Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/27

 of Vishnu (the sun), and afterward she was equipped with the arms of the other gods. Indeed, the Devimahatmya which if read with the eye of a worshipper of Dawn, appears nothing more than the Pauranic abnormal development of the myth of the Dawn as fighting with the help of the gods against Darkness, night, the demon, and filling the ten quarters of the globe with her victorious sounds. In the Devimahatmya, Mahamaya is said to have been formed of the glory of Vishnu combined with those of the gods, which expressed in the language of astronomy means the twilight, formed by stray rays of many stars combined with those of the sun. Durga in the Puranas is said to be the light of fire, the light of the sun, the light of electricity, and the light of the stars, and indeed the best of all lights. The above four are indeed the sources of all light. The light generated by chemical and vital actions is the only remaining source of light, which has not been mentioned, but it needs be remembered at what age the Puranas were written, for Western Science has only so late as the eighteenth century discovered these as the only sources of light. Dawn fills the air with light, and the Puranas have expressed the same idea almost in similar words. The glory of Mahamaya filled the ten quarters of the globe. The Vaidic idea of Dawn spreading the sky has been metamorphosed in the Puranas and the Tantras into the wide and terrific-mouthed goddess, for Durga is prayed as the terrific-faced and three-eyed. Forsooth, the only distinctive peculiarity of the Dawn and the Evening is the existence of a single star in the heavens. A greater number of stars than one makes the moment night, and the absence of any star, day.