Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/615

 ' NN, ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. = 5575 sweetly sounds the name of Krisna. * Dhustura flowers adorn his ears; and his eyes have a mad look from taking Dhustura drug ; his robe of tiger- skin is falling off from him.” This dance of Civa is quite distinct from the destructive dance of the Rudra Deva of the Vedas. The dancing described in this song reminds us rather of the dance of Chaitanya Deva in his spiritual ecstasy. The look of madness, the repeating of Krisna’s name, the loose robes,—the company of low-caste people who joined in his processions, as represented by the ghosts of Civa, all significantly point to the Vaishnava influence, without which this dance of Civa becomes mean- ingless; it is a dance in spiritual ecstasy and should not be confounded with the dance of the destroyer of the universe that Civa originally was. Civa’s love for drugs in this song symbolises the excess of emotion verging on madness_ which characterizes the Vaisnava dance ina Sankirtana party. Thus we see that Vaisnavism influenced the society of Bengal in all its different sections ; neither Caktas nor Caivas could resist that influ- ence. The prevailing creeds strengthened them- selves by assimilation of the attractive features of their more successful rival, such as has gone on from the beginning in Hindu society. During the Pauranic renaissance Bengali litera- The apolo- gy of the ture had not yet reached the stage when scholars vernacular could undertake writing in that language without সপ authors.
 * Datura fastuosa.