Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/93

II.] a number of old and rare songs in honour of the Pāl Kings from Northern Bengal.

It was to the growing influence of the Çaiva religion that Buddhism eventually succumbed in India. The conception of Çiva, as we ﬁnd it in the Purānas, is grand beyond all description. In the Vedic literature, he had been known as Rudra Deva. There he was the God of destruction, awe-inspiring, with four arms, each of which held a different weapon, and amongst which his trident and the Pināk carried at their points the grim terrors of death. The movements of this god, in infinite celestial space, made the great planets crush each other, and his trident pierced the elephants who supported the ten points of the compass. All other gods fell on their knees, and cried for protection, when Çiva danced in wild and destructive ecstacy at the time of the final dissolution of the universe.

But the Purāṅas completely changed the Great God. We have heard of the fiery planets growing cold with lapse of time in the celestial regions, the pleasant verdure of shrubs and plants covering those orbs from which once emanated sparks of living fire. The God Çiva has passed through a similar transformation. In the Paurāṅik age he is represented as the very personiﬁcation of calmness.