Influence of Mangal Kavya on folk music in East India has been laid down by the biographers who say that before Chaitanya Deva, people used to spend wakeful nights listening to folk-music on popular narratives, especially Manasamangal. Mangal Kavya is basically a collection of Bengali Hindu religious texts that were composed more or less between thirteenth Century and eighteenth Century. These texts mainly comprise of narratives of the indigenous deities of rural Bengal in the social scenario of the Middle Ages. In the earlier days, people of rural areas used to believe that listening to these verses would bring both spiritual and material benefits.

The Mangal Kavya usually focuses on a particular deity amalgamated with a Vedic or Hindu mythological god. These narratives are usually written in the form of verses. These narratives, cults based on the Puranas-plus-folk elements are rendered musically through established forms of folk-music.

Perhaps these narratives were orally composed and sung till a certain period of history, which might have been thirteenth or fourteenth century. Gradually thereafter, some genuine poets of rural areas began to contribute in writing. At least the music part of it was spontaneous and oral. It existed in the rural areas making Mangal narratives part and parcel of music, and these were handled by rural poets. In some cases, episodes from these narratives were sporadically composed and sung. People retained these in memory and recapitulated them orally. These local cults were the vehicles of propagation of music in agricultural areas; or the reverse may also be considered as true, that is, some of the principal types of folk-music had their growth on the basis of these cults.

History testifies, Manasa cult predominated in the Assam state of India earlier. Narayanadev was the principal poet. It was then channelized into the one section of folk-music in Assamese. Side by side with the use of various other narratives orally by people, as it was normal everywhere, poets like Bipradas, Ghanaram, Mukundaram of West Bengal state appeared in the field and composed these episodes poetically, and hence these are called Kavyas. Nevertheless, these cults produced songs and music, and especially songs of folk character.