Page:Bengali Religious Lyrics, Śākta.pdf/37

Rh vagabond, a haunter of waste places where dead men's bones lie; and their hearts go out in overflowing and distressed love to their child, returning to them, as once Persephone to Demeter from the gloomy throne of her dark consort. The whole pūjā is a very happy time, the Bengali Christmas. Small boys explode fire works incessantly, to their own immense joy and the good-humoured annoyance of passers-by. There is feasting and reunion everywhere.

In these songs, the sorrows of Umā have passed away, from the region of religion, into that of poetry. Many of them are of great beauty; the reader will be struck by the way in which the goddess has been taken into the family and inner domesticities of the Bengali home. She has been adopted as a kind of divine daughter; and the incidents of her history with her strange Lord are told with a straightforward simplicity that is often delightful. This is carried even further in a number of songs (of which we give examples), which are not Āgāmanī songs, strictly speaking, but closely akin to them. Of these, a few deal with Umā's Lord, yet chiefly as being her Lord and not for his own sake. There is no such extensive Śiva-literature in Bengal as we find in South India; his consort, in her various manifestations, has largely absorbed his cult or attached it to her own. But there is at least one voluminous and very popular Śiva-poem, the Śivāyana by Rāmeśwara, written about 1750. In this, and in other poems of this class, Śiva's life in Kailāsa is shown. 'Umā in Kailāsa plays the house wife, the perfect prototype of the Hindu wife, ever accustomed to patient and strenuous self-denial and labour, cheerfully borne for the sake of others. Her highest delight lies in distributing food to her husband, children and servants.' Dr. Sen translates (or, rather, paraphrases) a passage from the Śivāyana:

'With his two sons Śiva sits down to dine. Three sit to eat, and Umā serves food to them. As soon as