Narratives and Objects of Worship in Early Medieval Bengal

The liturgical text Sūnya Puranā refers to the regional deity ‘Dharma Thakur’ as a ‘fertility deity’ associated with the agrarian class of society. The ploughman element of Bengali is ‘Shiva’, a revered peasant god who oversaw the seasonal cycle and ensured the fertility of the soil and the regeneration of the harvest. Around the time, the Dharma Thakur cult reflected the core necessities of Bengal’s rural agriculturalist society—good health, progeny and an abundance of food. Dharma Thakur implies all the movements and changes that the natural order is susceptible to. The immanent Dharma is contradictory in that he is a typical malignant-cum-protective village godhead: on the one hand, he looks out for the villagers, improving offspring and abundant crops, but on the other hand—failing to receive worship—he curses them with illnesses, barrenness and obstructions to plant regeneration. Bengali liturgical texts work as a base for didactic narration and religious performances in Bengal and Orissa. The religious performances of Gājan are based on religious narrations. Dharma worship is neither monotheist nor henotheist in nature. There is worship of symbols in the form of Kurma [tortoise]. Historians engage in debates about the religious significance of this worship. The stories mentioned in the liturgical texts show that the object of worship and its emergence are related to mythological stories where the chief deity was formless and had created many objects while creating the universe. Kurma was one of his creations. The emergence and popularity of an object of worship are always matters of sociopolitical change in a society. Bengal, during the phase of transition from Buddhist Pala rule to Brahmanic Sen rule, experienced a phase of political chaos. Buddhists had to migrate from Bengal, and due to this migration, a religious vacancy emerged in rural areas of Bengal. This situation benefited the local religious practitioners and helped in the emergence of the regional religious cult, Dharma Thakur. To look into the idea of such religious practices, it would be important to study it through contemporary religious writings. This article is an attempt at an honest reading of the tale of Dharma Thakur through the writings of Ramai Pandit.