ABSTRACT
So far, I have avoided any thorough discussion about the status of Maijbhandar. I have limited myself to calling it a religious group or religious movement. I have had occasion to state the polycentric nature of this movement, due to the factionalisations among its officiating representatives and the many ways of accessing Maijbhandar; this results in a partial absence of clear-cut borderlines and a certain structural fuzziness which can, however, be interpreted as attributes of a lively and productive religious culture. However this may be, at this point I want to discuss a number of existing classificatory models with a view to their applicability in our case. To what extent do general religious taxonomies help us reach an understanding of what Maijbhandar is? Where do Maijbhandaris position themselves in the religious landscape of Bengal and beyond? Where are we to position Maijbhandar vis-à-vis other religious groups and factions? And, finally, in which way does the mystical idiom of Maijbhandar promote, modify or block such positionings? The following sections will seek to answer these questions.
