Call for Papers

Journal of Bengali Studies Vol 8 No 1

The Living Goddess Traditions

Due by 05 October 2025

Journal of Bengali Studies (ISSN 2277 9426), an online, open access, interdisciplinary, double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal to study the history and culture of the Bengali people, is glad to announce the Call for Papers for its upcoming issue (Vol. 8 No. 1) on the theme of the Living Goddess Traditions. Bengal has been the hub of various goddess traditions and this issue will study the past memory and the present phenomenon of such goddess cults.

Archaic Goddess cults existed in different parts of our planet since our Homind pasts (e.g. Venus of Berekhat Ram, Venus of Tan Tan), and they can be found in the stone age of Homo sapiens as well (e.g. Venus of Hohle Fels), down to the copper age (various ancient civilizations including the Harappans). But following the descent of the iron age, goddess cults seemed to have receded in most parts of the world, while mighty cults of powerful male Gods replaced or eclipsed the Goddesses.

Today, the Bengali-speaking Hindus remain the only large community on earth, who celebrate their thriving Goddess traditions, where the Goddess is not relegated to the curiosity of a museum, or does not play a secondary fiddle to some other almighty male Gods, like certain other parts of South Asia (i.e. north India or south India), but where the Supreme Goddess is very much at the core of the contemporary experience of a large people (numbering 10 crore or more, and it is only for political reasons we desist from calling the Bengali-speaking Hindus a nation on their own).

The theme of this upcoming issue of Journal of Bengali Studies attempts to trace the existing, living traditions of the Goddess cults of Bengal back to the hoary antiquities of its (mostly forgotten) past, and aims to map the trajectory of the evolution of such Goddess cults from past to present. This issue intends to interrogate the possible connections of Bengal’s history and prehistory with a largely rootless present, which, in spite of all the modern, colonial, communist and communal upheavals, still manages to celebrate the Goddess cults which form one of the most important markers, if not the most important marker of Bengali identity.

So, we invite articles which will inspect the existing popular cults and religious practices of the worship of the various goddesses amidst the backdrop of the kernels of history which form the foundations to such living goddess traditions.

The topics for contribution will include the following (but will not be limited to the same):

Goddess and goddesses: The supreme Creatrix and the many manifestations of attendant goddesses.
Goddess and Tantra.
The Folk Goddess Cults: From antiquity to contemporaneity.
Goddess Kālī: Primeval Invocations (the Dark Goddess of the Night), Medieval Inventions (Kṛṣṇānanda Āgambāgīśa etc), Modern Inferences (from early modern Ramprasad & Kamalakanta to the twentieth century devotional songs of Pannalal Bhattacharya).

Goddess Durgā: Autumnal invocation of Goddess Ūṣā in Ṛgveda, Buffalo Sacrifice of Harappa, Chandraketugarh Goddesses, Post-Gupta Period and Śrī Śrī Caṇḍī, Pala Period Goddess Cults, Medieval Bengal and Caṇḍīmangala, Contemporary Durgā Pujo of public and private dispensations (Bonedi/elite and Baroari/collective). Festivity, Economics, Heritage and Popular Culture.
Goddess Tārā: The rise of the Great Goddess in Buddhist Tantra and Hindu Tantra to modern day Tarapith of Birbhum.
Pala Period Goddess Vajrayoginī and the contemporary Goddess Chinnamastā.
Sena cataloguing of the Ten Mahāvidyās in Bṛhaddharmapurāṇa and their lasting legacies of Tantric Goddess worship to this day. The other Mahāvidyās in the Goddess pantheon beyond Daśamahāvidyā.

Local Guardian Goddesses like Mṛṇmayī of Mallabhum, Kalyāṇeśvarī of Shikharbhum, Sarvamangalā of Bardhaman: Past lores and lived traditions.
Goddess Viśālākṣī: Local variations in iconology, ritual, styles of worship in the past lores and lived traditions.
Goddesses Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī: The evolution of their cults from antiquity to modernity within the domestic sphere, within the public sphere, respectively as the disburser of wealth and as the disseminator of knowledge, with reference to their iconographies and archaeomythologies.
Suggested Yakṣī cults and Chandraketugarh: The latent trajectory from the ancient to the medieval to the modern ages.
Śākta Rāsa (of Nabadwip and elsewhere).

Antiquarian Goddess Cults like the Bird Goddess and the Snake Goddess and their sublimations into various existing goddess cults like Mahāvidyā Bagalā and Goddess Manasā/Mahāvidyā Tvaritā).
The curious continuity of the early medieval Goddess Cāmuṇḍā/Carcikā to various lived traditions of Goddesses Petkati and Kankāleśvarī.
The lived traditions of Kuladevī or the Clan Goddess or the Family Deity: Past narratives and present practices.
The continuous serendipity of the discoveries of ancient and medieval goddess idols from obscure corners of Bengal: How the past communicates with the present.
The Śakti pīīthas of Bengal: Lores from the past, and lived traditions of the present.

Eponymous Guardian Goddesses of Settlements and the simultaneously rooted but floating identities of Bengali space (e.g. Kālī and Kalighat, Jessore and Yaśoreśvarī).
The lived traditions of Goddess worshippers: accomplished Sādhakas like Bamakhyapa of Tarapith, and their lasting legacies.
Evolution of Sākta theologies: Past moorings and contemporary traditions.
Last but not the least, the various non-Śākta worship of the Goddess in Bengal (including but not limited to the Vaiṣṇava worship of Kātyāyanī Durgā started by Nityananda Prabhu, or the Chinese Kali worship).

The minimum word limit of articles would be 3000 words, and maximum word limit would be 15000 words. Writers need to follow MLA format. Articles complete with bibliography and author’s bio-note should be submitted as email attachments in docx form by 05 October 2025 for this upcoming issue (expected to be published on the occasion of Kalipujo).

For any query, feel free to email shoptodina@gmail.com and/or whatsapp/telegram 9717468046. The editorial board of JBS remains the sole and final authority on the decisions regarding the publication or non-publication of any submitted article in original or modified forms.

Editor: Dr Rituparna Koley

Check out our past issues at https://bengalistudies.blogspot.com and www.bengalistudies.com