Bengali Sufis and Hindu Thought From the beginning of the Indo-
Turkish encounter with Bengal, one section of Muslims sought to
integrate into their religious lives elements of the esoteric
practices of local yogis, together with the cosmologies that
underpinned those practices. Contemporary Muslims perceived
northern Bengal generally, and especially Kamrup, lying between
the Brahmaputra River and the hills of Bhutan, as a fabulous and
mysterious place inhabited by expert practitioners of the
occult, of yoga, and of magic. During his visit to Sylhet, Ibn
Battuta noted that “the inhabitants of these mountains . are
noted for their devotion to and practice of magic and
witchcraft.” Around 1595 the great Mughal administrative manual
ā’īn-i Akbarī described the inhabitants of Kamrup as “addicted
to the practice of magic [jādūgarī].” Some twenty-five years
later a Mughal officer serving in northern Bengal described the
Khuntaghat region, in western Kamrup, as “notorious for magic
and sorcery.” And in 1662–63 anothe