This anthology of my essays was first published in 1966 under the title, "The Roots of Bengali Culture", in the hope that they would convey a broad idea about the distinctive heritage of Bengal. The book was soon out of print, and since then 1 have received requests from friends to reprint the book.
Meanwhile in 1971 we witnessed a significant socio-cultural upheaval. Early that year, Sheikh Mujibar Rahman declared that "we are neither Hindus nor Muslims, we are Bengalis" which resulted in a tremendous upsurge of Bengali sentiment, displaying a unity of people on language and culture, not witnessed before, and virtually wiped out, what then appeared, or was conceived, at least for the time being, an artificial border separating the same ethnic-cultural group.
But I thought the book needed to be revised, and it took me another ten years to revise and slightly enlarge the book in its present form. I do however hope that after my retirement from the present job I shall have the time and opportunity to do further research into the sources of this culture, and write a more authoritative and comprehensive book on the subjects, and present this other Indian tradition which has since been submerged in the so-called general Hindu Brahmanic tradition mistakenly regarded as the Indian tradition.
Till then, I hope readers will have time to probe this ana-lysis and make valued criticism and suggestions.
When Hindu culture and civilization was resuscitated by the initiative of a few Europeans during the latter part of the 18th century, no efforts was made to explore the history and culture of the regional people of India. It was perhaps not realized at the time that the regional people had any history and culture different from the main trend of the vedic Aryan civilization. The discovery of Bengal's history and culture was thus left to a few Bengalis whose researches, beginning in the latter part of the 19th century, have now shed a new light into the history and culture of the people of Bengal. It has now been revealed that the tradition and culture of the native population of Bengal have had peculiarities and distinctiveness of its own different from that of the Aryan Hindus.
This discovery inspired the famous Bengali scholar, late Haraprasad Shastri, one of the pioneers in the field of historical research in Bengal, to make the statement that "Bengalees are a self-oblivious people". This very description explains why a history of the racio-cultural group of people, residing in the eastern region of India, has become necessary. It is necessary not only for the people of Bengal to know their own culture and tradition, but also to let others know the distinctiveness of the history and culture of the Bengalis, whose unorthodoxy has distinguished them from the rest of India.
Haraprasad Shastri firmly held that Bengal had a distinctiveness which clearly indicated that before its submergence under Brahmanical domination, it was the seat of a civilization different in significant respects from that of the vedic Aryan, the latter being pastoral while the former was agricultural. He further said that Buddhism and Jainism had their origin cast of the orthodox centre of Brahmanical culture in the middle Gangetic plain, and in both, the authority of the Rig Vedic tradition was absent. In these two religious systems there is a moral approach to the problems of life by their emphasis on the primacy of human spirit in contrast to vedic theology. This humanistic approach, the eminent Anthropologist N. K. Bose writes, "gave rise in later times in Bengal to a number of un-orthodox sects, in which the human bolly itself is treated as the mystic temple of God.... It had its origin in the treatment of humanity as the highest value, in contrast to vedic ritualdom" (Modern Bengal, Calcutta, 1959, p. 9). The famous Vaishnava poet, Chandidas, wrote "Man is the ultimate Truth" which found great popular response among Bengalis. The eminent historian, R. C. Majumdar refers to many elements in the culture and civilization of Gauda and Vanga "which differentiated them from the rest of India, and imparted a distinct individuality to the Bengalis" (History of Ancient Bengal, Calcutta, 1971, р. 468).
Anthropologists generally agree that the Bengalis "originally came of an ethnic stock that was different from the stock from which the vedic Aryans originated" (ibid., p. 19). It has now been established by eminent anthropologists and scholars (like Sarat Chandra Roy, Dr. B. S. Guha, Rama Prasad Chanda and others) that Bengalis were proto-Australoid people, distinct from the Nordic Aryans, and were only later mixed with the Dravidians and even much later with the vedic Aryans. The Bengali society was casteless unlike what we find in North India (vide: Atul Sur-Bangaleer Nritatwik Parichaya The Anthropological Characteristics of the Bengalis-Calcutta, 1977, p. 50). Later, during the rule of Ballal Sen (1160-1176), the first attempt to introduce the caste system was made. In "Rev. Lalbehari De and the Tale of Chandramukhi" (in Bengali) Dr. Debipada Bhattacharya, presently Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University, writes: Lalbehari De was born in a poor subarna-vanik. family in an obscure village in Burdwan. This subarna-vanik community was declared as an cut-caste, a caste from which an upper caste Hindu could not accept drinking water, from the time of Ballal Sen (p. 13). This was even more vigorously pursued by the later Sena rulers.
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