Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/106

76 give pain to yourself or to others. Not depending upon others, is salvation. Heaven lies in eating food of delicious taste."

It is further preached that immorality is no vice, but this particular passage need not be quoted.

Now let us imagine the effect of such free-thinking on society. The Tāntriks who were dominant all over India in the age of which we are speaking, were known to banquet on things so horrible as, for instance, a putrid corpse. They wanted to shew that in their eyes nothing in creation was unholy. The marriage system had become lax. During the flourishing days of Buddhism, the different races of Asia had been brought into close touch with one another. The monasteries were filled with men and women of alien race, and when standards of morality sank low in Buddhistic society in course of time, a population, consisting of children disowned by the communities of both their parents came into existence, and