The songs of the Bauls and their lifestyle is influenced by
Bengali culture, but nowhere did it leave its imprint more powerfully than on
the work of Rabindranath Tagore, who talked of Bauls in a number of speeches in
Europe in the 1930s. Rabindranath Tagore was greatly influenced and inspired by
Bauls. He wrote: "One day I
chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baul sect of
Bengal...What struck me in this simple song was a religious expression that was
neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its
rarefied transcendentalism. At the same time, it was alive with an emotional
sincerity, it spoke of an intense yearning of the heart for the divine, which
is in man and not in the temple or scriptures, in images or symbols... I sought
to understand them through their songs, which is their only form of
worship."
Rabindranath Tagore became a Baul acolyte when the legendary
Sri Nabani (Gosia) Das Khyappa Baul gave Tagore the name Ravi (Robi) Baul and
in return Tagore gave Nabani (Noboni) the name Khyappa Baul and named him
'Mirror of the Sky'. The Pous Mela in Shantiniketan was created by Rabindranath
Tagore in honour of Nabani Das Baul to bring together intellectuals, poets, and
creative artists from around the world. Here is a famous Rabindrasangeet (Tagore
song), heavily influenced by Baul theme:
Tai heri taye sakol khane
Achhe shé nayōntaray, alōk-dharay, tai na haraye—
Ogo tai dekhi taye jethay sethay
Taka-i ami jé dik-pané
(The man of my heart dwells inside me.
Everywhere I behold, it's Him!
In my every sight, in the sparkle of light
Oh I can never lose Him –
Here, there and everywhere,
Wherever I turn, right in front is He!)
The mystical nature of Tagore's lyrics is also a
product of his affinity to these wandering bards. Edward Dimock Jr. in
his The Place of the Hidden
Moon (1966) writes: "Rabindranath Tagore put the Bauls on a
higher-than-respectable level by his praise of the beauty of their songs and
spirit, and by his frank and proud acknowledgement of his own poetic debt to
them." The Baul pattern also inspired many other successful poets,
playwrights and songwriters of the 19th and 20th centuries.
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