A group of his followers requested him to perform cihna yatra but he did not agree at their first request. In his reply, Sankardeva told them that he should devote more time in studying Sastra with different angle. Besides study, Sankardeva desired to gather some practical experiences and more information on different religious shrines like Puri, Mathura, Vrindaban etc .
Sankardeva spent twelve years to roam in and around and got the opportunity to study more and more of other sastras. After returning from his twelve years journey he discussed the entire planning with his faithful followers like Jagatananda, Paramananda and Ketaikha etc. The twelve years pilgrimage taught him that any kind of performance should be understandable to every section of the people where Sanskrit language would be not appropriate in this regards.
Sankardeva observed that to perform SriKrishnalila people of Braja used a language which was a mixture of Maitheli, Hindi, Parsi, and Arabic. This language was used by Bidyapati, the great language composer of Maitheli. Srimanta Sankardeva thought to introduce such type of language where maximum words would be local one along with a mixture of Maitheli, Hindi and Parsi.
The replacement of Sanskrit language in such a manner will be known as Brajawali language which would be easily understandable to all sections of people including Bhuyans. When language was chosen then Sankardeva proceeded to compose the sastra for further preparation of performances.
The first and foremost task would be the script writing and Srimanta Sankardeva devoted most of his time on it but during that preparation a consideration came to his mind that if some songs were inoculated during the performances it would be much better and sparkling also. Then he started to make khol( an instrument used for singing) and after a long painstaking work able to complete the making of khol which produced a very melodious sound when he played the same.
Besides this, other instruments like doba, negera, kah were prepared along with some musk. A long preparation was needed to make the characters much more prominent as well as attractive.
Before the starting of the main drama, preparatory performances were exhibited with saru dhemali, bor dhemali, nat dhemali and sutra dhemali etc. where all instruments were played along with songs also. Srimanta sankardeva believed that the bhaona would be more attractive if it would perform during the night hours and in this connection he started to prepare an artificial light.
It was a much more challenging task but he made it with a continuous effort which he called it as agnigargh, mota and bhota which lighted full complete night with a high flame without any interruption. Before the performances, Sankardeva looked after the entire process of preparation once again so that no interferences occur during the performances. The main bhaona was started when all dhemalis were over and its sutradhar was Ram ram guru.
With a proper dress and garlanding, Sutradhar started his dancing and that would follow the dancing in Baikuntha by Sankardeva himself wearing musk of garur. The bhaona moved ahead in which all kinds of instruments also played and the spectators became mesmerized by observing the various characters under the bright artificial light. As people demanded to continue the bhaona for more performances, then at last Sankardeva was bound to continue it consecutively for seven days.
All the spectators were surprised to see the performance of bhaona and everybody started to express their view that sankardeva must have some god gifted quality without which it would not be possible.
The script writing, lyrics, composition of music, preparation of instruments, musk and taking an active role in acting as well as in dancing was not a simple task for which everybody used to respect him as a guru irrespective of religion, caste and creed. Srimanta Sankardeva became much more popular amongst all sections of people and people from long distances also came to him for their darsan.
The main important part of the cihna yatra was the language which Sankardeva used in his script was Brajawali which was easily understandable to all. It was not an easy task because to create a new language it required the phonology, grammar and vocabulary and mixture of these three components must be accurate otherwise it would went in vain.
Besides these, the composition of different words from different languages with special touch of more local words was not an easy task but Sankarguru made it with a fine tune in which the gist of the language was fulfilled. Moreover, the script writing envisages two criteria i.e. art and craft and combination of these two must be noted to perform before the mass media.
Sankardeva was very much successful in this matter; hence every one was satisfied in the performance of bhaona. Sankardeva did a revolutionary work in the field of drama for the first time in Assam.
The art which was drawn for cihna yatra must be attracted to all and for which it took a conscientious work because the combination of colours was important along with the drawing of accurate figures. It was a mile stoning work because almost six hundred years back Sankardeva made it fruitful with a grand success and beginning of a new era of audio-visual art which was the base of the present day drama, cinema etc.
It is to be noted that four hundred years back William Shakespeare wrote only drama and became famous across the world but almost six hundred years back our Sankarguru not only wrote drama but touched each and every literature, art, culture with manifold creative works and remained in Assam only.
We have not focused our guru in national and international perspective hence his greatness has been constricted in our state only but a beam of rays focus to some extend now-a-days outside of Assam to establish Sankardeva’s contributions but this is not sufficient.
We have to work more through different media in a broader perspective to focus multifaceted qualities of Gurujona.
Dr. Jagadindra Raychoudhury, Academecian and Litterateur
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