Byangoma

What it is

The Byangoma sit in the folklore of Bengal rather than in any living rite. They are pictured as birds wearing human faces, and the tales credit them with knowledge of what lies ahead. Their best-known appearance is in Thakurmar Jhuli, a book of Bengali fairy tales, in which a pair of them guide and assist princes on a quest. The name has a feminine form too: Byangomi. Within the stories the birds weigh character, and they spend their foresight and their strength only on people found worthy. A painting by Abanindranath Tagore offers a different reading, its birds small and without human faces. The creature therefore lives on page and canvas alike: a Bengali tale-figure whose gift is counsel about fate and a back strong enough to ride.

Where it comes from

These birds belong to Bengali folklore, and the clearest trace of them is a printed one. Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder gathered Bengali fairy tales into his volume Thakurmar Jhuli, drawing the birds himself for the book's pictures. In one story there, Lalkamal Neelkamal, the creatures take a central part. The name also carries a feminine shape, Byangomi. A second record followed in 1939, when the painter Abanindranath Tagore gave the pair his own reading, one that changed how they look. The figure thus reaches the present through one collected tale and one canvas.

What it is for

Within the tales, help is something a seeker travels to find. The princes Lalkamal and Neelkamal go to the birds' nesting tree to ask for aid, and they receive two kinds: counsel about what the future holds, and carrying on the birds' backs across Tepantorer Math, that vast open plain. The gift is not offered to everyone. The birds come across as wise judges of character, and their fortune-telling and strength go only to those who deserve it. So what a seeker gets from a Byangoma or Byangomi depends on the worth the birds themselves find in that person.

Peoples and places

The birds come from Bengali storytelling, the shared stock of tales told in the Bengal region. Two renderings show how one figure can shift between tellers. In Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder's collection they are large, strong enough to carry riders, and have human faces; the author supplied pictures of them in the book. In Abanindranath Tagore's painting they are smaller and no longer wear human faces, so his version reads almost like another creature. The name has a feminine partner too: Byangomi is used for a female bird. Between book and canvas, the same folk figure serves as a quest's helper in one telling and a quiet image in the other.

What people believe

Within the tale Lalkamal Neelkamal, the chicks of these birds hatch blind, and their eyes are said to open only when drops of a giver's blood touch them. The grown birds read what lies ahead for people and choose to aid those who merit it. They hold great strength as well: each can bear a prince on its back across Tepantorer Math, a plain said to be so wide that three horizons can be seen from it. The tree where the pair nests stands at that plain's border. In this story-world, aid is earned, and the birds themselves decide who has earned it.

Today

Abanindranath Tagore's painting of the pair, made in 1939, hangs in the Victoria Memorial. Its Bengali lettering reads ব্যাঙ্গমা-ব্যাঙ্গমী, and its English title is The vision anybird. His birds are smaller than the story's, and the human faces are gone. The book keeps the earlier look, with Majumder's own drawings set beside his text. Tale and canvas together trace a folk figure moving out of storytelling and into a public collection.

Questions people ask about Byangoma

Good reading and sources

• Byangoma on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data