Explore Ancient India

  Author - Biswarup Chatterjee.                  Cooch Behar constitutes one of the principal riverine and agrarian districts of West Bengal, where men and women engage in a wide range of rituals, ceremonies, and forms of worship throughout the year. Each festival observed in this district is marked by prescribed customs and rituals, performed on fixed dates and times. Significantly, the majority of participants in these vows (vratas), festivals (parvans), and related observances are women, among whom unmarried girls often play a particularly prominent role.         As in many other districts of West Bengal, the practice of drawing alpana (ritual floor designs) is an integral feature of festivals and religious occasions in Cooch Behar. A notable example is the Pusuna ritual among the Rajbanshi community, which parallels the Poush Parvan observed in East Bengal. Many such rituals retain elements of magical orientation ...

            (Courtesy: https://share.google/images/kRudVtaFMLQJuWAve) Author - Biswarup Chatterjee  . Introduction         In the rural hinterlands of Bengal, the worship and ritual observances of numerous folk deities are often represented in peculiar and fearsome forms which continue to persist to the present day. In the remotest villages of Bangladesh today, one can witness the worship and festivals dedicated to this type of terrifying folk deities. Among them, the ‘Pāñcu’ or ‘Pẽcho Ṭhākur’ holds a distinctive place. The name Pẽcho is more commonly used among villagers. Local belief identifies him as both a protector and destroyer of children, a deity of fierceness and temper in a terrifying form, and wholly primitive imagination. His idols, as they survive today, retain almost unaltered features of archaic religious conception and primordial sculptural design. Iconography of Pāñcu Ṭhākur         Pāñcu Ṭhāku...