Dharma Maṅgal are long, narrative Bengali poems that explain and justify the worship of Lord Dharma as the eternal, formless, and supreme god. Surviving texts were written between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries. By examining the plots of Dharma Maṅgal, I hope to describe features of a precolonial Bengali warriors” culture. I argue that Dharma Maṅgal texts describe the career of a hero and raja, and that their narratives seem to be designed both to inculcate a version of warrior culture in Bengal, and to contain it by requiring self-sacrifice in both battle and “truth ordeals.”l