Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/14

 of the Dasahara festival; the same practice of sowing grains and of putting on the pagri (the head-dress) of men and in locks of hair of women the springing grass on the Vijaya Dasami day is still followed; and the same worship of portable gardens and the throwing of them at the end of the festival into a fountain or stream is still observed. The Vedas, though they ignore the adoration of any visible gods or tangible forms of modern Hindu idolatry, have sung of the Panchasaradiya Yajna and Vasantotsava or the autumnal and vernal festivals. Not only this, but in the Aranyaka, a later appendage to the Black Yajur Veda, laudatory hymns are also given to invoke Amvika, another name for Durga. The Puranas likewise mention that in the month of Madhu agreeing with the modern lunar month of Chaitra and also in Isa agreeing with the modern lunar Asvina the Devi was worshipped.

But let us pause to enquire who this wondrous Devi is, adored at the beginning of creation by Brahma the first-born of heaven for fear of the Titans (Madhukaitabha) and thence forward by man. Is she a deified heroine like Semiramis, or a remarkable historical personage like Lucretia, or a personification of natural object as Thetes or a creature of mere fancy and speculation like Ceres or Pallas, or the offspring of a chimera, the creation of an idle, terrified brain, a hob-goblin, a Siren, a Naiad or a Driad? Decidedly she is none of these, for a goddess so universally and contemporarily adored could not be the creature of fiction, which is local in its very nature. What then could this prodigy riding on a ferocious lion be? She could not