Charyapada

Its a collection of Vajrayana/Sahajyana Buddhist verses titled Charya. It consists of poems written by Buddhist Tantrics from Bengal between the 7th to the 11th centuries AD. The philosophies that lie behind these poems belong, presently, to Tibetan Buddhism. It is said that the philosophies of Tantra, of the Nath praxis as well as of the Baul minstrels came to be from these verses. These literary heritage can be considered as a part of the Bhakti movement because they offer counternarratives to Brahminical and Advaita-Vedantist aggression, and, as I have explained in the first part that I have titled ‘Letter to the Reader’, they bring to light how and when the theories of Unitarian Voidism of the Buddhists were converted into those of Unitarian Vedantism of the caste-Hindus. The language used in these poems has been termed ‘Shandhyo Bhasha’ or Twilight Language because most of the songs have multiple folds of meanings, like the Baul and Fakir songs. It is said that the Bangla language evolved from this, and these poems are considered as the first literary output of the Bangla language. Other than the songs, Haraprasad Shastri had written a Mouthpiece and some notes on the identity of the Tantric Buddhist poets. All these were published together by Bongiyo Shahityo Porishawd way back in 1916. The Charya songs represent this wisdom of absolute equality. At the heart of this wisdom lies Karuna – compassion – which is to unite with Shunya – the unqualified void – to show the seekers the path to liberation from all the sadness of the world – to Nirvana. However, though the basic philosophies of the Charya mystics survived even after Buddhism had fallen to the power-maddened gall of the priestly classes and the feudal gentry, their literary creations were lost from the subcontinent during the medieval ages. Nonetheless, those creations survived in Tibet – through translations and annotations that were studied and archived by the scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.