Page:Bengali Religious Lyrics, Śākta.pdf/20

Rh He is the great Ascetic, with matted locks, seated in age-long meditation, or haunting burning-grounds, wandering fiercely, accompanied by ghosts and goblins. At first sight, it might seem that no more repellent deity could be imagined; but there is so much of sublimity in the conception of him that many of the most religious Hindus have been attracted by his figure. It is easy to understand and to share this attraction. The dreadful need not be immoral, and it can be, often is, sternly bracing, as well as wildly poetical. All men in the end must come to the burning-ground; and the God who is a destructive fire, shrivelling to ashes all that is transitory and fleshly, who is divine negligence personified, meditating amid the ruin of worlds or wandering among the cinders which are all that is left of men's hopes and passionate love—all except memory, growing ever fainter as the years pass—this God in the mind's bleaker moods may bring such sad exultation and courage as men have felt on a lost battlefield or amid eternal snows.

But much of śiva's worship has gone to his consort, Kālī or Durgā. Possibly because it was felt necessary to remove the God beyond the operation of karma or activity, logically involving change and consequences, within the first millenium of the Christian era the tendency grew up to centralise and intensify his energies in his śakti or female counterpart. Vishṇu, too, has his śakti, as have all the gods but it is round the names of Kālī and Durgā that the great bulk of Śāktā worship has gathered. The manuals of this worship are the Tantras, whose number is variously estimated. Hundreds have been lost, but very many survive. Parts of the Puranas also deal with the śākta cult. The whole cult is very obscure, partly because it enjoins the strictest secrecy; but it is known that in its worst forms it is perhaps the vilest and most degraded worship that has ever been. Śiva is not only destroyer, but lord of