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The European concept of nationalism became a useful instrument in creating new identities of peoples of South Asia. In Bengal, traditional identities were given political dimensions, and a number of emotion building symbols, narrations, invented traditions and characteristics of the land, were employed to attract the people to the idea of a particular nationalism. The role of cities in creating the nationalisms of Bengal is discussed in the present paper. The examples of Dhaka, Kolkata and Murshidabad are considered on the one hand, whereas on the other there is an attempt of a comparison between the role of these three cities and the influence of the countryside and the rural landscape of Bengal in appealing to the sentiments of Bengalis in their nationalistic discourse. Conclusions are submitted for further considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is conceived as an examination of the textual sources of the Tantric Vaiṣṇava tradition in its regional context and of the way in which vernacular Bengali and Sanskrit functioned as two factors determining the development and shape of the particular medieval esoteric tradition. The complicated history of the Bengali culture amalgam, which determines the special character of this region, takes on a crucial meaning here as pan-Indian Brahmanical and Sanskrit culture is juxtaposed on many levels with regional culture. The interactions between the regional and the pan-Indian as well as between the vernacular and Sanskrit seem to be a very complex problem with dynamic nets of interactions, functioning synchronically on multiple levels. The examination of this matter is proceeded by a general overview of the previous scholarship on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sheer intensity of the encounter between the Buddhist and Hindu pantheons in 'Eastern India' (comprising the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and present Bangladesh) from the 7th to the 12th century, was unmatched in any other region. It left, above all, a visual and textual trail in the Buddhist iconography, as attested by the presence of two Mātṛkas (Mothers) among the members of Māra's army attacking the Buddha on the night of his Awakening, Brahmanical deities being incorporated into the Buddhist world: Vārāhī appears in the Jagdishpur sculpture, and Cāmuṇḍā in a large fragment from a sculpture which must have been as large as the Jagdishpur image and used to stand in Lakhisarai, more fragments of it being preserved in the Indian Museum (Fig. 1). Further, the key component of Vārāhī iconography,3 the hog head, became an integral part of the images of Buddhist deities like Mārīcī and Vajravārāhī. The cultural background within which the images of the goddess were incorporated helps to understand this twofold phenomenon, the representation of her being transferred to a Buddhist context and some of her specific features being embedded in the iconography of Buddhist deities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]