Why tales about Bonbibi, guardian spirit of Sunderbans, are so important to the region’s literature

The Bonbibī kecchā, today better known as the Bonbibī jahurā nāmā of Mohāmmad Khater, tells the story of the woman who became the “Mother” of all the inhabitants of the Sundarbans, the Āthārobhātī, or Land of the Eighteen Tides. She was given the epithets of bibī, or matron, and pīrānī, female Sufi saint. She had a fraternal twin in her brother Śājan˙gali, himself a pīr of no small stature, but she was always his senior and in command, while he acted as her second. Like many of the other sagas, this narrative is divided into three distinct tales. In the first part, the narrator describes how Khodā summoned the twins Bonbibī and Śājan˙gali at paradise, behest, and sent them down to the devout Berāhim and his second wife, Golbibī. Because of a rash promise by Berāhim to his first wife, Phulbibī, he abandoned his second wife, Golbibī, in the jungle just as she was nearing term. She gave birth alone, save for wild animals. Distraught by the recognition that she would be hard-pressed to care for one child there in the jungle, much less two, she chose to abandon the girl-child, Bonbibī, in order to save her son, a culturally conditioned choice that, given the circumstances, would surprise no one....

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