Mother-Goddess in Pre-Mediaeval Bengal:A Study of the Evolution of Concept & Forms of Female-Divinities (An Old and Rare Book)

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Dr.Sikha Sarkar (Aditya) comes of a very respected family of Rangpur (Bangladesh). She was brought up in the district of Burdwan and completed her post-graduate studies at the University of Burdwan. She obtained First Class in M.A. in History (1977) and stood first in order of merit. She was awarded research fellowship, for which she was encouraged to undertake a- research project. She has already rendered service as a teacher of history at different colleges located in Purulia and Burdwan for about more than ten -years. At present she is not only a senior member of the Department of History, Burdwan Raj College, but also secretary of a research- organisation known as 'Bhārata Vidyā Charcha Kendra'. She has delivered lectures at the invitation of Bharata Vidya Charcha Kendra itself and other literary and cultural societies.

The cult of Mother-goddess has attracted the attention of a host of scholars interested in investigation into the cultural history of India. In India, religion & culture are inseparable from each other. In fact, it is through the religious history of India that the cultural history may be fruitfully studied. In the religious history of India one may trace the prevalence of the cults of Vişņu, Siva, Sakti, Sürya & Ganapati. Among those cults, the cult of Mother-goddess is considered as a bridge between the pre-historic and the historic period, a symbol that may be studied from the infancy of the human civilization to the modern age. Because, the cult of Mother-goddess has played its role not only in the religious life of the people, but also in the socio-economic life. While a number of scholars have studied the cult of Mother-goddess in India, Dr. Sikha Aditya has undertaken the origin and growth of the same cult in the background of Bengal. This is not only an attempt on her part to make a micro-level study of a pan-Indian cult, but also it reflects her effort to confine the study within the boundaries of Bengal where mother-goddess attained a position of supremacy over all other Puranic divinities. Her efforts have been substantiated by an in-depth study of the Märkandeya- Purăņa, that might have been written somewhere in Eastern India, if not, in Bengal itself.

What is apparently a religious history is in fact the history of society and economy, because religion in India was to a great extent closely related to the material life of the people. In fact, most of the indigenous texts available so far for reconstruction of history are religious in character. But those texts can be utilised, provided they are subjected to an analysis from material point of view, to furnish us with valuable information regarding the stages of development of Indian society. On these grounds, I decided to take up religious history as the area of my Research.

I began my investigation mainly on the basis of archaeological and anthropological data. The data which are available ultimately circumscribed the area of my study and I was rather guided by the sources available, published and unpublished, to take up the study of the origin and development of the cult of Mother-goddess in Bengal since earliest times to the beginning of the mediaeval period. I thought that the cult of Mother-goddess characterizes the culture of Bengal, distinguishes the socio-economic development in Bengal and assigns to Bengal a unique position in India's religio-cultural life.

Eminent scholars have made their contributions to the religious history of India in general, and of Bengal in particular. Mention may be made in this connection of the chapters on 'Religion' contained in the volumes published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and edited by R.C.Majumdar, Dacca History of Bengal, Vol.I, edited by R.C.Majumdar and N.R.Roy's Bangalir Itihas (Adiparvan).