Mothers and kings in Mangalakavya weddings: Negotiating authority in the Dharmamangal tradition

Marriage episodes in the medieval Bengali Mangalakāvya tradition function as key narrative sites where royal authority, kinship, and gender are negotiated in concrete social terms. Focusing primarily on the Dharmamangal text, this essay examines how weddings stage moments of tension between sovereign power and the prerogatives of kin groups, and between patriarchal authority and domestic morality, through the figures of the king and the mother. While royal authority appears as the ultimate guarantor of social and cosmic order, it is repeatedly tested by the claims of kinship and customary rights. Similarly, maternal voices, though formally excluded from decision-making, emerge as moral interlocutors that articulate apprehension, foresight, and dissent at crucial junctures in marital negotiations. Drawing on episodes from the Dharmamangal alongside parallels from the Chandīmangal and Manasāmangal, the essay argues that these texts do not undermine patriarchal or monarchical hierarchies but sustain them through controlled articulation of dissent. Mothers’ protests and subjects’ remonstrances function as ethical punctuation within an otherwise normative order, transforming unilateral decrees into scenes of dialogue, persuasion, and eventual submission. Situating these narrative strategies within the Performative context of the Mangalakāvya corpus and broader historical shifts in post-Sena Bengal, the essay demonstrates how authority in these texts is constructed not as brute command but as negotiated legitimacy. Weddings thus emerge as ritualized arenas where defiance and submission coexist, revealing a social imagination that relied on voiced dissent to secure obedience.