24th October 1980
am Suhrid came for a day of translating. We went to see Kalyankumar Ganguli in the evening. This old man helped start up Asutosh Museum and was a lecturer in ancient history at the university. He said that the Maharashtra Purana had a lot of incorrections 'Bengali concoction'. The Bargis did not worship Durga. He talked of Okal Bodhan as being in Krittibas' Ramayana. The problem was how to excuse this autumnal worship when the standard worship was Basanti puja. Ravana was a worshipper of Shiva. One way to appease Shiva was to do it indirectly through Devi-Durga puja by Rama on the advice of Brahma. This Dp came in late Mughal period. Raja Kanshanarayan of Taherpur did Dp before fighting the Mughals. But he was only a zemindar not a raja. There is also another figure called Raja Kangsha but he is not dated/located; some think the 2 are different and became amalgamated. Mr Ganguly also talked of Orissa. Apparently there is a tradition of Dp there where the image is 8 handed. The Bengali and Orissan artistic tradtions of Dp differ. Bengal was known as Gaur. This name was a special title. During the Mughal period Akbar's chief mininster did a pan-Indian survey of all territory under the Mughals. He termed this area Banga or Bangla but the term didn't catch on. It was only in the British period that the term Bengal caught on. During the time of the Turkish invasion the Gaur people were in danger of losing their culture to the rough and ready life-style of the Turks who were their Arabic counterparts though under the same umbrella theme of Islam. Chaitanya saved Bengal and his particular brand of Viashnavism came to be known as Gaudiya Vaishanavism.
I was told that Kali is a term particular only to Bengal-she is known by a food-giving title in Rajasthan where she was the patron deity of one of the raja lines of Ajmer which was then the capital (though under a different name-Ayamar?). There is apparently a lot of bhakti worship but no connection with mrinmoyi worship of Bengal.
I was also told that Sarasvati means saras (water) wati (flowing) and that there is a list of 8 rivers in India-this is the list that is recited at the beginning of any puja. She was also the patron goddess of the forefathers of the Pandavas/Bharatas (?) of Mahabharata fame and was known as Bharati. She was then the patron goddess of India. The Mahavidyas (knowledge) still retain this connection with Sarasvati. Suhrid thinks that the puja nowadays using a) fire b) ghot c) puspa involves the 3 types of culture-Aryan, Dravidian and Austric. The word puja meaning to decorate with flowers. Mr Ganguli says that Puranic worship involves use of ghot, flowers, leaves and fruit. Sarasvati-according to one of the Vedas-is the greatest of all the mothers, of all the rivers and something else. Originally water was regarded as containing the germ of all life. The sole reason for the Marathas attacking various parts of India was for money-which Nawab Alivardi of Bengal refused to give. Suhrid told me that Bijaya greetings were useless after 6 days-they had to be done before then. The greetings involve touching the feet of the other and embracing diagonally 3 times and then folding palms in respect. All office workers, friends, relatives do this.
27th October 1980 - Kalighat and Patuapara
29th October 1980 - Asu Datta's house
30th October 1980 - Tarakeswara, Radhanagar, Gopalnagar, Krishnanagar
31st October 1980 - Tarakeshwara and Kolimbar village