Editorial Note, January – February, 2025

This issue of Social Scientist includes three articles addressing different themes in History. In the first, Seema Bawa questions notions regarding the appearance and proliferation of the goddess cult and worship ritual in India, especially in early historic Bihar (fifth century BCE to fifth century CE), through visual evidence, with reference both to Brahmanism and heterodox sects. It is based on the premise that both the presence and the absence of visual and material evidence of deities and ritual objects related to these are significant indicators of religious formations in a region. Her survey suggests that finds of the divine feminine are few and far between, and that goddess worship was not well established in the early period in Bihar.