Mangalchandi is a gentle, domesticated form of the fierce goddess Chandi, worshipped in Bengal as the guardian of household welfare. Her name carries a double sense: mangal means well-being, and Mangalbar is Tuesday, the day sacred to her, so that she is at once the Chandi of auspiciousness and the Chandi of Tuesdays. Her worship belongs largely to women, conducted in the home through vratas, votive observances accompanied by the telling of her tales.
In the mangal poems
She presides over one of the principal currents of the Bengali mangalkavya literature. The Chandimangal, of which the sixteenth-century poem of Mukundaram Chakravarti is the most celebrated, narrates how the goddess established her worship on earth: first through the poor hunter Kalketu, whom she raised to kingship, and then through the merchant Dhanapati and his son, whose seafaring troubles end only when the goddess is acknowledged. The poems fold the goddess of the wild into the world of the market and the household, which is precisely Mangalchandi's domain.
Worship
Her vratas are kept on Tuesdays, with particular observances in certain months, when women gather, offer simple articles and recite the katha, the story that seals the vow. The rewards sought are the traditional goods of household life: the health of husbands and children, safe journeys, and prosperity. In her, one of the fiercest figures of the Hindu pantheon meets its most domestic devotion.
Further reading
- Dimock, Edward C. The Place of the Hidden Moon. University of Chicago Press, 1966
- Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin, 2009
- Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press, 2007
- Lipner, Julius. Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge, 2010
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.