The Heart as the Seat of the Divine: Conceptual Metaphor Schemas of Qalb in the Bengali Fakīrī Song Tradition

Abstract

Within the devotional universe of the Bengali Fakīrī song tradition, the Arabic term qalb — designating simultaneously the physical heart and its mystical double as the innermost seat of divine presence — is far more than a theological concept borrowed from Sufi cosmology. It is a structurally generative metaphor, one that organises the practitioner's understanding of embodiment, knowledge, and the proximity of God with a consistency and cognitive depth that repays sustained linguistic scrutiny. Yet despite the richness of scholarly attention directed at the Bāul-Fakīr tradition from the perspectives of anthropology, ethnomusicology, and religious studies, the cognitive architecture underpinning qalb-centred symbolism has remained largely unexamined. This paper addresses that gap through the analytical lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), as foundationally articulated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) and developed in relation to embodied image schemas by Johnson (1987) and primary metaphor theory by Grady (1997). Working through the close reading of a central composition by Lalon Fakir — supplemented by oral performances collected through fieldwork in West Bengal and Bangladesh — the paper traces four interrelated metaphor schemas through which qalb is cognitively elaborated: the heart as a dwelling place, the heart as a reflective surface, the heart as a navigational instrument, and the heart as a locus of concealed knowledge. These schemas are not arbitrary poetic ornaments. They are, as the analysis demonstrates, grounded in sensorimotor experience and then culturally elaborated through the syncretic Sufi-Vaiṣṇava cosmology that has historically shaped the Fakīrī milieu. The paper ultimately contends that in this tradition, metaphor is epistemology — the way the heart is spoken of is inseparable from the way divine knowledge is understood to be accessed, embodied, and performed.