4: Songs for the Goddess: Tracing the Veneration of Manasa and Chandi in Early Modern Bengal

The mangalkabyas, composed as eulogies to various deities occupy an important place in the literature of the Bengal region in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The texts, in their multiple iterations, offer insights into the evolving practises of veneration and celebration of local deities in early modern Bengal. 

The mangalkabyas as they exist today in print, put together from extant manuscripts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, occupy the interstices between the oral and the written, between manuscript and print. While the ritual status of the mangalkabya poems remains a subject of scholarly dispute, their status as performance texts can scarcely be questioned. Structured in terms of the respective festive traditions—such as the ashtamangala/eight-day long celebration of Chandi, or the celebration of Manasa in Shravan, accompanied by the lachari/nachari dancers—the mangalkabya texts serve as testimony to the practises of veneration in early modern Bengal. They are, furthermore, important links to modern day practises of veneration of the deities in question in the West Bengal/Bangladesh regions, as well as to allied traditions in what is modern day Bihar, Odisha, and Assam. Pursuing these strands, therefore, opens up spaces for reflection on the connected histories of worship and performance in the region.