The Chandi Mangal Kavya of Mukundaram Chakraborty
Abstract
The Mangal Kavyas of Medieval Bengal were generally addressed to a female deity in her benevolent form. The story of the Chandi Mangal Kavya is that of a female deity soliciting worship in a patriarchal society devoted to androcentric worship, particularly that of Siva. The first part of this Kavya shows the goddess empowering a low born tribal hunter to propagate her cultic status on earth. In the second part Chandi seeks worship from a high born woman of the powerful spice merchant community and through her, from her recalcitrant husband Chand Saudagar, irrevocably committed to Saivism (worship of Lord Siva). Despite the many trials and tribulations showered upon him by the wrath of a goddess scorned, Chand continues to slight her as unworthy of worship. The paper therefore examines the position of women, both human and divine, in a patriarchal, kulin society, which regularly practiced polygamy and of the conflict between the two aspects of religion, andro- and gyno- centric, in a society where Brahminization had already led to the appropriation of female deities into the male Hindu pantheon. The de-mythologization of the goddess Chandi, the association of her simple wants and desires as Siva’s wife with other poverty-stricken village women, is also an issue in this study.
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