Bengali Ceremonial in America - Charak Puja

Bengali Ceremonial in America - Charak Puja Festival in Mexico.

~ photo - National Museum 

From remote antiquity the American continent and its inhabitants were known to the adventurous Bengali Hindu colonists, traders, gold and silversmiths, religious preachers and messengers of culture, who were responsible for the spread of similar forms of cult, civilisation and religious philosophies whose immortal imprints have been dis- covered all over the vast continent of America.

Bengali Ceremony in America -Hewitt, referring to the practice of penance in India and America, writes:

"It is still preserved in India, in the ceremony of swinging the young sun-god in August; also the Dakota (U.S.A.) swinging- penance is exactly like that annually performed in Bengal by the devotees, who swing themselves on hooks at the Charak-pooja, while the preparations for cutting down the mystery tree are very like those observed in Chota-Nagpore, in cutting down the Kurrum tree (Naudea parvifolia), at the barley festival in August, and in both cases, those who cut the tree must fast. It is all but utterly impossible that this peculiar form of swinging-penance should have originated independently both among the Bengalis and Dakotas (in America), and when the numerous other coincidences between Hindu, Chinese, Japanese, and American myth and ritual, especially the measurement of time, both in India and America, by the Pleiades, Orion, the Pole Star and Great Bear, are also taken into account.