SOCIAL SCIENTIST The visual renditions of the Buddhist myths in Ajanta and Bagh serve as some of the best examples of the classical artistic formula. In the Ajanta murals the human figures press to the surface emerging with a dramatic force from the dark background as the narrative unfolds in a serialized fashion across the walls of the cave temples. Here, fantasy is wedged in with daily incidents, as familiar figures, landscapes and architecture situate the myth in the viewers' imagination as part of a lived experience. This classical formula finds an affirmation in the popular scroll paintings of Bengal. Here the images float up to the surface from a shallow background allowing human forms and mythic beings to be packed into a visual design through spatial adjustment. In both, the visual schema evolves slicing the picture space into separate units allowing the viewer to enter each specific incident of the story. While the Ajanta murals draw in the audience encompassing them in the procession of images, the scroll painting, monitored by the artist-narrator arranges a specific rhythmic entry for the viewer by the repeated motions of the rolling and unrolling of the painted scroll. Viewing the paintings forms a part of the ritual function which transforms the viewers into devotees. In contemporary Bengali paintings local cults replace the Buddhist myths. Most of these local deities originate from a pre-Brahmanical religious system and are rooted in the totemic functions of snake and tree worship. The narrative scheme adopted by the folk artists, however, spans the entire range of puranic contents, from which the oral and, later, written myths assume a specific form. Most of these folk deities came into prominence in the thirteenth century, when under the impact of Islam the moribund Hindu society took refuge in every kind of propitiating ritual to save itself from complete destitude. Interestingly, these cults were nurtured mostly by the lower orders of the Hindu society and by women in upper caste households. So from the beginning these folk deities remained outside the iconography of the official Brahmanical or Buddhist orders. The oral recitations which kept these local myths alive were found in the bratageet (ritual songs) sung by women mainly to ward off evil and ensure the well-being of the household. Another form of narration was through the panchali. These were recited by men in a social gathering usually after a day's work in the portals of the temple. The themes of the panchalis were derived mainly from the puranas and the epics. A syncretic characteristic was infused in them when, following historical demands, the Puranic Narayans,