakfasts. Yeah, a lot of doom scrolling. Right.
7:00–7:06But Jaha turned it into a digital literary salon. He used it to find the other displaced
7:06–7:11readers of Mayfilly literature. And eventually this pipeline from a Facebook post to a printed
7:11–7:15published book of criticism, it became a reality for him.
7:15–7:20It did. But to really understand the psychological engine driving his work, we have to look at
7:20–7:21his displacement.
7:21–7:22Okay, let's unpack that.
7:22–7:26In cultural theory, there's a scholar named Homi K. Pabha who talks about the concept
7:26–7:27of the third space.
7:27–7:29The third space. What is that exactly?
7:29–7:33It's this hybrid cultural space that is produced when someone is displaced from their
7:33–7:39origin. So, Hittnall Chah doesn't just exist in Koylak, his home village, and he doesn't
7:39–7:41just exist in Hazaraba where he worked.
7:41–7:42Right, he's somewhere in between.
7:42–7:46Yes, he operates in the third space between them. He has a dual inheritance.
7:46–7:50Okay, let me see if I'm interpreting this dual inheritance correctly. On one side,
7:50–7:54he has the anchor, the ancestral village of Koylak.
7:54–7:55Exactly.
7:55–8:00The sources mention his family has a 29 generation intellectual lineage going back to
8:00–8:03ancient scholars, 29 generations.
8:03–8:06It's an almost unfathomable depth of roots.
8:06–8:07Yeah.
8:07–8:13His father, Terenath Shah, edited a handwritten Mifili journal back in 1933.
8:13–8:16So the literary bloodline is ancient and intense.
8:16–8:17Yeah.
8:17–8:23But then on the other side, you have the reality of his day to day life, the diaspora, the
8:23–8:28displaced professional navigating the modern banking sector in Herkhand, probably speaking
8:28–8:32Hindi or English at work, dealing with modern economic realities.
8:32–8:33Precisely.
8:33–8:36So he is perpetually negotiating the tension
8:36–8:38between the homeland and the diaspora.
8:38–8:40He is an insider by blood,
8:40–8:44but an outsider by geography and by his profession.
8:44–8:46It actually makes me think of Walter Benjamin's
8:46–8:47famous essay on the storyteller.
8:47–8:49Oh, that's a great connection.
8:49–8:51Yeah, Benjamin argued that the most profound wisdom
8:51–8:54doesn't come from the isolated academic.
8:54–8:56He said it comes from two types of people.
8:56–8:58First, the resident tiller of the soil,
8:58–9:00the person who knows the deep history
9:00–9:01of one specific place.
9:01–9:02Right.
9:02–9:04Second, the trading semen.
9:04–9:05The person who has traveled widely
9:05–9:07and seen how the rest of the world operates.
9:07–9:09And Hitmuthchah is somehow both.
9:09–9:10Exactly.
9:10–9:13He has the deep roots of Koylak,
9:13–9:15but the observational distance of the professional
9:15–9:17who has spent decades outside the bubble.
9:17–9:19Oh.
9:19–9:20So I have to ask you,
9:20–9:22does working outside the ivory tower
9:22–9:24actually make someone a better critic?
9:24–9:25Yeah.
9:25–9:26Because we are usually taught
9:26–9:28that you need a PhD in literature
9:28–9:29to do this work properly.
9:29–9:31Well, the evidence in the parallel history
9:31–9:35suggests that his professional distance was his greatest asset.
9:35–9:36Really? How?
9:36–9:41Think about the sociology of a small regional literary ecosystem.
9:41–9:44If you live in the capital working in the university department,
9:44–9:47you are constantly surrounded by the authors you are reviewing.
9:47–9:48Oh, right. You go to the same parties.
9:48–9:50Exactly. You compete for the same grants.
9:50–9:53You navigate the same petty rivalries.
9:53–9:55It is very, very hard to be objective.
9:55–9:56That makes total sense.
9:56–9:59You can't give a bad review to a guy you're having tea with the next morning.
9:59–10:00Exactly.
10:00–10:06Kirtanath Shah, sitting way out in Hazarbha, was entirely insulated from institutional
10:06–10:07literary politics.
10:07–10:11This gave his criticism a profound authenticity.
10:11–10:16And this exact combination, the insider's love and the outsider's analytical distance,
10:16–10:19it resulted in his 2017 masterwork right.
10:19–10:21A book simply titled Koylak.
10:21–10:23Yes, Koylak.
10:23–10:27This is where the story shifts from literary criticism into something much, much more
10:27–10:28ambitious.
10:28–10:31The sources describe this book as a Gramgatha,
10:31–10:34which translates to a village narrative
10:34–10:36or a Gram-Ithias, the village history.
10:36–10:38Right, but it's not just a history book.
10:38–10:41He essentially invented or at least perfected
10:41–10:44a hybrid genre to write the biography
10:44–10:45of his ancestral hometown.
10:45–10:47It is a staggering documentary effort.
10:47–10:49I mean, he doesn't just sketch the village,
10:49–10:50he maps it entirely.
10:50–10:53He records the physical geography, the demographic data.
10:53–10:56He notes population of around 8,500 people
10:56–10:58during the 2011 census.
10:58–11:02And he painstakingly chronicles its 500-year intellectual lineage.
11:02–11:03Yes.
11:03–11:07He traces the scholars from Umapati Upataya in the 16th century
11:07–11:08all the way up to the modern era.
11:08–11:11He details the local doctors, the diaspora scholars,
11:11–11:13and the men who became the first professors of Matili
11:13–11:14at Calcutta University.
11:14–11:15Right.
11:15–11:17But if he just listed 500 years of resumes and birth
11:17–11:19dates, it would be completely unreadable.
11:19–11:20Yeah.
11:20–11:21It would just be a phone book.
11:21–11:23So how does he actually make this a narrative?
11:23–11:24He achieves it through a method
11:24–11:27that anthropologists following Clifford Geertz
11:27–11:29call thick description.
11:29–11:30Okay, let's break that down.
11:30–11:32Because thick description is one of those academic terms
11:32–11:34that sounds simple,
11:34–11:36but is actually incredibly nuanced.
11:36–11:37It really is.
11:37–11:40A lot of people use that standard textbook example
11:40–11:41of the blink versus the wink.
11:41–11:44Like a thin description says an eyelid fluttered.
11:44–11:46While a thick description says they winked
11:46–11:48to signal a secret joke.
11:48–11:49Exactly.
11:49–11:51But I feel like we need a better analogy
11:51–11:55to understand how this applies to a 300-page village history.
11:55–11:56I agree.
11:56–12:01Let's look at it through the lens of a bank statement, which is fitting for a jaw, obviously.
12:01–12:02Oh, I like that.
12:02–12:06A thin description of a marriage is looking at a joint bank account ledger.
12:06–12:12You see a $50 charge at a flower shop, a $200 charge at a restaurant, and a $1,500
12:12–12:14charge to a law firm.
12:14–12:15It's just data.
12:15–12:19It tells you what happened, but it is entirely devoid of human meaning.
12:19–12:20Right.
12:20–12:23accurate, but it's blind to the reality.
12:23–12:24So what's the thick description?
12:25–12:29A thick description is knowing that the $50 for flowers was an apology after a
12:29–12:30massive argument.
12:30–12:36The $200 dinner was a failed attempt at reconciliation and the $1,500 to the law
12:36–12:38firm was the retainer for the divorce attorney.
12:38–12:39Wow.
12:39–12:39Okay.
12:39–12:39Yeah.
12:40–12:45Thick description takes the raw data and embeds it in the complex, messy,
12:45–12:48emotional and cultural reality of human beings.
12:48–12:49That's a fantastic way to look at it.
12:49–12:53So when Hittinath Shah writes about the festivals in Koylak,
12:53–12:55he isn't giving us the bank statement.
12:55–12:57He isn't saying on October 15th,
12:57–12:59the village gathers and lights lamps.
12:59–13:00Precisely.
13:00–13:02He gives us the thick description.
13:02–13:04He embeds the festival in the agricultural cycle,
13:04–13:06like why does it happen after the harvest?
13:06–13:07Right.
13:07–13:09He embeds it in the kinship structures.
13:09–13:10Who is allowed to light the first lamp
13:10–13:12and what does that say about family hierarchies?
13:12–13:14He ties it to the mythological cosmology
13:14–13:16of the mytholar region.
13:16–13:18Yes, he gives you the entire cultural ecosystem
13:18–13:21that makes the action of lighting a lamp meaningful.
13:21–13:24He is embodying the anthropological ideal
13:24–13:25of participant observation.
13:25–13:27He is deeply embedded in the bloodlines
13:27–13:29and living memory of the village,
13:29–13:31but he organizes that memory
13:31–13:34with the rigorous analytical mind of a bank manager.
13:34–13:35Exactly.
13:35–13:38But history is complicated and nostalgia is dangerous.
13:38–13:39Very true.
13:39–13:42A loving portrait of your ancestral home
13:42–13:44is a beautiful thing.
13:44–13:46But if we are calling this a definitive history,
13:46–13:48we have to confront the blindspots.
13:48–13:50And the sources are very clear that Koylak
13:50–13:52has some glaring omissions.
13:52–13:55Yeah, reviewers of the book, specifically critics
13:55–13:57like Professor Mash Faralal Das
13:57–13:59and Dr. Kailash Khurmar Mishra,
13:59–14:02they pointed out that Jara essentially
14:02–14:03wrote a history of the elite.
14:03–14:05He did.
14:05–14:08The book overwhelmingly focuses on the brahminical
14:08–14:11intellectual lineage while largely ignoring
14:11–14:13the non-Brahman castes of the village.
14:13–14:16right, the Yadav, the Teli, the Musahar communities,
14:16–14:19the people whose physical labor actually sustains the village.
14:19–14:21And that isn't the only omission.
14:21–14:23The critics also noted that the book glosses over
14:23–14:25a highly uncomfortable statistic.
14:25–14:27In 2018, the village of Koylak
14:27–14:29had a literacy rate of under 60%.
14:29–14:31And this is where I really have to push back
14:31–14:33on the celebration of this book.
14:33–14:36We are talking about a village that prides itself
14:36–14:38on a 500-year unbroken chain
14:38–14:40of scholars and university professors.
14:40–14:43It's the intellectual crown jewel of the region.
14:43–14:43Right.
14:43–14:46But nearly half of the people living there cannot read or write.
14:46–14:49So if a historian leaves out the working classes
14:49–14:51and ignores a devastating statistic
14:51–14:55about educational inequality, is it actually a history book?
14:55–14:58Or is it just a heavily researched, highly sanitized
14:58–15:01family memoir designed to make the elite feel
15:01–15:02good about themselves?
15:02–15:05That is the exact tension that makes this book so
15:05–15:08structurally vital to the Myfilly Canon.
15:08–15:08Wait, really?
15:08–15:09How is that vital?
15:09–15:15Well, you are entirely correct that a purely objective comprehensive history must represent all demographics.
15:15–15:19But the anthropologist Victor Turner has a concept called the social drama,
15:19–15:23which helps explain why this flawed book is actually doing essential cultural work.
15:23–15:25Social drama, okay.
15:25–15:29Turner argues that communities don't figure out who they are when everything is peaceful.
15:29–15:35They figure out who they are through conflict, through breaches of the norm, and the resulting public arguments.
15:35–15:38So you're saying the flaw is a feature, not a bug.
15:38–15:42How does leaving people out help the community?
15:42–15:46It acts as a catalyst by putting this soaring, deeply
15:46–15:49researched, magnificent history of the bromenical intellect
15:49–15:52into the public sphere, while inadvertently exposing
15:52–15:55the fact that the working casts and the illiterate majority
15:55–15:57are missing from the narrative.
15:57–15:59Jihad forced a crisis of identity.
15:59–16:00Oh, I see.
16:00–16:02The book holds up a mirror to the village.
16:02–16:05The elite look in the mirror and see their glorious past,
16:05–16:07but the critics look at the mirror and say,
16:07–16:09Wait, where is everybody else?
16:09–16:09Right.
16:09–16:11If he hadn't written the book at all,
16:11–16:14the conversation about the 60% literacy rate
16:14–16:15might never have happened in the literary sphere.
16:15–16:16Exactly.
16:16–16:18The book forces the community to confront
16:18–16:21the massive, uncomfortable gap between its mythological self
16:21–16:24image and its deeply unequal present reality.
16:24–16:27The critique it invites is the true cultural function
16:27–16:27of the book.
16:27–16:28Yes.
16:28–16:29Hittin' Up Chop provided the thesis,
16:29–16:32a thick description of the intellectual lineage.
16:32–16:34The reviewers provided the antithesis,
16:34–16:38the socioeconomic reality of the marginalized,
16:38–16:41and the resulting community dialogue is the synthesis.
16:41–16:43It's an incredibly brave thing
16:43–16:44to put a piece of work out there
16:44–16:47knowing it will be dissected like that.
16:47–16:48It really is.
16:48–16:50And this honesty, this willingness to engage
16:50–16:53in the messy reality of reader response,
16:53–16:56it's the perfect bridge to how he actually approaches
16:56–16:58his day job as a literary critic.
16:58–17:01Absolutely, because in 2023,
17:01–17:03he publishes a book called Lekrek.
17:03–17:07which is basically a masterclass in how to review a book
17:07–17:08without being a snob.
17:08–17:10Lekrek is a fascinating document.
17:10–17:13It is a collection of his pahakia.
17:13–17:16In Methili, a pahakia roughly translates
17:16–17:17to a reader response.
17:17–17:18Okay, reader response.
17:18–17:21It is a very specific, intermediate, critical form.
17:21–17:24It sits exactly halfway between a casual reading note
17:24–17:26you might scribble in the margins of a novel
17:26–17:28and a formal, highly structured,
17:28–17:30heavily cited academic review.
17:30–17:32The way I picture a pahakia is like
17:32–17:35the best possible version of a book club discussion.
17:35–17:36Oh yeah.
17:36–17:37You know the kind of book club I'm talking about?
17:37–17:40Not the one where everyone drinks wine and just gossips.
17:40–17:41Right.
17:41–17:43And not the one where that one guy with a master's degree
17:43–17:44tries to dominate the conversation
17:44–17:46by quoting French philosophers.
17:46–17:48Ugh, yes, we've all been there.
17:48–17:50It's a space where people are deeply,
17:50–17:53genuinely engaged with the text.
17:53–17:55They're saying, when the protagonist did this,
17:55–17:56I felt betrayed.
17:56–17:59Or the author's pacing in chapter four
17:59–18:02completely lost me, and here is why.
18:02–18:04It's rigorous, but it's accessible.
18:04–18:07And honestly, doesn't formal academic criticism
18:07–18:10sometimes do more harm than good?
18:10–18:12If a literature is fighting to survive,
18:12–18:14doesn't impenetrable academic jargon
18:14–18:17just alienate the very readers you need
18:17–18:18to keep the language alive?
18:18–18:20You've hit on the exact crisis
18:20–18:22of regional literatures right there.
18:22–18:25In an ecosystem like Mathili, which is rich in history,
18:25–18:27but lacks the vast, well-funded
18:27–18:29institutional infrastructure of Hindi
18:29–18:30or English publishing,
18:30–18:34A professional hyperacademic critic can end up shouting into a void.
18:34–18:38Just writing reviews that only five other professors can understand.
18:38–18:39Exactly.
18:39–18:42Hitnath Chah recognized that the survival of Mathiliate depends on the informed general
18:42–18:44reader, so he writes for them.
18:44–18:47And the sources emphasize his ethics as a reviewer.
18:47–18:51Because he's a retired banker living in Karkand, he owes absolutely nothing to the
18:51–18:53literary dawns of Bihar.
18:53–18:55He doesn't care about the politics at all.
18:55–18:56Right.
18:56–19:01There's a 22-year-old debut novelist with the exact same microscopic attention and analytical
19:01–19:06care that he applies to an established, award-winning literary heavyweight.
19:06–19:13His independence is his superpower, and he evaluates these books based on four very grounded,
19:13–19:14practical benchmarks.
19:14–19:15Let's go through those.
19:15–19:16First is accessibility, right?
19:16–19:18Yes, accessibility.
19:18–19:23Does the book communicate its ideas clearly without condescending to the reader?
19:23–19:26Second is Yathartha or realism.
19:26–19:31Does the story engage honestly with the gritty material and social realities of contemporary
19:31–19:33Mathilli life, or is it just nostalgic fluff?
19:33–19:37Third is Basha Shudi, which is linguistic propriety.
19:37–19:39Does the author respect the craft of the language?
19:39–19:45Are they avoiding overly convoluted, hypersanscritized vocabulary that no one actually speaks?
19:45–19:48While also avoiding lazy, imprecise slang.
19:48–19:49Exactly.
19:49–19:50And fourth is formal innovation.
19:50–19:54Is the author actually pushing the boundaries of the genre or just repeating what worked
19:54–19:5520 years ago?
19:55–19:56Those are fantastic criteria.
19:56–20:00I mean, if every Goodreads review had to pass those four tests, the internet would be a
20:00–20:01much better place.
20:01–20:02I couldn't agree more.
20:02–20:07But here is where the parallel history source document does something that absolutely blew
20:07–20:09my mind.
20:09–20:14The editor, Gajendra Thakur, doesn't just praise Jha's practical approach.
20:14–20:21He actually maps Hitnavata's modern Facebook-era book reviews onto a 14th century system of
20:21–20:22classical Indian logic.
20:22–20:23Yes.
20:23–20:27the application of Navya Nyaya epistemology. Navya Nya.
20:27–20:31And the geographical symmetry here is just beautiful. Navya Nyaya was a revolutionary
20:31–20:36school of logic founded by the philosopher Gagesha Upatiyaya in the 14th century.
20:36–20:39And where did he found it? Right in the Mithila region.
20:39–20:44That is wild. So applying a 600-year-old Mithili philosophical framework to a modern
20:44–20:47Mithili critic, it's this profound homecoming of ideas.
20:47–20:51Exactly. Gagesha's foundational texts, the Tathantamani, argues that there are
20:51–20:56four primaches, four valid means of acquiring accurate knowledge about the world.
20:56–21:01Okay, we need to spend some serious time here because this is the intellectual core of the deep dive.
21:01–21:07We're going to walk through these four primates and I want to see how a guy typing on a laptop in 2023
21:07–21:09is executing 14th century logic.
21:09–21:09Let's do.
21:09–21:14So the first primate is Pratika. What is it and how does Jaya use it?
21:14–21:20Pratika translates to direct perception. In classical logic, it means the immediate raw
21:20–21:25sensory encounter with an object before your brain starts analyzing it.
21:25–21:28Direct perception. Okay, so applied to literary criticism, what is that?
21:28–21:33It is the phenomenological experience of reading. It's what the text does to your nervous system
21:33–21:35before you apply any academic theories.
21:35–21:36Oh, I see.
21:36–21:43Hitnath Chah's reviews always, always start with Prachekah. He never begins a review by saying,
21:43–21:46according to Marxist theory, this novel represents...
21:46–21:51He begins by saying, I read this book and it evoked this specific feeling of melancholy
21:51–21:52in me.
21:52–21:53Exactly.
21:53–21:56He anchors his entire critique in the honest, raw perception of the reader encountering the
21:56–21:57text.
21:57–22:00Which is exactly why his reviews resonate on social media.
22:00–22:02It's the ultimate hook.
22:02–22:05If you tell me a book is a deconstruction of post-colonial gender norms, I might just
22:05–22:06keep scrolling.
22:06–22:07Right.
22:07–22:10But if you tell me a book made you feel a profound sense of isolation because of
22:10–22:14how the author described a rainy afternoon, I want to read it.
22:14–22:15The raw feeling is the gateway.
22:15–22:21spot on. So you have the feeling, what is the second step? The second Prama is Anumana,
22:21–22:27which means inference. Inference. This is the logical heavy lifting. Once you have your direct
22:27–22:33perception, your raw feeling, you have to infer a conclusion based on evidence. In the Navya
22:33–22:39and Aya system, inference is incredibly rigorous. You can't just jump to a conclusion. You have
22:39–22:42to prove it. Yes, you have the subject, you have the conclusion you want to prove,
22:42–22:49You have the specific evidence, which is called the head to, and you have the invariable rule that links the evidence to the conclusion.
22:49–22:53Okay, I'm going to need a translation of that into modern terms. It sounds like you're saying show your work.
22:53–23:02Exactly. Let's invent a hypothetical scenario. Let's say the host of a show weeds a new thriller and feels a sense of relentless tension.
23:02–23:06Okay, that tension is the Prat Chah, the direct perception.
23:06–23:11Now, the host wants to claim that the author is a master of pacing.
23:11–23:13That claim is the conclusion.
23:13–23:15But how do you prove it?
23:15–23:18In Anumana, you must provide the head to, the evidence.
23:18–23:21So Hit Nuts High doesn't just say, this book has great pacing.
23:21–23:22Right.
23:22–23:27He says, this book has great pacing, and my evidence is that in chapter 4, the author
23:27–23:33exclusively uses staccato, five word sentences during the chase scene, which physically
23:33–23:35mimics a racing heartbeat.
23:35–23:39Oh wow, he makes the architecture of his reasoning
23:39–23:40completely transparent to the reader.
23:40–23:41He does.
23:41–23:42Okay, I love that.
23:42–23:45So step one, Prechaqa, I feel the tension.
23:45–23:48Step two, Anumana, I prove the tension exists
23:48–23:50by pointing to the short sentences.
23:50–23:52I've perceived it and I've proven it.
23:52–23:54What is the third Preta Mana?
23:54–23:55The third is Upamana,
23:55–23:58which translates to analogical comparison.
23:58–23:59Analogical comparison.
23:59–24:01In philosophy, it's how you gain knowledge
24:01–24:03of something entirely new
24:03–24:05by comparing it to something you already know.
24:05–24:10Let's say you've never seen a wild boar, but I tell you it looks like a pig, but with coarse dark hair and tusks
24:10–24:16When you see one in the woods you use upamana to identify it because you compare exactly for hit-not-shot
24:16–24:19This is how he contextualizes a new piece of literature
24:19–24:23Right because a book doesn't exist in a vacuum if I read a great sci-fi book
24:23–24:27I naturally compare it to dune or foundation to see where it ranks
24:28–24:34Exactly Jhada constantly evaluates a new Mathili debut by placing it against the massive backdrop of the
24:34–24:36the Mithaili literary corpus.
24:36–24:39He determines its value by identifying its resemblances
24:39–24:42and its departures from the traditions that came before it.
24:42–24:45He uses analogy to map its coordinates in the culture.
24:45–24:48Okay, so we have perception, inference and analogy.
24:48–24:51What is the final step in this 14th century playbook?
24:51–24:53The fourth is SUPTA,
24:53–24:55which translates to verbal testimony.
24:55–24:56The verbal testimony.
24:56–24:58In logic, this means acquiring knowledge
24:58–25:01by relying on the authority of a reliable source
25:01–25:03or the established textual record.
25:03–25:05You can't personally witness the French Revolution,
25:05–25:08so you rely on Subta, the testimony of historians.
25:08–25:09Okay.
25:09–25:12Hittnath Ha is deeply invested in the historical record.
25:12–25:16In 2003, he co-edited a massive historical survey
25:16–25:18of Mathili literature.
25:18–25:19He relies on the synthesis of centuries
25:19–25:22of literary testimony to ensure that his modern critiques
25:22–25:23are grounded in historical truth.
25:23–25:27It is genuinely staggering to step back and realize
25:27–25:30that a retired banker typing out reviews
25:30–25:32in a Facebook comment box is organically
25:32–25:38embodying a 600 year old epistemological framework that was invented in his own ancestral
25:38–25:39backyard.
25:39–25:40It really is incredible.
25:40–25:42He isn't trying to sound smart.
25:42–25:45The logic is just woven into his cultural DNA.
25:45–25:49He strips away the pretension to find the core truth of the text.
25:49–25:50Yes.
25:50–25:55And that specific skill, the ability to bypass the noise and locate the emotional core of
25:55–26:00a piece of writing is what makes him not just a brilliant critic but a masterful
26:00–26:01translator.
26:01–26:04The transition into his translation work is where we see his critical theories put into
26:04–26:06actual practice.
26:06–26:10For 15 years, Hittnath Ha dedicated himself to translating the work of the Hindi progressive
26:10–26:13poet Shambhubadal into my Philly.
26:13–26:16And the context of Shambhubadal's poetry is essential here, right?
26:16–26:17Absolutely.
26:17–26:19Badal is not writing romantic poetry about the moon.
26:19–26:24He is a deeply political poet whose work centers on the exploited working classes,
26:24–26:28the marginalized Adivasi communities, and the environmental devastation of the Sharkhand
26:28–26:29Bihar borderland.
26:29–26:34which is exactly the landscape that Hittnath Chan navigated during his decades as a bank
26:34–26:35manager.
26:35–26:36Precisely.
26:36–26:37He wasn't sitting in a cafe in Paris.
26:37–26:40He was working in the economic trenches of Tarkhand.
26:40–26:42He saw the coal mines.
26:42–26:43He saw the exploitation.
26:43–26:46He saw the working class struggles that Badal was writing about.
26:46–26:51And that shared physical environment deeply informed his approach to the translation.
26:51–26:54Translating poetry is notoriously treacherous.
26:54–26:55Oh, I'm sure.
26:55–27:00There is always a war between formal equivalents translating word for word, keeping the exact
27:00–27:03grammatical structure and dynamic equivalents.
27:03–27:08Jha is a fierce proponent of dynamic equivalents, a concept heavily theorized by the linguist
27:08–27:09Eugene Nida.
27:09–27:12Dynamic equivalents, what does that mean in practice?
27:12–27:16It means that the ultimate goal of a translation is not to copy the dictionary definition
27:16–27:20of the words, but to recreate the exact emotional impact.
27:20–27:26The Mothili reader must feel the exact same punch to the gut that the Hindi reader felt.
27:26–27:30He prioritizes the Mola Bhavana, the foundational emotional core.
27:30–27:34Let's get into the mechanics of how he actually does that, because the choices he makes are
27:34–27:35fascinating.
27:35–27:40The sources highlight a specific poem he translated called Khoiliyamokia, which is about a
27:40–27:42village cobbler.
27:42–27:47If Jaha were trying to show off his vast intellectual lineage, he could have translated
27:47–27:53this poem using highly elevated, Sanskritized metheali. He could have made it sound like
27:53–27:56a 15th century royal decree. Why didn't it?
27:56–28:00Because doing so would have been a political and artistic betrayal of the poem.
28:00–28:01A betrayal?
28:01–28:06Yes. If you take a gritty, class-conscious, Hindi poem about a man who works with leather
28:06–28:12and dirt, and you translate it into the polished, elite vocabulary of the upper castes,
28:12–28:14you have essentially colonized the poem.
28:14–28:15Wow.
28:15–28:20that. To achieve dynamic equivalents, he deliberately utilized the everyday working-class
28:20–28:25Mithili vocabulary. He used the language of the street, the language of the soil to capture Badal's
28:25–28:31voice. He matched the socio-economic reality of the subject with the socio-economic register of the
28:31–28:37vocabulary. This maps so beautifully onto classical Indian poetic theory, specifically the theory
28:37–28:41of rasa, which I find endlessly fascinating. Yes, rasa theory is foundational here,
28:41–28:49Outlined in Harata's ancient text the Nayashastra, Rasa refers to the dominant aesthetic flavor or emotional essence of a work of art.
28:49–28:49Right.
28:49–28:56The theory posits that there are several distinct Rasa's love, comedy, terror, disgust, and so on.
28:56–29:04When the critics in our source material analyze Chas' translations of Badal's progressive poetry, they note a very specific emotional cocktail.
29:04–29:05What's the mix?
29:05–29:10The dominant flavor is Shantarasa, which is a sense of deep serenity or equanimity.
29:10–29:15This is mixed with kardolrasa, which is payfos or deep compassion for suffering, and
29:15–29:19vira rasa, which is heroic resolve or quiet courage.
29:19–29:23But the most revealing part of this analysis isn't what is there, it's what is explicitly
29:23–29:24missing.
29:24–29:29The sources note that Cha meticulously avoids rajarasa, the flavor of rage or fury.
29:29–29:30Yes, he does.
29:30–29:34I want to linger on this because it seems completely counterintuitive to me.
29:34–29:39He is translating highly political poetry about the brutal exploitation of marginalized
29:39–29:44workers and the destruction of the environment. In Western progressive poetry, rage is often
29:44–29:48the primary engine. Why strip the rage out of it?
29:48–29:54Because rage is volatile, rage burns incredibly hot, but it burns out quickly and it often
29:54–29:56distorts the clarity of the art.
29:56–30:01By anchoring the translation in Shantarasa equanimity mixed with heroic resolve and
30:01–30:08compassion, hot ensures that the political critique is sustained, deep, and unshakable.
30:08–30:11the difference between a sudden explosion and a deep unstoppable river.
30:11–30:16Exactly. The refusal to let anger distort the poetry actually makes the indictment of exploitation
30:16–30:18far more powerful.
30:18–30:23And by maintaining that equanimity, he protects the most delicate aspect of the poetry, the
30:23–30:23Dvani.
30:23–30:30Yes, Dvani. Dvani is arguably the most sophisticated concept in Indian poetics. It translates roughly
30:30–30:35to resonance or suggestion. The ninth century theoretician Anand Vardana argued that
30:35–30:37that Dhvani is the true soul of poetry.
30:37–30:41It's the meaning that echoes beyond the literal definition of the words,
30:41–30:44much like the lingering vibration of a struck bell.
30:44–30:47And if you are screaming and rage, you can't hear the resonance of the bell.
30:47–30:48Exactly.
30:48–30:53The source material gives a breathtaking example of this resonance in action.
30:53–30:59They discuss Jha's translation of Badal's poem, simply titled, Ma or Mother.
30:59–30:59Yes.
30:59–31:04In Jha's Mathili translation, the word ma acts as a profound vessel for Dhvani.
31:04–31:09It resonates simultaneously on three distinct, tragic levels.
31:09–31:10Let's go through them.
31:10–31:13First, there is the literal biological mother
31:13–31:14who is aging and vulnerable.
31:14–31:17Second, it resonates as the mother tongue,
31:17–31:18the Methyl language itself,
31:18–31:20which is constantly under threat of erasure
31:20–31:23by more dominant languages and modernization.
31:23–31:23And the third.
31:23–31:26And third, it resonates as the motherland,
31:26–31:29the primordial physical landscape of Harkond and Methylah,
31:29–31:32which is being ripped apart by capitalism,
31:32–31:34mining and deforestation.
31:34–31:36Think about the psychological weight of that for the reader.
31:36–31:39Imagine if the word for mother in English
31:39–31:42simultaneously meant the literal earth beneath your feet
31:42–31:44and the only language your grandmother speaks.
31:44–31:46It's incredibly heavy.
31:46–31:49When you read a line in the poem about the mother dying,
31:49–31:51your brain fires on three different
31:51–31:52tragic cylinders at once.
31:52–31:55You are mourning your parent, your culture,
31:55–31:57and your planet simultaneously.
31:57–31:59That is the power of Devani.
31:59–32:00It really is.
32:00–32:02And it brings up a really modern critical lens,
32:02–32:06ecocriticism. In these translations, the environment, the
32:06–32:10south forests, the winding rivers, the gaping coal mines of
32:10–32:13the Chodanagpur Plateau, they are not just backdrops where the
32:13–32:16human drama takes place. They're bleeding characters. The
32:16–32:18natural world has supreme agency.
32:18–32:22It is a profound act of cultural bridging. Hittnetta is
32:22–32:24essentially translating the wounded soil of Harkhand into
32:24–32:28the linguistic soul of Mithla. He is preserving the
32:28–32:31ecological and human truth of one marginalized space by
32:31–32:33rendering it perfectly into the language of another.
32:33–32:39So we have spent the first half of this deep dive looking at a man who preserves culture
32:39–32:44through the written word, through the meticulous crafting of village histories, through rigorous
32:44–32:48Facebook reviews powered by 14th century logic, and through the delicate translation
32:48–32:50of progressive poetry.
32:50–32:55But there's a massive fundamental flaw in everything Hitnothcha is doing.
32:55–32:57Text is static.
32:57–32:58Text requires literacy.
32:58–33:03And as we discussed with the Koylaag village history, literacy in these regions was sometimes
33:03–33:04under 60%.
33:04–33:05Right.
33:05–33:10If your entire strategy for saving a culture is printing books, you are inherently losing
33:10–33:12the soul of the illiterate masses.
33:12–33:16You are losing the people whose entire historical archive is oral.
33:16–33:20So how do you save a culture that lives entirely in breath, rhythm, and melody?
33:20–33:21Right, that's the big question.
33:21–33:25To answer that, we have to pivot to the second figure in the document, Friede
33:25–33:26Narayancha.
33:26–33:30Yes, the contrast between the two men is stark, but their mission is identical.
33:30–33:34While Hittanath operates in the realm of the permanent text, Frida and Arayansha operates
33:34–33:37in the ephemeral realm of voice and performance.
33:37–33:38Who exactly is he?
33:38–33:45He is a recognized folk-culturist, a devotional artist, and an all-India radio or Akashvani
33:45–33:47B. Highgrade artist.
33:47–33:52Furthermore, he is a deeply committed practitioner of traditional lineage-based yoga known as
33:52–33:54Guru Parampara.
33:54–33:59Let's talk about that all India radio grading because be high grade sounds like an arbitrary
33:59–34:00piece of corporate bureaucracy.
34:00–34:02It does sound like that.
34:02–34:06If I tell a teenager today that someone is a be high grade artist, they're going to
34:06–34:08look at me blankly.
34:08–34:12But in the context of folk art in India, this is a massive deal.
34:12–34:16It's almost like getting the ultimate verified blue check mark, but one that actually
34:16–34:19means you possess immense cultural talent.
34:19–34:22What does that grading actually represent to an oral artist?
34:22–34:24It represents institutional survival.
34:24–34:27The AIR grading system is incredibly rigorous.
34:27–34:31It assesses technical vocal competence, artistic quality, and the cultural authenticity of the
34:31–34:32repertoire.
34:32–34:36For classical musicians who have sheet music and massive academies behind them, it's
34:36–34:38a career milestone.
34:38–34:43But for a folk artist, someone who operates strictly within the oral tradition where
34:43–34:48the songs are passed down purely from memory, this grading acts as a crucial stamp of legitimacy
34:48–34:49from the state.
34:49–34:50Wow.
34:50–34:54It elevates the songs of the village courtyard to the level of broadcast worthy high
34:54–34:58culture. It means the National Archive recognizes the value of your breath.
34:58–35:03And his connection to yoga is not incidental here, is it? We think of yoga in the West as a
35:03–35:09stretching class you take at a gym, but traditional Guru Pornpura yoga is deeply tied to breath control,
35:09–35:12to pranayama, to the physical mastery of the body's energy.
35:12–35:14Right, it's a completely different discipline.
35:14–35:19Harayana Naranjha sits right at the intersection of the performative, his singing, and the
35:19–35:21ascetic, his yogic discipline.
35:21–35:25His entire archive is held in his lungs and his vocal cords.
35:25–35:26Exactly.
35:26–35:29If the library burns down, Hitnappcha loses his work.
35:29–35:33If Reden-Reyno loses his breath, his entire cultural archive disappears.
35:33–35:36And he was acutely, painfully aware of this fragility.
35:36–35:41He knew that an oral archive is only one generation away from total extinction.
35:41–35:42Yes.
35:42–35:46And that realization sparked his most urgent defining mission.
35:46–35:49In 2009, he published a monumental essay.
35:49–35:53It was featured in the very first digital compilation of the Vidae archive, which was
35:53–35:56sort of like the ultimate way back machine from the Aethelie culture.
35:56–35:57Right, yeah.
35:57–36:03The essay is titled, Endangered Messilly Folk Songs, or Luprapraya Methililokagita.
36:03–36:07And reading it feels less like an academic paper and more like a man screaming that
36:07–36:10a house is on fire while everyone else is watching television.
36:10–36:12It is a blaring alarm bell.
36:12–36:18He methodically lists the specific vanishing genres of mythily life and the sheer volume
36:18–36:20of what is being lost is heartbreaking.
36:20–36:22What kind of songs are we talking about?
36:22–36:26He documents the Parity, which are the hymns sung exclusively at dawn.
36:26–36:30He lists the Gosya Nikita, the invocation sung to the household deities.
36:30–36:33The Sohara, which are the songs of birth and celebration.
36:33–36:36The Kelona, the traditional children's play songs.
36:36–36:40The Hakkana, the hunting songs of lamentation and sorrow.
36:40–36:44In the Lugani, the specific melodies sung during a wedding procession.
36:44–36:45Let's not just list them.
36:45–36:48Let's think about why they are dying.
36:48–36:51Because they aren't dying because people suddenly decided they hate music.
36:51–36:53No, of course not.
36:53–36:57They are dying because the mechanics of modern life are murdering the spaces where the music
36:57–36:59used to live.
36:59–37:01Take the Parati, the Dawn hymns.
37:01–37:03Why are they vanishing?
37:03–37:07Because modernization fundamentally changes our relationship with sleep and labor.
37:07–37:09Exactly.
37:09–37:14When you live in an agrarian society, waking a dawn is a communal reality tied to the rising
37:14–37:15sun.
37:15–37:20When you transition to a modern gig economy or a 9-to-5 commute, you don't wake up a
37:20–37:21dawn to sing communally.
37:21–37:26You wake up to an iPhone alarm, you scramble to make coffee, and you run to catch a train.
37:26–37:29The song dies because the lifestyle that supported the song died.
37:29–37:31That is an excellent point.
37:31–37:34The same applies to the Lugani, the wedding processional songs.
37:34–37:39In the past, the slow physical act of moving the bridal party from one location to another
37:39–37:44took time, and that time was filled with specific traditional melodies sung by the
37:44–37:45women of the family.
37:45–37:50Today, people hire a DJ with massive speakers to play Bollywood hits, and they drive in
37:50–37:51cars.
37:51–37:55Right, the technological shift replaces the human voice.
37:55–37:59Freede and Ryan Shaw recognized the unraveling of the social fabric.
37:59–38:04Long before international bodies like UNESCO popularized their frameworks for safeguarding
38:04–38:06intangible cultural heritage.
38:06–38:09And his solution wasn't just to write an essay complaining about it.
38:09–38:14He proposed a highly specific, three-part tactical plan for preservation.
38:14–38:15Yes.
38:15–38:18First, collect the songs from the living elders immediately before they pass away.
38:18–38:23Second, document the physical performance using audio and video technology.
38:23–38:26Don't just write down the lyrics, capture the cadence of the breath.
38:26–38:29And third, publish the transcribed texts so they can be studied.
38:29–38:34he goes a step further, and this is where his work becomes truly visionary. He doesn't
38:34–38:38just treat these songs as floating pieces of audio, he geographically anchors them.
38:38–38:39What do you mean?
38:39–38:45In his essay, he maps these endangered songs directly onto the Shakti landscape of Mithila.
38:45–38:47The Shakti landscape, what does that mean?
38:47–38:53In Hindu theology, Shakti represents the primordial cosmic energy, the divine feminine force.
38:53–38:58The Mithila region is deeply steeped in this tradition. In his essay, Shakthas
38:58–39:04sites ancient texts like the Brihad Vishnu Purana to establish the spiritual sanctity of the land itself.
39:04–39:10Okay. And then he lists dozens of specific physical shrines dedicated to the goddess.
39:10–39:16He lists Durgastan in Madhubani, Padrakali in Kuala, Siddhikali in Jitvarpur and many others.
39:16–39:21I see. So he's saying this specific song of lamentation doesn't just belong anywhere.
39:21–39:24It belongs to the dust of the courtyard at the Badrakali temple.
39:24–39:25Yes.
39:25–39:28He is tying the ephemeral sound to permanent stone.
39:28–39:31If the song is forgotten, the map to the sacred geography is lost.
39:31–39:34The songs are the coordinates of the culture's faith.
39:34–39:37Precisely. The songs in the land are inextricable.
39:37–39:41Furthermore, in his documentation, he identifies nine distinct musical tunes or dunas.
39:41–39:45And he shows how this musical tradition spans the entire social spectrum.
39:45–39:50It connects the high classical, complex poetry of the legendary Vigipati
39:50–39:57all the way down to completely anonymous, simple, oral folk tunes sung by everyday villagers.
39:57–40:02It is a radically egalitarian view of culture, where the illiterate grandmother's lullaby is
40:02–40:06treated with the same archival reverence as the 15th century master poet.
40:06–40:11It's a beautiful vision, but I have to play devil's advocate here. I am going to push back on
40:11–40:15this entire premise of preservation. Let's go back to the wedding procession.
40:15–40:20If a community decides they would rather dance to a DJ than sing a slow traditional Ligani,
40:20–40:23who are we to tell them they are wrong? That's a fair question.
40:23–40:27Culture is a living organism, right? Organisms evolve, they shed old skin,
40:27–40:31and sometimes old traditions just die to make room for new ones.
40:31–40:35Is there a danger that by putting these songs in a digital archive,
40:35–40:40we are just embalming the culture? Are we turning a living breathing village into a museum
40:40–40:45exhibit. That is the eternal central tension in the field of anthropology. Do you let the culture
40:45–40:50breathe and change even if it means losing the past, or do you freeze it in amber? The argument
40:50–40:56Fridae Norai and Ha is making, and that the source document supports, is that archiving is not
40:56–41:02embalming. It is the opposite. When a community abandons these songs, they aren't just losing
41:02–41:08a melody. They are losing their epistemological connection to their ancestors, their historic
41:08–41:12relationship to the changing of the seasons and their communal language for processing
41:12–41:14grief and joy.
41:14–41:18So he isn't saying you must sing this song every day for the rest of time.
41:18–41:24He's saying if you let it vanish entirely, you lose the genetic material of who you are.
41:24–41:25Exactly.
41:25–41:29You archive it so that 50 years from now a new generation of make-believe musicians
41:29–41:30can rediscover that DNA.
41:30–41:32They can remiss what they can build upon it.
41:32–41:34They can understand where they came from.
41:34–41:35The archive is the seed bank.
41:35–41:36The seed bank.
41:36–41:37Yeah.
41:37–41:39If a crop fails, you starve.
41:39–41:41In cultural terms, without the archive,
41:41–41:43you are left with nothing but amnesia.
41:43–41:46Amnesia. That is a terrifying and powerful way to put it.
41:46–41:50Let's pull all of this together and synthesize what we've discovered in this massive document.
41:50–41:54We started with a mission to uncover the Terrell L. History of Literature.
41:54–41:58We learned that the official canon might only care about academic gatekeepers,
41:58–42:02university degrees, informal publishing houses, and major metropolitan cities.
42:02–42:10But tree culture, the actual beating lifeblood of a community, is preserved by the outliers.
42:10–42:11The people on the ground.
42:11–42:12Yes.
42:12–42:17It's preserved by a retired bank manager sitting in his Zari Ba, applying 14th century logic
42:17–42:22to Facebook posts to keep literary criticism honest and accessible.
42:22–42:26And it's preserved by a radio artist in Yogi, racing against time to map the vanishing
42:26–42:30dawn hymns of his ancestors onto the sacred shrines of his homeland before everyone
42:30–42:32forgets the tune.
42:32–42:36In the unifying thread between Hidnath Shah and Hrida Naranjha is that concept of thick
42:36–42:41description we discussed earlier, neither man was satisfied with the surface.
42:41–42:45Hrida Naranjha didn't just translate words, he translated the ecological trauma and political
42:45–42:50weight of the Kirkhan soil intimately, refusing to let the rage distort the art.
42:50–42:54Hrida Naranjha didn't just list the titles of songs, he connected them to the physical
42:54–42:58breath of the singer, the phase of the moon, and the specific temple where the
42:58–42:59goddess resided.
42:59–43:04They both proved that a culture's survival relies entirely on the passionate, loving,
43:04–43:07and rigorous documentation of everyday life.
43:07–43:12Multiple perspectives, deeply analyzed, are the only safeguard against cultural amnesia.
43:12–43:15It comes back to the tools we have at our disposal.
43:15–43:18A Facebook timeline, an audio recorder.
43:18–43:22They used what they had to build a fortress against the fading of the light.
43:22–43:26And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you with a thought to turn over
43:26–43:27in your own mind.
43:27–43:30We were talking about Mathila, but turn the lens onto your own life.
43:30–43:31Think about your own hometown.
43:31–43:33Think about your own family.
43:33–43:37What is the unwritten history happening right now in your living room or at your dinner table?
43:37–43:39What's the story only you know?
43:39–43:39Yeah.
43:39–43:43What is the inside joke that requires 10 years of context to understand?
43:43–43:47What is the specific weird way your family celebrates a Tuesday
43:47–43:51or the story your grandmother tells that only exists in the air between you and she speaks?
43:51–43:56If a historian a hundred years from now looked only at your bank statements and your official tax records,
43:56–44:02What beautiful everyday songs, what massive social dramas, what crucial pieces of your soul would they completely miss?
44:02–44:04Because no one took the time to write them down.

Plain text

I want you to picture, just picture the rhythm of a decade's long career. Oh, right. Like the ultimate daily grind. Yeah, exactly. You wake up, you commute, you manage the regional branches of a government bank. You spend, I don't know, 30 or 40 years dealing with ledgers and loan approvals and corporate bureaucracy. Living the sort of displaced life, right? In a city totally far away from where you were actually born. Right, and the days just blur into years. And then finally, retirement hits. You get the gold watch, the pension, and this sudden massive expanse of empty time. Which is usually when people, you know, take up golf. Yeah, golf, or maybe just sinking into the couch and doom scrolling on social media for hours. But imagine if literally the day after you retired, you logged onto Facebook, not to like argue with strangers in the comments. Which is what Facebook is mostly for, honestly. Right, totally. But instead of doing that, you use it to slowly, methodically, become one of the most vital literary critics of your entire culture. It sounds almost like magical realism, doesn't it? It really does. Like the idea that the salvation of a millennium old literary tradition might come from, you know, the keyboard of a retired bank manager in Karkhand. Yeah. But then you look at the other side of this coin because we have another figure living a completely different life. Right, totally different. A broadcast radio artist, a devotional singer, a master of traditional yogic breathing. And he looks around and realizes that the songs his ancestors sang at dawn are just vanishing. To disappearing into thin air. Exactly, and he realizes he has to race against the clock. He has to archive the very breath of his people before the noise of modernization just drowns it out forever. So it's two totally different lives. One is operating in this digital realm, you know, text and social media. And the other is operating in the ancient, completely ephemeral realm of breath and melody. Right, but they are both driven by this visceral, urgent sense of preservation. And that is exactly what we are unpacking today. Welcome to the Deep Dive. We have our hands on this incredibly rich, really dense document. It's excerpts from a parallel history of Mithila and Methililiterature, Toman II. Edited by Gagendra Thakur in 2026. Yes, exactly. And the mission of this Deep Dive today is to figure out what the official canon left out. We're looking at how these two men, Hitnaf Shah and Hridayn Arayan Chah, became these unconventional parallel guardians of Mathilli culture. And to really grasp the stakes here, I mean, we need to ground ourselves in what Mathilli culture actually is. Yeah, let's set the stage for you listening at home. Right, so we are talking about the Mathilli region. Geographically, this spans parts of Bihar in India and actually extends into Nepal as well. Okay. And this isn't some fringe dialect. This is a vibrant historically profound literary tradition that dates all the way back to the 10th century. Wow, the 10th century. Yeah, this is the land of Vidyapati, the legendary 15th century poet whose work influenced, well, entire literary movements across eastern India. But the official history of this region is usually written by traditional gatekeepers, right? Like the Sijithi Academy or state-sponsored institutions, university departments. Exactly, but we aren't looking at them today, we are looking at the parallel history. And if you're wondering, you know, why you should care about a specific regional literature in India, it's because this document is a masterclass in how human culture actually survives. It's a blueprint, really. A complete blueprint. Yeah. Culture doesn't survive just because the government builds a dusty museum. It survives in the passionate, totally unpaid, obsessive work of everyday people. Yeah. It lives in a thoughtful book review typed out in a Facebook comment section. Right. song sung to a household deity in a village courtyard. By the end of this deep dive, we're going to see how ancient 14th century Indian logic, modern social media networks, and village oral traditions all just collide. To keep this 1,000-year-old literary lamp burning. Yes. So it is the ultimate collision of the ancient and the hypermodern. Let's start with the phenomenon of the late blooming writer, specifically, Hitnath Jaha. Hitnath Jaha, right? His biography is just so crucial to understanding his work. So he was born in 1956 in a village called Koylak in the Madhubani district of Mithila. But he didn't stay there, did he? No, he didn't. He got a science degree and spent his entire professional life far away. He was working as a government bank manager in Hazariba, which is in the state of Charquendt. Which is a massive geographic and cultural shift. I mean, he's going from the agrarian, deeply traditional heartland of Mithila to the industrial administrative landscape of the Chodonagpur Plateau. Very different physical landscapes, yes. And he spends his whole adult life there. That's not really the typical incubator for a cultural critic. Not at all. Usually, you know, we expect our critics to be sitting in a university lounge in Delhi or Patna debating post-structuralism over tea or something. Right, right. And the sources explicitly note that his major literary output didn't begin until after he retired from the bank. Which is so fascinating to me. Well, there is a certain skepticism in the literary world about retirees who suddenly decide to become writers. Oh sure, like Vanity Projects. Exactly. Often there's a temptation to churn out Vanity poetry or highly derivative stories just to get a spot on a stage somewhere or win a local award. But Hitton S. Jaw didn't do that. No, he completely bypassed that ego-driven route. He looked at the landscape of Mothili literature and realized what it actually needed wasn't just another mediocre poet. You needed a reader. Yes, it needed a critic, a reviewer, a historian who could take the work seriously. And the mechanism he used to do this is what really caught my eye in the source material. He didn't start submitting essays to prestigious peer-reviewed journals. No, he definitely didn't. And he didn't wait for a legacy magazine to grant him a column. He literally used Facebook. He started posting these brief, focused book notices and reader responses directly onto his timeline. And that choice of medium, I mean, it fundamentally changed the nature of his criticism. Oh, so? Well, by putting his thoughts on social media, he was testing his ideas in a very public, highly democratic forum. He bypassed all those institutional bottlenecks where an editor might reject a review just because it didn't align with a certain academic trend. Does that make sense? So he's just going straight to the people? Exactly. On Facebook, he built an audience organically. The sources mentioned that through these posts, he cultivated this vibrant network of literary interlocutors like retired IAS officers, publishers, independent scholars. Wow. I want to pause on that because it really challenges how we view social media today. We tend to view Facebook as this like graveyard of political arguments and photos of people's breakfasts. Yeah, a lot of doom scrolling. Right. But Jaha turned it into a digital literary salon. He used it to find the other displaced readers of Mayfilly literature. And eventually this pipeline from a Facebook post to a printed published book of criticism, it became a reality for him. It did. But to really understand the psychological engine driving his work, we have to look at his displacement. Okay, let's unpack that. In cultural theory, there's a scholar named Homi K. Pabha who talks about the concept of the third space. The third space. What is that exactly? It's this hybrid cultural space that is produced when someone is displaced from their origin. So, Hittnall Chah doesn't just exist in Koylak, his home village, and he doesn't just exist in Hazaraba where he worked. Right, he's somewhere in between. Yes, he operates in the third space between them. He has a dual inheritance. Okay, let me see if I'm interpreting this dual inheritance correctly. On one side, he has the anchor, the ancestral village of Koylak. Exactly. The sources mention his family has a 29 generation intellectual lineage going back to ancient scholars, 29 generations. It's an almost unfathomable depth of roots. Yeah. His father, Terenath Shah, edited a handwritten Mifili journal back in 1933. So the literary bloodline is ancient and intense. Yeah. But then on the other side, you have the reality of his day to day life, the diaspora, the displaced professional navigating the modern banking sector in Herkhand, probably speaking Hindi or English at work, dealing with modern economic realities. Precisely. So he is perpetually negotiating the tension between the homeland and the diaspora. He is an insider by blood, but an outsider by geography and by his profession. It actually makes me think of Walter Benjamin's famous essay on the storyteller. Oh, that's a great connection. Yeah, Benjamin argued that the most profound wisdom doesn't come from the isolated academic. He said it comes from two types of people. First, the resident tiller of the soil, the person who knows the deep history of one specific place. Right. Second, the trading semen. The person who has traveled widely and seen how the rest of the world operates. And Hitmuthchah is somehow both. Exactly. He has the deep roots of Koylak, but the observational distance of the professional who has spent decades outside the bubble. Oh. So I have to ask you, does working outside the ivory tower actually make someone a better critic? Yeah. Because we are usually taught that you need a PhD in literature to do this work properly. Well, the evidence in the parallel history suggests that his professional distance was his greatest asset. Really? How? Think about the sociology of a small regional literary ecosystem. If you live in the capital working in the university department, you are constantly surrounded by the authors you are reviewing. Oh, right. You go to the same parties. Exactly. You compete for the same grants. You navigate the same petty rivalries. It is very, very hard to be objective. That makes total sense. You can't give a bad review to a guy you're having tea with the next morning. Exactly. Kirtanath Shah, sitting way out in Hazarbha, was entirely insulated from institutional literary politics. This gave his criticism a profound authenticity. And this exact combination, the insider's love and the outsider's analytical distance, it resulted in his 2017 masterwork right. A book simply titled Koylak. Yes, Koylak. This is where the story shifts from literary criticism into something much, much more ambitious. The sources describe this book as a Gramgatha, which translates to a village narrative or a Gram-Ithias, the village history. Right, but it's not just a history book. He essentially invented or at least perfected a hybrid genre to write the biography of his ancestral hometown. It is a staggering documentary effort. I mean, he doesn't just sketch the village, he maps it entirely. He records the physical geography, the demographic data. He notes population of around 8,500 people during the 2011 census. And he painstakingly chronicles its 500-year intellectual lineage. Yes. He traces the scholars from Umapati Upataya in the 16th century all the way up to the modern era. He details the local doctors, the diaspora scholars, and the men who became the first professors of Matili at Calcutta University. Right. But if he just listed 500 years of resumes and birth dates, it would be completely unreadable. Yeah. It would just be a phone book. So how does he actually make this a narrative? He achieves it through a method that anthropologists following Clifford Geertz call thick description. Okay, let's break that down. Because thick description is one of those academic terms that sounds simple, but is actually incredibly nuanced. It really is. A lot of people use that standard textbook example of the blink versus the wink. Like a thin description says an eyelid fluttered. While a thick description says they winked to signal a secret joke. Exactly. But I feel like we need a better analogy to understand how this applies to a 300-page village history. I agree. Let's look at it through the lens of a bank statement, which is fitting for a jaw, obviously. Oh, I like that. A thin description of a marriage is looking at a joint bank account ledger. You see a $50 charge at a flower shop, a $200 charge at a restaurant, and a $1,500 charge to a law firm. It's just data. It tells you what happened, but it is entirely devoid of human meaning. Right. accurate, but it's blind to the reality. So what's the thick description? A thick description is knowing that the $50 for flowers was an apology after a massive argument. The $200 dinner was a failed attempt at reconciliation and the $1,500 to the law firm was the retainer for the divorce attorney. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Thick description takes the raw data and embeds it in the complex, messy, emotional and cultural reality of human beings. That's a fantastic way to look at it. So when Hittinath Shah writes about the festivals in Koylak, he isn't giving us the bank statement. He isn't saying on October 15th, the village gathers and lights lamps. Precisely. He gives us the thick description. He embeds the festival in the agricultural cycle, like why does it happen after the harvest? Right. He embeds it in the kinship structures. Who is allowed to light the first lamp and what does that say about family hierarchies? He ties it to the mythological cosmology of the mytholar region. Yes, he gives you the entire cultural ecosystem that makes the action of lighting a lamp meaningful. He is embodying the anthropological ideal of participant observation. He is deeply embedded in the bloodlines and living memory of the village, but he organizes that memory with the rigorous analytical mind of a bank manager. Exactly. But history is complicated and nostalgia is dangerous. Very true. A loving portrait of your ancestral home is a beautiful thing. But if we are calling this a definitive history, we have to confront the blindspots. And the sources are very clear that Koylak has some glaring omissions. Yeah, reviewers of the book, specifically critics like Professor Mash Faralal Das and Dr. Kailash Khurmar Mishra, they pointed out that Jara essentially wrote a history of the elite. He did. The book overwhelmingly focuses on the brahminical intellectual lineage while largely ignoring the non-Brahman castes of the village. right, the Yadav, the Teli, the Musahar communities, the people whose physical labor actually sustains the village. And that isn't the only omission. The critics also noted that the book glosses over a highly uncomfortable statistic. In 2018, the village of Koylak had a literacy rate of under 60%. And this is where I really have to push back on the celebration of this book. We are talking about a village that prides itself on a 500-year unbroken chain of scholars and university professors. It's the intellectual crown jewel of the region. Right. But nearly half of the people living there cannot read or write. So if a historian leaves out the working classes and ignores a devastating statistic about educational inequality, is it actually a history book? Or is it just a heavily researched, highly sanitized family memoir designed to make the elite feel good about themselves? That is the exact tension that makes this book so structurally vital to the Myfilly Canon. Wait, really? How is that vital? Well, you are entirely correct that a purely objective comprehensive history must represent all demographics. But the anthropologist Victor Turner has a concept called the social drama, which helps explain why this flawed book is actually doing essential cultural work. Social drama, okay. Turner argues that communities don't figure out who they are when everything is peaceful. They figure out who they are through conflict, through breaches of the norm, and the resulting public arguments. So you're saying the flaw is a feature, not a bug. How does leaving people out help the community? It acts as a catalyst by putting this soaring, deeply researched, magnificent history of the bromenical intellect into the public sphere, while inadvertently exposing the fact that the working casts and the illiterate majority are missing from the narrative. Jihad forced a crisis of identity. Oh, I see. The book holds up a mirror to the village. The elite look in the mirror and see their glorious past, but the critics look at the mirror and say, Wait, where is everybody else? Right. If he hadn't written the book at all, the conversation about the 60% literacy rate might never have happened in the literary sphere. Exactly. The book forces the community to confront the massive, uncomfortable gap between its mythological self image and its deeply unequal present reality. The critique it invites is the true cultural function of the book. Yes. Hittin' Up Chop provided the thesis, a thick description of the intellectual lineage. The reviewers provided the antithesis, the socioeconomic reality of the marginalized, and the resulting community dialogue is the synthesis. It's an incredibly brave thing to put a piece of work out there knowing it will be dissected like that. It really is. And this honesty, this willingness to engage in the messy reality of reader response, it's the perfect bridge to how he actually approaches his day job as a literary critic. Absolutely, because in 2023, he publishes a book called Lekrek. which is basically a masterclass in how to review a book without being a snob. Lekrek is a fascinating document. It is a collection of his pahakia. In Methili, a pahakia roughly translates to a reader response. Okay, reader response. It is a very specific, intermediate, critical form. It sits exactly halfway between a casual reading note you might scribble in the margins of a novel and a formal, highly structured, heavily cited academic review. The way I picture a pahakia is like the best possible version of a book club discussion. Oh yeah. You know the kind of book club I'm talking about? Not the one where everyone drinks wine and just gossips. Right. And not the one where that one guy with a master's degree tries to dominate the conversation by quoting French philosophers. Ugh, yes, we've all been there. It's a space where people are deeply, genuinely engaged with the text. They're saying, when the protagonist did this, I felt betrayed. Or the author's pacing in chapter four completely lost me, and here is why. It's rigorous, but it's accessible. And honestly, doesn't formal academic criticism sometimes do more harm than good? If a literature is fighting to survive, doesn't impenetrable academic jargon just alienate the very readers you need to keep the language alive? You've hit on the exact crisis of regional literatures right there. In an ecosystem like Mathili, which is rich in history, but lacks the vast, well-funded institutional infrastructure of Hindi or English publishing, A professional hyperacademic critic can end up shouting into a void. Just writing reviews that only five other professors can understand. Exactly. Hitnath Chah recognized that the survival of Mathiliate depends on the informed general reader, so he writes for them. And the sources emphasize his ethics as a reviewer. Because he's a retired banker living in Karkand, he owes absolutely nothing to the literary dawns of Bihar. He doesn't care about the politics at all. Right. There's a 22-year-old debut novelist with the exact same microscopic attention and analytical care that he applies to an established, award-winning literary heavyweight. His independence is his superpower, and he evaluates these books based on four very grounded, practical benchmarks. Let's go through those. First is accessibility, right? Yes, accessibility. Does the book communicate its ideas clearly without condescending to the reader? Second is Yathartha or realism. Does the story engage honestly with the gritty material and social realities of contemporary Mathilli life, or is it just nostalgic fluff? Third is Basha Shudi, which is linguistic propriety. Does the author respect the craft of the language? Are they avoiding overly convoluted, hypersanscritized vocabulary that no one actually speaks? While also avoiding lazy, imprecise slang. Exactly. And fourth is formal innovation. Is the author actually pushing the boundaries of the genre or just repeating what worked 20 years ago? Those are fantastic criteria. I mean, if every Goodreads review had to pass those four tests, the internet would be a much better place. I couldn't agree more. But here is where the parallel history source document does something that absolutely blew my mind. The editor, Gajendra Thakur, doesn't just praise Jha's practical approach. He actually maps Hitnavata's modern Facebook-era book reviews onto a 14th century system of classical Indian logic. Yes. the application of Navya Nyaya epistemology. Navya Nya. And the geographical symmetry here is just beautiful. Navya Nyaya was a revolutionary school of logic founded by the philosopher Gagesha Upatiyaya in the 14th century. And where did he found it? Right in the Mithila region. That is wild. So applying a 600-year-old Mithili philosophical framework to a modern Mithili critic, it's this profound homecoming of ideas. Exactly. Gagesha's foundational texts, the Tathantamani, argues that there are four primaches, four valid means of acquiring accurate knowledge about the world. Okay, we need to spend some serious time here because this is the intellectual core of the deep dive. We're going to walk through these four primates and I want to see how a guy typing on a laptop in 2023 is executing 14th century logic. Let's do. So the first primate is Pratika. What is it and how does Jaya use it? Pratika translates to direct perception. In classical logic, it means the immediate raw sensory encounter with an object before your brain starts analyzing it. Direct perception. Okay, so applied to literary criticism, what is that? It is the phenomenological experience of reading. It's what the text does to your nervous system before you apply any academic theories. Oh, I see. Hitnath Chah's reviews always, always start with Prachekah. He never begins a review by saying, according to Marxist theory, this novel represents... He begins by saying, I read this book and it evoked this specific feeling of melancholy in me. Exactly. He anchors his entire critique in the honest, raw perception of the reader encountering the text. Which is exactly why his reviews resonate on social media. It's the ultimate hook. If you tell me a book is a deconstruction of post-colonial gender norms, I might just keep scrolling. Right. But if you tell me a book made you feel a profound sense of isolation because of how the author described a rainy afternoon, I want to read it. The raw feeling is the gateway. spot on. So you have the feeling, what is the second step? The second Prama is Anumana, which means inference. Inference. This is the logical heavy lifting. Once you have your direct perception, your raw feeling, you have to infer a conclusion based on evidence. In the Navya and Aya system, inference is incredibly rigorous. You can't just jump to a conclusion. You have to prove it. Yes, you have the subject, you have the conclusion you want to prove, You have the specific evidence, which is called the head to, and you have the invariable rule that links the evidence to the conclusion. Okay, I'm going to need a translation of that into modern terms. It sounds like you're saying show your work. Exactly. Let's invent a hypothetical scenario. Let's say the host of a show weeds a new thriller and feels a sense of relentless tension. Okay, that tension is the Prat Chah, the direct perception. Now, the host wants to claim that the author is a master of pacing. That claim is the conclusion. But how do you prove it? In Anumana, you must provide the head to, the evidence. So Hit Nuts High doesn't just say, this book has great pacing. Right. He says, this book has great pacing, and my evidence is that in chapter 4, the author exclusively uses staccato, five word sentences during the chase scene, which physically mimics a racing heartbeat. Oh wow, he makes the architecture of his reasoning completely transparent to the reader. He does. Okay, I love that. So step one, Prechaqa, I feel the tension. Step two, Anumana, I prove the tension exists by pointing to the short sentences. I've perceived it and I've proven it. What is the third Preta Mana? The third is Upamana, which translates to analogical comparison. Analogical comparison. In philosophy, it's how you gain knowledge of something entirely new by comparing it to something you already know. Let's say you've never seen a wild boar, but I tell you it looks like a pig, but with coarse dark hair and tusks When you see one in the woods you use upamana to identify it because you compare exactly for hit-not-shot This is how he contextualizes a new piece of literature Right because a book doesn't exist in a vacuum if I read a great sci-fi book I naturally compare it to dune or foundation to see where it ranks Exactly Jhada constantly evaluates a new Mathili debut by placing it against the massive backdrop of the the Mithaili literary corpus. He determines its value by identifying its resemblances and its departures from the traditions that came before it. He uses analogy to map its coordinates in the culture. Okay, so we have perception, inference and analogy. What is the final step in this 14th century playbook? The fourth is SUPTA, which translates to verbal testimony. The verbal testimony. In logic, this means acquiring knowledge by relying on the authority of a reliable source or the established textual record. You can't personally witness the French Revolution, so you rely on Subta, the testimony of historians. Okay. Hittnath Ha is deeply invested in the historical record. In 2003, he co-edited a massive historical survey of Mathili literature. He relies on the synthesis of centuries of literary testimony to ensure that his modern critiques are grounded in historical truth. It is genuinely staggering to step back and realize that a retired banker typing out reviews in a Facebook comment box is organically embodying a 600 year old epistemological framework that was invented in his own ancestral backyard. It really is incredible. He isn't trying to sound smart. The logic is just woven into his cultural DNA. He strips away the pretension to find the core truth of the text. Yes. And that specific skill, the ability to bypass the noise and locate the emotional core of a piece of writing is what makes him not just a brilliant critic but a masterful translator. The transition into his translation work is where we see his critical theories put into actual practice. For 15 years, Hittnath Ha dedicated himself to translating the work of the Hindi progressive poet Shambhubadal into my Philly. And the context of Shambhubadal's poetry is essential here, right? Absolutely. Badal is not writing romantic poetry about the moon. He is a deeply political poet whose work centers on the exploited working classes, the marginalized Adivasi communities, and the environmental devastation of the Sharkhand Bihar borderland. which is exactly the landscape that Hittnath Chan navigated during his decades as a bank manager. Precisely. He wasn't sitting in a cafe in Paris. He was working in the economic trenches of Tarkhand. He saw the coal mines. He saw the exploitation. He saw the working class struggles that Badal was writing about. And that shared physical environment deeply informed his approach to the translation. Translating poetry is notoriously treacherous. Oh, I'm sure. There is always a war between formal equivalents translating word for word, keeping the exact grammatical structure and dynamic equivalents. Jha is a fierce proponent of dynamic equivalents, a concept heavily theorized by the linguist Eugene Nida. Dynamic equivalents, what does that mean in practice? It means that the ultimate goal of a translation is not to copy the dictionary definition of the words, but to recreate the exact emotional impact. The Mothili reader must feel the exact same punch to the gut that the Hindi reader felt. He prioritizes the Mola Bhavana, the foundational emotional core. Let's get into the mechanics of how he actually does that, because the choices he makes are fascinating. The sources highlight a specific poem he translated called Khoiliyamokia, which is about a village cobbler. If Jaha were trying to show off his vast intellectual lineage, he could have translated this poem using highly elevated, Sanskritized metheali. He could have made it sound like a 15th century royal decree. Why didn't it? Because doing so would have been a political and artistic betrayal of the poem. A betrayal? Yes. If you take a gritty, class-conscious, Hindi poem about a man who works with leather and dirt, and you translate it into the polished, elite vocabulary of the upper castes, you have essentially colonized the poem. Wow. that. To achieve dynamic equivalents, he deliberately utilized the everyday working-class Mithili vocabulary. He used the language of the street, the language of the soil to capture Badal's voice. He matched the socio-economic reality of the subject with the socio-economic register of the vocabulary. This maps so beautifully onto classical Indian poetic theory, specifically the theory of rasa, which I find endlessly fascinating. Yes, rasa theory is foundational here, Outlined in Harata's ancient text the Nayashastra, Rasa refers to the dominant aesthetic flavor or emotional essence of a work of art. Right. The theory posits that there are several distinct Rasa's love, comedy, terror, disgust, and so on. When the critics in our source material analyze Chas' translations of Badal's progressive poetry, they note a very specific emotional cocktail. What's the mix? The dominant flavor is Shantarasa, which is a sense of deep serenity or equanimity. This is mixed with kardolrasa, which is payfos or deep compassion for suffering, and vira rasa, which is heroic resolve or quiet courage. But the most revealing part of this analysis isn't what is there, it's what is explicitly missing. The sources note that Cha meticulously avoids rajarasa, the flavor of rage or fury. Yes, he does. I want to linger on this because it seems completely counterintuitive to me. He is translating highly political poetry about the brutal exploitation of marginalized workers and the destruction of the environment. In Western progressive poetry, rage is often the primary engine. Why strip the rage out of it? Because rage is volatile, rage burns incredibly hot, but it burns out quickly and it often distorts the clarity of the art. By anchoring the translation in Shantarasa equanimity mixed with heroic resolve and compassion, hot ensures that the political critique is sustained, deep, and unshakable. the difference between a sudden explosion and a deep unstoppable river. Exactly. The refusal to let anger distort the poetry actually makes the indictment of exploitation far more powerful. And by maintaining that equanimity, he protects the most delicate aspect of the poetry, the Dvani. Yes, Dvani. Dvani is arguably the most sophisticated concept in Indian poetics. It translates roughly to resonance or suggestion. The ninth century theoretician Anand Vardana argued that that Dhvani is the true soul of poetry. It's the meaning that echoes beyond the literal definition of the words, much like the lingering vibration of a struck bell. And if you are screaming and rage, you can't hear the resonance of the bell. Exactly. The source material gives a breathtaking example of this resonance in action. They discuss Jha's translation of Badal's poem, simply titled, Ma or Mother. Yes. In Jha's Mathili translation, the word ma acts as a profound vessel for Dhvani. It resonates simultaneously on three distinct, tragic levels. Let's go through them. First, there is the literal biological mother who is aging and vulnerable. Second, it resonates as the mother tongue, the Methyl language itself, which is constantly under threat of erasure by more dominant languages and modernization. And the third. And third, it resonates as the motherland, the primordial physical landscape of Harkond and Methylah, which is being ripped apart by capitalism, mining and deforestation. Think about the psychological weight of that for the reader. Imagine if the word for mother in English simultaneously meant the literal earth beneath your feet and the only language your grandmother speaks. It's incredibly heavy. When you read a line in the poem about the mother dying, your brain fires on three different tragic cylinders at once. You are mourning your parent, your culture, and your planet simultaneously. That is the power of Devani. It really is. And it brings up a really modern critical lens, ecocriticism. In these translations, the environment, the south forests, the winding rivers, the gaping coal mines of the Chodanagpur Plateau, they are not just backdrops where the human drama takes place. They're bleeding characters. The natural world has supreme agency. It is a profound act of cultural bridging. Hittnetta is essentially translating the wounded soil of Harkhand into the linguistic soul of Mithla. He is preserving the ecological and human truth of one marginalized space by rendering it perfectly into the language of another. So we have spent the first half of this deep dive looking at a man who preserves culture through the written word, through the meticulous crafting of village histories, through rigorous Facebook reviews powered by 14th century logic, and through the delicate translation of progressive poetry. But there's a massive fundamental flaw in everything Hitnothcha is doing. Text is static. Text requires literacy. And as we discussed with the Koylaag village history, literacy in these regions was sometimes under 60%. Right. If your entire strategy for saving a culture is printing books, you are inherently losing the soul of the illiterate masses. You are losing the people whose entire historical archive is oral. So how do you save a culture that lives entirely in breath, rhythm, and melody? Right, that's the big question. To answer that, we have to pivot to the second figure in the document, Friede Narayancha. Yes, the contrast between the two men is stark, but their mission is identical. While Hittanath operates in the realm of the permanent text, Frida and Arayansha operates in the ephemeral realm of voice and performance. Who exactly is he? He is a recognized folk-culturist, a devotional artist, and an all-India radio or Akashvani B. Highgrade artist. Furthermore, he is a deeply committed practitioner of traditional lineage-based yoga known as Guru Parampara. Let's talk about that all India radio grading because be high grade sounds like an arbitrary piece of corporate bureaucracy. It does sound like that. If I tell a teenager today that someone is a be high grade artist, they're going to look at me blankly. But in the context of folk art in India, this is a massive deal. It's almost like getting the ultimate verified blue check mark, but one that actually means you possess immense cultural talent. What does that grading actually represent to an oral artist? It represents institutional survival. The AIR grading system is incredibly rigorous. It assesses technical vocal competence, artistic quality, and the cultural authenticity of the repertoire. For classical musicians who have sheet music and massive academies behind them, it's a career milestone. But for a folk artist, someone who operates strictly within the oral tradition where the songs are passed down purely from memory, this grading acts as a crucial stamp of legitimacy from the state. Wow. It elevates the songs of the village courtyard to the level of broadcast worthy high culture. It means the National Archive recognizes the value of your breath. And his connection to yoga is not incidental here, is it? We think of yoga in the West as a stretching class you take at a gym, but traditional Guru Pornpura yoga is deeply tied to breath control, to pranayama, to the physical mastery of the body's energy. Right, it's a completely different discipline. Harayana Naranjha sits right at the intersection of the performative, his singing, and the ascetic, his yogic discipline. His entire archive is held in his lungs and his vocal cords. Exactly. If the library burns down, Hitnappcha loses his work. If Reden-Reyno loses his breath, his entire cultural archive disappears. And he was acutely, painfully aware of this fragility. He knew that an oral archive is only one generation away from total extinction. Yes. And that realization sparked his most urgent defining mission. In 2009, he published a monumental essay. It was featured in the very first digital compilation of the Vidae archive, which was sort of like the ultimate way back machine from the Aethelie culture. Right, yeah. The essay is titled, Endangered Messilly Folk Songs, or Luprapraya Methililokagita. And reading it feels less like an academic paper and more like a man screaming that a house is on fire while everyone else is watching television. It is a blaring alarm bell. He methodically lists the specific vanishing genres of mythily life and the sheer volume of what is being lost is heartbreaking. What kind of songs are we talking about? He documents the Parity, which are the hymns sung exclusively at dawn. He lists the Gosya Nikita, the invocation sung to the household deities. The Sohara, which are the songs of birth and celebration. The Kelona, the traditional children's play songs. The Hakkana, the hunting songs of lamentation and sorrow. In the Lugani, the specific melodies sung during a wedding procession. Let's not just list them. Let's think about why they are dying. Because they aren't dying because people suddenly decided they hate music. No, of course not. They are dying because the mechanics of modern life are murdering the spaces where the music used to live. Take the Parati, the Dawn hymns. Why are they vanishing? Because modernization fundamentally changes our relationship with sleep and labor. Exactly. When you live in an agrarian society, waking a dawn is a communal reality tied to the rising sun. When you transition to a modern gig economy or a 9-to-5 commute, you don't wake up a dawn to sing communally. You wake up to an iPhone alarm, you scramble to make coffee, and you run to catch a train. The song dies because the lifestyle that supported the song died. That is an excellent point. The same applies to the Lugani, the wedding processional songs. In the past, the slow physical act of moving the bridal party from one location to another took time, and that time was filled with specific traditional melodies sung by the women of the family. Today, people hire a DJ with massive speakers to play Bollywood hits, and they drive in cars. Right, the technological shift replaces the human voice. Freede and Ryan Shaw recognized the unraveling of the social fabric. Long before international bodies like UNESCO popularized their frameworks for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. And his solution wasn't just to write an essay complaining about it. He proposed a highly specific, three-part tactical plan for preservation. Yes. First, collect the songs from the living elders immediately before they pass away. Second, document the physical performance using audio and video technology. Don't just write down the lyrics, capture the cadence of the breath. And third, publish the transcribed texts so they can be studied. he goes a step further, and this is where his work becomes truly visionary. He doesn't just treat these songs as floating pieces of audio, he geographically anchors them. What do you mean? In his essay, he maps these endangered songs directly onto the Shakti landscape of Mithila. The Shakti landscape, what does that mean? In Hindu theology, Shakti represents the primordial cosmic energy, the divine feminine force. The Mithila region is deeply steeped in this tradition. In his essay, Shakthas sites ancient texts like the Brihad Vishnu Purana to establish the spiritual sanctity of the land itself. Okay. And then he lists dozens of specific physical shrines dedicated to the goddess. He lists Durgastan in Madhubani, Padrakali in Kuala, Siddhikali in Jitvarpur and many others. I see. So he's saying this specific song of lamentation doesn't just belong anywhere. It belongs to the dust of the courtyard at the Badrakali temple. Yes. He is tying the ephemeral sound to permanent stone. If the song is forgotten, the map to the sacred geography is lost. The songs are the coordinates of the culture's faith. Precisely. The songs in the land are inextricable. Furthermore, in his documentation, he identifies nine distinct musical tunes or dunas. And he shows how this musical tradition spans the entire social spectrum. It connects the high classical, complex poetry of the legendary Vigipati all the way down to completely anonymous, simple, oral folk tunes sung by everyday villagers. It is a radically egalitarian view of culture, where the illiterate grandmother's lullaby is treated with the same archival reverence as the 15th century master poet. It's a beautiful vision, but I have to play devil's advocate here. I am going to push back on this entire premise of preservation. Let's go back to the wedding procession. If a community decides they would rather dance to a DJ than sing a slow traditional Ligani, who are we to tell them they are wrong? That's a fair question. Culture is a living organism, right? Organisms evolve, they shed old skin, and sometimes old traditions just die to make room for new ones. Is there a danger that by putting these songs in a digital archive, we are just embalming the culture? Are we turning a living breathing village into a museum exhibit. That is the eternal central tension in the field of anthropology. Do you let the culture breathe and change even if it means losing the past, or do you freeze it in amber? The argument Fridae Norai and Ha is making, and that the source document supports, is that archiving is not embalming. It is the opposite. When a community abandons these songs, they aren't just losing a melody. They are losing their epistemological connection to their ancestors, their historic relationship to the changing of the seasons and their communal language for processing grief and joy. So he isn't saying you must sing this song every day for the rest of time. He's saying if you let it vanish entirely, you lose the genetic material of who you are. Exactly. You archive it so that 50 years from now a new generation of make-believe musicians can rediscover that DNA. They can remiss what they can build upon it. They can understand where they came from. The archive is the seed bank. The seed bank. Yeah. If a crop fails, you starve. In cultural terms, without the archive, you are left with nothing but amnesia. Amnesia. That is a terrifying and powerful way to put it. Let's pull all of this together and synthesize what we've discovered in this massive document. We started with a mission to uncover the Terrell L. History of Literature. We learned that the official canon might only care about academic gatekeepers, university degrees, informal publishing houses, and major metropolitan cities. But tree culture, the actual beating lifeblood of a community, is preserved by the outliers. The people on the ground. Yes. It's preserved by a retired bank manager sitting in his Zari Ba, applying 14th century logic to Facebook posts to keep literary criticism honest and accessible. And it's preserved by a radio artist in Yogi, racing against time to map the vanishing dawn hymns of his ancestors onto the sacred shrines of his homeland before everyone forgets the tune. In the unifying thread between Hidnath Shah and Hrida Naranjha is that concept of thick description we discussed earlier, neither man was satisfied with the surface. Hrida Naranjha didn't just translate words, he translated the ecological trauma and political weight of the Kirkhan soil intimately, refusing to let the rage distort the art. Hrida Naranjha didn't just list the titles of songs, he connected them to the physical breath of the singer, the phase of the moon, and the specific temple where the goddess resided. They both proved that a culture's survival relies entirely on the passionate, loving, and rigorous documentation of everyday life. Multiple perspectives, deeply analyzed, are the only safeguard against cultural amnesia. It comes back to the tools we have at our disposal. A Facebook timeline, an audio recorder. They used what they had to build a fortress against the fading of the light. And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you with a thought to turn over in your own mind. We were talking about Mathila, but turn the lens onto your own life. Think about your own hometown. Think about your own family. What is the unwritten history happening right now in your living room or at your dinner table? What's the story only you know? Yeah. What is the inside joke that requires 10 years of context to understand? What is the specific weird way your family celebrates a Tuesday or the story your grandmother tells that only exists in the air between you and she speaks? If a historian a hundred years from now looked only at your bank statements and your official tax records, What beautiful everyday songs, what massive social dramas, what crucial pieces of your soul would they completely miss? Because no one took the time to write them down.

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