Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/32

 The dark fortnight of a lunar month is the period, when darkness predominates and is therefore considered unfit for certain ceremonies. In the bright fortnight also for seven or eight days there is a contest as it were between Darkness and Lights, and it is only on the dasami tithi, the tenth lunation, that the dominion of light is thoroughly established. Following this natural phenomenon in the worship of Durga, the Dasami (Vijaya) may be regarded as the celebration of the victory of Dawn over Darkness, and as the martial exploits of the ancients were commemorated by the presentation or lustration of arms in review so the triumph of Dawn over Darkness is similarly celebrated by the presentation or lustration of (lights) the weapons of Dawn.

Black kid is the most acceptable sacrifice to Durga, Dawn, for blacknight is her victim, and for the same reason the Sastras enjoin that in the Vasanti Puja, dark flowers should be offered to Durga. In sacrificing a goat to Durga the animal is directed to be fixed between cloud-formed pillars and between the pillars which divide the universe. At the approach of Dawn, Darkness is fixed between hazy clouds or properly speaking between the zones of condensed vapour hovering over the horizon, and made palpable in the east and west by the rising and setting sun. Night, Darkness, the demon is fixed between the pillars of Dawn and Gloaming, which divide the day of twenty-four hours or of the Equinoxes which divide the starry heaven into two.

Durga is gold coloured for Dawn is red as gold. But the Bengal pratima has other figures than Durga. Ganesa (Janus) is the God of morning and of day after whom the