Didarganj Yakshi: Conflict between myth and history

One of the finest sculptures from ancient India is known as the Chauri (Fly Whisk) Bearer or the Didarganj Yakshi. This highly polished chunar stone sculpture of a voluptuous figure has been described as a whisk bearer, and a Yakshini. Some historians and archaeologists date it to the 3rd Century BCE, while others basing themselves on details of ornamentation, insist that it belongs to the 2nd Century CE; a broader consensus places it in the Mauryan period.

It is difficult to date it properly because it is a standalone discovery, no other associated artefacts were found at the same site, and it is probable that it was removed from its original location, so dating through association is not possible.

Just as there are two opinions about its antiquity, there are also two stories about its discovery. According to a Patna Museum publication, the then commissioner of Patna EHS Walsh records in a letter that a man known as Ghulam Rasool saw what looked like the base of something sticking out of the muddy banks of the Ganga near Didarganj. He proceeded to dig out the stone and thus the statue was discovered.

The other version comes from a confidential report filed by an inspector of police on October 20, 1917. Why did the report have to be confidential is not explained. The continuing tradition of distrust that the judiciary places on police reports prompts one to suggest that we exercise a generous measure of circumspection while buying into this story. The fact that everybody believes this version makes it all the more doubtful.

Anyhow, this is what the good inspector recorded: “... For years this stone had been sticking out of the muddy bank of the Ganga near Didarganj and was used as a washing board, one day some people saw a snake and began to chase it, the snake rushed towards the stone and disappeared in a hole beneath the stone, everybody began to dig, eventually uprooting the stone that turned out to be the statue of a woman, buried face down…and thus was discovered the whisk bearer of Didarganj.” The cop’s tale, not unusually, makes no further mention of the snake.

Though it was found exactly a 100 years ago, in 1917, the year the Patna Museum, popularly known as Jaadu Ghar (house of magic) was founded, no one knows exactly which of the two stories of the discovery of the Chauri Bearer is authentic.

This ambiguity is not unique to the story of the Yakshi — this confusion is the lifeblood of the Indian situation. In this case, the commissioner and his subordinate are betting two hugely different horses: both are oral narratives recorded for posterity, and one cannot bet with any certainty on either. The situation becomes alarming when, as a people, we continue to mix mythology with history.

The historical method engages itself with interpreting known facts and weaving a narrative by studying the linkages between what is known and hypothesising on the basis of logical patterns that emerge through a study of these linkages. Mythology, on the other hand, needs no evidence and inquiry. It can survive, as it has for millennia, on unquestioning faith.

History needs to record evidence, to preserve the remains of the past and to keep going back to what we know of the past, and to constantly return to the same remains and to interrogate what we know in the light of newer instruments of investigation. Mythology is unencumbered by these rigours. It rests contended on what it believes to be eternal truths that came into existence in an undefined pristine past.

It is this constantly deepening enquiry of history, perpetually refining our understanding of our past that gives us a better understanding of how we arrived at our present and helps us chart out a course for the future. Opposed to this are the frozen-in-time certainties of mythology.

The problem we face in the India of the 21st Century is not so much due to a clash of ideas between alternative interpretations of history. In fact, the constantly evolving understanding of our past being refined by historians is forever being assailed by eternal truisms of mythologies increasingly being privileged as the only true history.

If we wish to take our place in the first row among the comity of nations, we will need to choose between myth and reality.

The author is a historian, and organises the Delhi Heritage Walk for children and adults