Dakshin Ray

Also Known As: Bengali দক্ষিণ রায়, “the Southern Lord”; also written Dakshin Rai, Daksin Ray and Dakshina Ray; called the tiger-king of the Sundarbans
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Bengali Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He commands the tigers of the Sundarbans and can take their shape at will, so that permission to enter the forest and the thing that kills you inside it are the same being.
Role in Mythos: He is the lord of the southern mangrove who must be asked before wood, honey or fish are taken from it, and who collects a price when he is not asked.
Relation to Humans: Woodcutters, honey collectors and fisherfolk deal with him constantly, through a ritual specialist who clears a patch of ground at the forest edge and sets down offerings before anyone picks up an axe. Two seventeenth and nineteenth century poems disagree completely about whether he is their protector or the thing they need protecting from, and the people who live there behave as though both are true.

At the edge of the mangrove, where the mud stops holding a footprint and the breathing roots begin, the woodcutters clear a patch of ground before they go in. They put up small tent-like huts of thatch, set painted clay figures inside them, and leave rice, sweets, a dish of khichuri gone cold, sometimes a live chicken tethered and complaining. Only then does anyone pick up an axe. The figures come apart in the salt air and are made again each year out of the same river mud, and one of them, when he is there at all, is a crowned man who is also a tiger.

His name says exactly what he claims. Dakshin Ray is the Southern Lord, and the south he rules is the Sundarbans, ten thousand square miles of tidal forest spread across the border of West Bengal and Bangladesh where the rivers meet the Bay of Bengal. Islands drown in one season and surface in another. The water is brackish, the wood is hard, the honey is worth a great deal, and the tigers there have a reputation, earned over centuries of European travelogues and local funerals, for coming into the boat at night and taking the fattest man in it. Dakshin Ray owns those tigers. He is also, when it suits him, one of them.

The record cannot agree on where he came from, and the disagreement is more interesting than a settled answer would have been. The forest poems make him the son of a Brahmin priest named Dandabakhya and his wife Narayani Devi, a clairvoyant boy who grew into a power able to wear any shape he liked and who mostly liked this one. A separate legend, the one repeated in Bengali reference works, makes him an army chief under Mukut Ray, the raja of Jessore, who conquered enough country to set up on his own account and then met two Muslim warriors, Gazi Khan and Gazi Kalu, and lost. He kept his peace by handing over part of his territory. It is a very specific defeat for a god to carry, and he carries it in both directions: the Hindu poets tell it one way and the Muslim poets tell it the other.

His own scripture is the Raymangal, a mangal-kavya of the kind Bengal produced for its local deities, epic poems explaining why a particular power deserves worship. There may have been an earlier version by Madhav Acharya, but it has not survived. The one that did was finished in 1686 by Krishnaram Das of Nimita, near what is now Kolkata, who said the god had appeared to him in a dream and told him to write it. Haridev made another in 1723, Rudradev another later still, and singers perform them at Dakshin Ray’s annual puja. In the Raymangal he is the good lord. A merchant called Puspadatta sends men into the Sundarbans for timber, builds a ship he names Madhukar, and sails off to find his lost father; on the way he stops at Khaniya to pray to Dakshin Ray, sees a whole city standing on the surface of the sea, cannot produce it for a sceptical king, and is thrown in prison for the boast. He prays again. He walks out free, with his father beside him, and marries the king’s daughter. That is the god the poem is selling: the one who gets you out.

Two centuries later a different book arrived and cast him as the problem. The Bonbibi Johuranama, written by Muhammad Khater of Calcutta in 1880 for Sundarbans villagers who kept asking him for a chapbook about her, tells how Bonbibi, born in Mecca and raised in the forest by deer, came south under Allah’s command to take the mangrove. Dakshin Ray was already sitting on it. His mother Narayani met Bonbibi in the field at the head of an army of witches and was beaten, though not destroyed; Bonbibi took her into her lap instead, on terms. The terms were that mother and son could keep their power in the low country provided they governed it under her. Dakshin Ray agreed, was given Khedokhali to rule justly, and almost immediately demanded a human being.

The man who had to supply one was Dhona, a honey and wax trader rich enough to send seven boats into the forest and careless enough to land without performing puja to the lord of it. Dakshin Ray came to him in a dream with an offer: fill all seven boats, in exchange for the boy Dukhe. Dhona walked Dukhe deep into the forest on a pretext and left him. Dukhe stood in the clearing and watched a tiger come out of the trees, remembered what his mother had told him at the boat, and shouted for Bonbibi as though she were his own mother. She was there before the tiger reached him, and her brother Shahjangali chased Dakshin Ray south through his own forest. He does not win. Cornered, he went to his old enemy Gazi Kalu, also called Barakhan, and begged him to intercede, and the Muslim pir who had once taken his land negotiated the settlement that let him keep the rest of it. Dakshin Ray paid for Dukhe in treasure. The boy went home rich enough to become a landlord and married the daughter of the man who had sold him.

What he can do follows from what he is. He commands every tiger in the delta, and since a Bengal tiger stalks in total silence for hours and takes its prey from behind at the neck, the command is nearly indistinguishable from omnipotence for anyone standing in the mangrove without permission. He appears in dreams and bargains there. He can wear other shapes and generally chooses the striped one. He controls the honey and the wax, which in that economy means he controls whether a family eats. What he cannot do is act alone. He is a subordinate power in his own forest, holding Khedokhali on licence from a woman who beat his mother, and any frightened person who remembers to call her name outranks him instantly. He can be negotiated with, which no truly sovereign thing can. He can be bought off, and he was, by a boy with nothing.

The two portraits have never been reconciled, and in the Sundarbans nobody seems to feel the need. At the village shrines, the mud-and-thatch structures called thans, the same group of painted clay figures stands together: Bonbibi, Shahjangali, Dukhe, Gazi Kalu, and Dakshin Ray, sometimes as a man and sometimes as a tiger, sometimes simply absent because the maker left him out. Hindus perform puja there before the men go in, asking Bonbibi for protection and, quite possibly, asking Dakshin Ray for permission. Muslims tie a red cloth to a flagstaff at the forest edge and say a du’a. Both hire the same fakir to walk in front of the work party, muttering mantras he will not repeat aloud, and both understand that if a tiger takes someone the permission was never granted. The party plants flags at the corners of that patch of forest so that nobody else goes in, and they go home.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dakshin Ray?

Dakshin Ray is the tiger deity of the Sundarbans, the great mangrove forest straddling West Bengal and Bangladesh. His name means “the Southern Lord,” and he is understood to command the tigers of the delta and to be able to take a tiger’s form himself. Woodcutters, honey collectors and fisherfolk seek his permission, or his mercy, before entering the forest.

Is Dakshin Ray good or evil?

The tradition holds both positions at once and has never resolved them. In the Raymangal, the seventeenth-century poem written in his honour, he is a benevolent protector who frees a merchant from prison and reunites him with his father. In the Bonbibi Johuranama of 1880 he is a superhuman figure who demands a human sacrifice and is stopped by Bonbibi.

What is the story of Dakshin Ray and Dukhe?

Dakshin Ray appeared in a dream to the wealthy trader Dhona and offered to fill his seven boats with honey and wax in exchange for a human sacrifice: the poor boy Dukhe. Dhona abandoned Dukhe in the forest, and Dakshin Ray took the shape of a tiger to devour him. Dukhe called out to Bonbibi as his mother had instructed, she rescued him, and Dakshin Ray was chased away and forced to pay compensation in treasure.

How is Dakshin Ray worshipped?

He is worshipped at simple village shrines called thans, made of mud and thatch, where painted clay images of him stand alongside Bonbibi, her brother Shahjangali, the boy Dukhe and the Muslim pir Gazi Kalu. Offerings of rice, sweets, khichuri or a live chicken are left at cleared patches of ground at the forest edge before a work party enters. Singers also perform the Raymangal at his annual puja.

Who defeated Dakshin Ray?

Two traditions record a defeat. In the Bonbibi Johuranama, Bonbibi defeats his mother Narayani and her army of witches, after which Dakshin Ray rules the low country only under Bonbibi’s authority. A separate Bengali legend has him beaten by the warriors Gazi Khan and Gazi Kalu, making peace only by ceding part of his territory to them.