Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/68

38 mystic rituals of Tāntrikism ruled Buddhistic and Hindu communities all over India. The Vāmāchārī Tāntriks perpetrated wanton crimes in the name of religion and the vast literature, they have left us, lays down codes for those initiated in the creed, which totally upset the moral fabric of society.

The Sahajiā-cult owed its origin to the Vāmāchārī Buddhists. Salvation was sought for by a process of rituals in which young and beautiful women were required to be loved and worshipped. In sexual love there is surely a higher side which points to love Divine. The Sahajiā-cult was originally based upon this idea.

Kāṅu Bhatta—a Buddhist scholar, who lived in the latter part of the 10th century. was the first apostle of love-songs of the Sahajiā-cult in Bengali. This love is not a legitimate affair sanctioned by society; with one's own wife it could not, according to this creed, reach a high stage of perfection. Kānu Bhatta's work in Bengali which formulates the creed of Vāmāchār is called Charyyā-Charyya Viniçchaya. It has been lately recovered from Nepāl by Mahāmahopādhyāya Hara Prasād Çāstrī. Another work of a similar kind is Bodhi-Charyyāvatāra, the MS. of which, as l have said elsewhere, is incomplete.

There are passages in the love-songs contained in the above two works which are obscene; but they are permeated by a mystic spiritual significance and are capable of a higher interpretation.

The doctrines promulgated by the Vāmāchārī Buddhists did not pass away with the overthrow of the Buddhistic influence in Bengal. In the