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Shri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a 15th century Indian saint and founder of Achintya Bheda Abheda. Devotees consider him an incarnation of the god Krishna. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mode of worshipping Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. He was also the chief proponent of the Vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda. Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism. He expounded Bhakti yoga and popularized the chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra. He composed the Shikshashtakam.
Behula is the protagonist in the Shiva Purana and the Manasamangal genre of Assamese and Bengali medieval epics. A number of works belonging to this genre were written between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. Though the religious purpose of these works is to eulogise the Hindu goddess Manasa, these works are more well known for depicting the love story of Behula and her husband Lakhindar.
Sadhak Rāmprasād Sen was a Hindu Shakta poet and saint of eighteenth century Bengal. His bhakti poems, known as Ramprasadi, are still popular in Bengal—they are usually addressed to the Hindu goddess Kali and written in Bengali. Stories of Ramprasad's life typically include legends and myths mixed with biographical details.
The history of Bengal is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia. It includes modern-day Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam's Karimganj district, located in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, at the apex of the Bay of Bengal and dominated by the fertile Ganges delta. The advancement of civilisation in Bengal dates back four millennia. The region was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Gangaridai, a powerful kingdom whose elephant forces led the withdrawal of Alexander the Great from Eastern India. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers act as a geographic marker of the region, but also connects the region to the broader Indian subcontinent. Bengal, at times, has played an important role in the history of the Indian subcontinent.
This is a History of Bengali literature.
Bengalis or Bangalees/Bangalis, also rendered as the Bengali people, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the Bengal region in South Asia. The population is divided between the region of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam's Barak Valley. Most of them speak Bengali, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family. The term "Bangalee" is also used to denote people of Bangladesh as a nation.
Ramai Pandit or Ramai the Wise was a medieval Bengali poet from the region of Bengal. The exact date of his birth is not known, but some scholars believe that he was born in the later half of the 10th century and also lived in the 11th century AD, as he is a contemporary to Mayur Bhatt, the coart-poet of King Lausen. Some scholars believe that he lived in the 13th or 14th century AD. He is famous as the author of Shunya Purana, the scripture of Dharma Puja Bidhan, written in the 11th century AD. The extant Shunya Purana refers to events that occurred in the 15th century.
Mangal-Kāvya is a group of Bengali Hindu religious texts, composed more or less between 13th and 18th centuries, notably consisting of narratives of indigenous deities of rural Bengal in the social scenario of the Middle Ages. The Mangal-Kāvyas usually give prominence to a particular deity amalgamated with a Vedic or Hindu mythological god and the narratives are usually written in the form of verses.
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Bipradas Pipilai was a 15th-century poet. He was the son of Mukunda Pipilai, the family hailed from Baduria-Batagram in 24 Parganas, now in the Indian state of West Bengal.
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Manasamangal Kāvya is the oldest of the Mangal-Kāvya and narrates how the snake-goddess Manasa established her worship in Bengal by converting a worshipper of Shiva to her own worship. Manasa was a tribal deity that was merged into the greater folds of Hinduism, and her worship took place from ancient times in Bengal. Manasa is also known as Bisahari, Janguli and Padmavati.
The Sultanate of Bengal, was an empire based in Bengal for much of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. It was the dominant power of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. Its imperial capital was one of the world's largest cities. The Bengal Sultanate had a circle of vassal states, including Odisha in the southwest, Arakan in the southeast, and Tripura in the east. In the early 16th-century, the Bengal Sultanate reached the peak of its territorial growth with control over Kamrup and Kamata in the northeast; and Jaunpur and Bihar in the west. It was reputed as a thriving trading nation and one of Asia's strongest states. Its decline began with an interregnum by the Suri Empire, followed by Mughal conquest and disintegration into petty kingdoms.
The Vaishnava Padavali movement refers to a period in medieval Bengali literature from the 15th to 17th centuries, marked by an efflorescence of Vaishnava poetry often focusing on the Radha-Krishna legend. The term padavali has the literal meaning "gathering of songs".
Shashthi or Shashti is a Hindu folk goddess, venerated as the benefactor and protector of children. She is also the deity of vegetation and reproduction and is believed to bestow children and assist during childbirth. She is often pictured as a motherly figure, riding a cat and nursing one or more infants. She is symbolically represented in a variety of forms, including an earthenware pitcher, a banyan tree or part of it or a red stone beneath such a tree; outdoor spaces termed shashthitala are also consecrated for her worship. The worship of Shashthi is prescribed to occur on the sixth day of each lunar month of the Hindu calendar as well as on the sixth day after a child's birth. Barren women desiring to conceive and mothers seeking to ensure the protection of their children will worship Shashthi and request her blessings and aid. She is especially venerated in eastern India.
Bengali Muslims are an ethnic, linguistic and religious population who make up the majority of Bangladesh's citizens and the largest minority in the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam. They are Bengalis who adhere to Islam and speak the Bengali language. They form the largest Bengali and the second largest Muslim ethnic group in the world.
Shreemati Rasasundari (1810–1899) was a 19th-century Bengali writer. She is notable for her autobiography, which provides a rare insight into the life of a 19th-century Bengali housewife.
References
- ↑ Seabrook, Jeremy (2001). Freedom Unfinished: Fundamentalism and Popular Resistance in Bangladesh Today. Zed Books. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-85649-908-8.
- ↑ Sengupta, Nitish K. (2011). Land of Two Rivers: A History of Bengal from the Mahabharata to Mujib. Penguin Books India. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-14-341678-4.
- 1 2 3 Ahmed, Wakil. "Vijay Gupta". en.banglapedia.org. Banglapedia. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
- ↑ "Manasha Devi, the relentless fighter". Daily Sun. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
- ↑ Chaudhury, Sushil (2016). Trade, Politics and Society: The Indian Milieu in the Early Modern Era. Taylor & Francis. p. 308. ISBN 978-1-351-99728-7.
