Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/16

 Or why should Nature our common mother, divine Omnipotence, be portrayed as waging everlasting war with Demons and not nursing her children with fostering care? And above all how such speculations seized the mind through the length and breadth of the ancient world and became the theme of the epics of poets of several nations and the beau ideal of the Deity of all.

We must it appears then seek to trace this universal Verego in something that is common to all?

Does she then reside in the heavens? The early Chaldæans and Phœnicians from their knowledge of the heavenly bodies fell at last to their worship. The Hindus as well as the other Arian nations have adored from time immemorial the heavenly luminaries as beings superior to man, and have from their supposed extraordinary influence adorned them with suitable attributes. In the heavens therefore we must seek for the Devi, for in the heavens we find the heavenly Virgin shining in full lustre and throwing light on the grand mystery of her origin. She proves at once to be the first female Divinity of heaven, the daughter of Daksha, progenitor of the Stars, the holy Virgin of the early Christians and the Astarte of the Assyrians. She proves verily to be the daughter of Himavat by Mena, the Manasa-sarovara, from her position over the eastern extremity of the mount, whence the declination to the southern course of the sun commences in his equatorial line of the Meru, and whence the constellation is seen to rise in early autumn evenings. To the left of the constellation Virgo and a little below it, is situated the constellation of the Centaur with its body of half buffalo and half man. On the other side of Virgo of