| abstract
| - BARAH MAHA or BARAH MASA (in Hindi), is a form of folk poetry in which the emotions and yearnings of the human heart are expressed in terms of the changing moods of Nature over the twelve months of the year. In this form of poetry, the mood of Nature in each particular month (of the Indian calendar) depicts the inner agony of the human heart which in most cases happens to be a woman separated from her spouse or lover. In other words, the separated woman finds her own agony reflected in the different faces of Nature. The tradition of Barah Maha poetry is traceable to classical epochs. In Sanskrit, the Barah Maha had the form of shad ritu varnan, i.e. description of the six seasons (shad = six; ritu = season; varnan = description), the most wellknown example being Kalidasa's Ritu Sanhar. The mode was commonly employed to depict the moods of the love stricken woman in separation, and it became an established vogue in medieval Indian poetry. Modern languages of northern India claim several distinguished models. In Hindi, the first instance of this poetic form occurs in Malik Muhammad Jayasi's Padmavat. In Punjabi, Guru Nanak's Barah Maha in the measure Tukhari is not only the oldest composition belonging to this genre but also the first in which the theme of love poetry has been transformed into that of spiritual import. He made the human soul the protagonist which suffers in the cesspool of transmigration as a result of its separation from the Supreme Soul. This is followed by Guru Arjan's Barah Maha. Later some Sufi poets such as 'Ali Haider, Bulleh Shah, Hasham and Shah Murad also wrote barah mahas. Haflz Barkhurdar was the first poet in the Punjabi romantic tradition to compose a barah maha as an independent work. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were a number of barah mahas and siharffs written in Punjabi. Poetry in this class can be broadly divided into various types religious, farmers' narrative (included in an epic poem), viraha (separation) and 'trial of chastity* variety. Guru Arjan's Barah Maha falls in the viraha category, depicting through the twelve months the pangs of the bride, i.e. the human soul separated from her Divine Essence.
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