GENDER IN FOLK PAINTINGS OF BENGAL the Buddhist Sunya and the Islamic Pir merged into the icon of Satyanarayan. The ritual worship of this deity in Bengali Hindu families even today marks the continued popularity enjoyed by this cult. In the written form of Mangal Kavyas, these local myths assumed a definite literary importance after the advent of Vaishnavism in the fifteenth century and the subsequent growth of a vernacular Bhakti literature. These mythic tales were therefore brought before the Bengali audience continuously through daily rituals and subjected to constant re-interpretation at each historical moment of their lives (Bhattacharya, 1980). Literature speaks of bards carrying around scroll paintings from the first century onwards, and evidence of artistic schema datable from the same period can be found in the railing decorations of feharhut and Sanchi. But no example of a painted scroll has been discovered in Bengal prior to the late eighteenth century. The persistence of this visual narrative schema, however, testifies to a collective artistic memory. Indian artists seemed to be engaged in perfecting a visual design through various experiments of space and volume to reach a comprehensive style in the Ajanta murals. The common central motif of a flowing river or winding road linking the separate incidents of the narrative also finds an echo in Rajasthani miniatures dealing with more secular themes. Here, as in the Bengali scroll paintings an element of humour is introduced through the quick juxtaposition of imaginary incidents with the actual. The visual narrative structure thus constructed allows what has been aptly described as a quick transcendental element of play implicit in folk culture to flourish alongside the grander manifestation of mythology.1 (Kapur, 1981) The woman image is constructed within this visual format in accordance with the historical needs of the artist-narrator. Both as the cult icon and as the main protagonist the feminine form is projected as the aesthetic core of the visual structure. To take an example, in the Manasa Mangal patas, the woman image is first projected as the cult goddess. As the scroll unfolds and the first scene is revealed one gazes in awe at the fearful visage of a woman crowned by a snake, seated on the throne made of coiled bodies and framed by an arc of hissing snake heads while the patua (the folk artist/singer) sings: Manasa hey jagat gouri jai bishahari Ashtam nager mathay parama sundari