মৃত্তিকা ও মনস্তত্ত্ব : তারাশঙ্কর বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়ের ‘ছলনাময়ী’ ও ‘রসকলি’ গল্পগ্রন্থে রসতত্ত্ব, মনোবিশ্লেষণ ও প্রান্তিক মানবসত্তার রূপায়ণ/ Soil and Psyche : Rasa Theory, Psychoanalysis, and the Representation of Marginal Subjectivity in Tarashankar Bandyo

Abstract

Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's early short-story collections Chhalanamayee (1937) and Rasakali (1939) occupy a relatively underexplored position within the critical discourse on his literary oeuvre, despite their significant engagement with rural life and the psychological complexities of marginal existence. This article proposes an alternative interpretive framework by reading the two collections through the classical Indian theory of rasa, particularly vatsalya (parental affection), karuna (pathos), and bhayanaka/ raudra (terror/wrath), in dialogue with two major Western psychological paradigms: Sigmund Freud's concepts of the uncanny and repetition compulsion, and René Girard's theory of the scapegoat mechanism. Close readings of stories such as Sandhamani, Dainir Bashi, Khorga, Akhraiyer Dighi, the titular Chhalanamayee, Rasakali, and Kalapahar demonstrate that Tarashankar's rural, marginal, and even non-human characters are represented not merely as sociological types but as psychologically complex subjects whose experiences of grief, guilt, jealousy, dignity, and emotional conflict can be understood through both indigenous aesthetic principles and cross-cultural psychoanalytic perspectives. The article argues that Tarashankar's fiction anticipates, in vernacular and pre-theoretical form, insights later articulated within modern psychoanalytic and anthropological thought, revealing how collective violence frequently converges upon an arbitrary victim and how repressed trauma returns in cyclical and uncanny forms. By bringing classical Indian aesthetics into conversation with modern psychoanalytic theory, this study offers a fresh critical perspective on Tarashankar's early short fiction and demonstrates how the interplay of emotion, psychology, and social marginality deepens our understanding of human and even non-human, subjectivity within the contexts of rural poverty, superstition, and communal judgment.