Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c28.7

c28.7

Rāmāi was held in all Dharma-maṅgala literature to have been the founder of the Dharma cult. The fact may historically be explained in the following manner. A mass of crude local religious ideas and practices of purely indigenous origin got mixed up with some crypto-Buddhist ideas and practices and with these again were incorporated many Hindu ideas and practices in course of time. This curiously composite whole, which could neither be recognised as any form of Buddhism, nor any form of Hinduism, was perhaps modified and loosely codified into a popular religious system by Rāmāi Paṇḍit and henceforth Rāmāi Paṇḍit has been enjoying the credit of being the founder of the cult. Attempts have been made by scholars to determine the time of Rāmāi Paṇḍit, but it appears to us that no such convincing data are available as may warrant the fixing up of the date historically. One way of forming some idea about the time of Rāmāi is to trace the history of later Buddhism in Bengal, from which evolved this mixed religion among the ordinary people, and from a consideration of the course of evolution of later Buddhism it appears that Rāmāi Paṇḍit might have appeared in or about the twelfth century A.D. As we have said, detailed accounts of Rāmāi Paṇḍit and his heirs are given in the *Śrī-dharma-maṅgala* of Mayūra-bhaṭṭa, edited by Mr. B. K. Chatterjee as well as in the *Paddhati* of Yātrāsiddha Rāya;¹ but for various reasons we are not prepared to believe in the historicity of these accounts. The accounts given there are all of an extremely legendary nature.² It may cursorily be mentioned here that in the ritualistic texts as well as in the Dharma-maṅgalas we find occasional references to Mārkaṇḍeya Muni in connection with the worship of Dharma, and sometimes he is depicted as the instructor of Rāmāi in the matter of Dharma-worship. This seems to be nothing but an attempt somehow to connect the Dharma cult with the Purāṇic Hindu legends. Attempts have also been made by scholars to connect the legends of the Dharma cult with those of the Nāth literature and to determine the time of Rāmāi Paṇḍit with the help of the personages of the Nāth literature.¹ In the Śūnya-purāṇa we find that king Haricandra erected a temple of Dharma and with his chief queen Madanā worshipped Dharma with pomp and pageantry avowedly with the purpose of having a son born to them. This Haricandra has been identified with king Hariścandra of Sābhār in the district of Dacca. Two daughters of Hariścandra, *viz.*, Adunā and Padunā were given in marriage to the renowned king Gopi-candra or Govinda-candra, who flourished in the eleventh century.² The Tibetan historian Lama Tāranāth has also mentioned the name of Haricandra, who was, a king in Bengal in the eleventh century. But the story of Haricandra (or rather Hariścandra), found in the Dharma-maṅgala literature, seems to be purely mythical, and like the story of the sage Mārkaṇḍeya and the fragments of many other Purāṇic stories, this well-known story of Haricandra or Hariścandra