Dharmathakur
Dharmathakur is a Hindu deity of death and justice, worshipped by villagers in the traditional Rarh region in the present day Indian state of West Bengal as one of their special village gods. He is represented by a shapeless stone daubed with vermillion and is normally placed under a tree or placed in the open, but sometimes enshrined in a temple. The worship takes place in the months of Baisakh, Jaistha and Asarh on the day of full moon and sometimes on the last day of Bhadro. Dharmaraj is worshipped mainly by the Bauri, Bagdi, Hari, Dom etc. castes.
A temple of Dharma stood in the Jaun Bazaar street in Calcutta during the late 19th century.
Origins
Dharmaraj has been linked with many gods such as Sun-god Surya, Varuna, Vishnu, Yama, Shiva and even with Buddhism. Fundamentally, it all started with the magical beliefs related to harvesting in the primitive days and thereafter layers of Aryan Hindu and Buddhist beliefs transformed it in many ways at different places and has now become too complex to trace its roots properly.Suniti Kumar Chatterji says, "Dharma who is however described as the supreme deity, creator and ordainer of the Universe, superior even to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and at times identified with them, and he has nothing of the abstractions of Buddhist Dharma about him." He has further opined that the songs and dances linked with Gajan of Dharma is clearly non-Aryan in origin. It could be Dravidian or Tibeto-Chinese.
Sukumar Sen says that Dharmaraj has come down with the so-called lower category of common people. They formed a majority at one point of time and had no right to Brahminical learning. Brahmins who started migrating to Bengal in large numbers during the Gupta period were mostly not the original inhabitants of Bengal and as such had no links with Dharmaraj. He was not a personal-god but a community-god worshipped by many at a time. He was worshipped by large groups of non-Brahmins such as Haris, Doms and Chandalas.
It is notable that very important patrons of his worship were Brahmins and that they wrote most of the scriptures dedicated to his worship. These include works Dharma Purana of Mayura Bhatt, the Dharmamangal of Mayura Bhatta, Ramdas Adak, Manik Ganguly, Ghanarama, Sahadeva Chakravarty, and Ruparama. Perhaps the Ghanarama festival, in which modern-day adherents worship Dharmaraj is named after the Brahmin Ghanarama Chakravarti.
Frank Korom, a Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Boston University, wrote his PhD dissertation on Dharmaraj. He found that Dharmaraj is perceived and worshipped differently from district to district.