Dasae Dance
Festival of Grief in Santals | Dasae song | Dasae dance
Dasae consists of two words –Dak(rains) and Sae(over) .Which
means the festival is celebrated after the rainy season(monsoon) is over. Dasae
is festival of grief among Santals. There is a mythology story that tells when
our ancestors fought with the Aryans or the Turuk as we used to name them, always used to lose the battle. Aryans wanted
to find out the reason as to why they lost the battle each time they fought
with Santalas. Later, they discovered that it was because of two brave women
warriors who also fought along with the others, and as a result, Aryans
couldn’t beat them. Then Aryan planned a way how to weaken the Santals in battle. They waited for
the right opportunity and when it came, they kidnapped the two brave women
warriors – Ayan and Kajal.
When Devi and Durga , two young brave men warriors got to
know about this incident, they went out in their search. By then, the news of
this incident had spread everywhere. To find out the Ayan and Kajal, all the men and women were
assigned special responsibilities. Since it was rainy season they could not
carry out their plan effectively and hence could not find them.
When the monsoon was over, they again went out with their
traditional weapon and started to look for them. Even women also used to carry
out such tasks with other cooperating them. Taking lesson from this, the men
started dress like women and adopted this disguise while searching Ayan and
Kajal door to door so that nobody could
recognize them. They used women’s saris.
For this very lesson the men folk going around for Dasae
dance dresses like women.
This is how the story goes like, that these dancers under
such disguise went from house to house
So the story goes that these dancers under such disguises went
from house to house showing their dance
and secretly peeped inside houses in
hope of finding out of any presence of
Ayan and Kajal. During this the dance, the women while giving them grains as
aims also used to tell them whether Ayan and Kajal were in the house or not.
Santals used to have the Master and their disciple who also helped in the
search and did their work in different areas wherever they were.
Dasai has many stories and songs too which relates to one
thing, which seem to have similar but have different way of showing on the
subject. Dasae song and dance are mainly accompanied by a stringed musical
instrument called Bhuwang . The songs used to describe where they had gone and why they had gone. The song
describes the event in following words :
Hae re Hae re, Devi re, Durga do kin odong ena re,
Divi re chela do kin baher ena re.
Hae re Hae re, bela buta re kin odong ena re,
Aora tora re kin baher ena re,
Hae re Hae re , Chet lagit do kin odok ena re,
Chet lagit to kin baher ena re,
Hae re, Hae re, des darang
lagit do kin odok ena re,
Disom sangar lagit do kin baher ena re
Hae re, hae dini re durga do kin odok ena re,
Ayan-kajal do kin baher ena re.
Hae re, hae chet lagit do kin odok ena re ?
Chet lagit do kin baher ena re,
Hae re, hae ,des lagit do kin odok ena re,
Disom lagid do kin baher ena re.
Hae re, hae, oka disom te kin odok ena re ?
Toka disom te kin baher ena re ?
Hae re, hae, sunum sindur guru ho dese
Argoy me,
Khari- khunti ate disa abon me.
Hae re, hae, divi- durga do kin seter godok ma,
Ayan-kajal do kin upel godok ma.
Hae re, hae, dela se divi-durga, hoe leka te,
Dela se ayan kajal bardu leka te.
Hae re, hae, otang hijuk pe se serma saging khon,
Ghurlaw hijuk pe se serma patal khon.
To listen the Dasai song click here