Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/81

LOVE IN HINDU LITERATURE. 67 social institutions. The sex-factor may be said to enter as a conception in every socio-religious item. The Radha-Krishna songs of Vidyapati have thus a back- ground, context or milieu, sufficiently widie and varied not only in India's art and literature (e.g., Purdnas and Tantras) but also in the incidents of its daily existence.

Worship of lingam or phallus as the creative male element is too deep-rooted in Hindu consciousness to be treated as an aberration. Nor is the male sex deified only in its generative function. Shiva, the " Great God," stands for the thousand and one functions and aspects of the male principle, both beneficent and malevolent. If the Hindu knows one Krishna to be a lover and a sweetheart, he knows another Krishna as a statesman and a warrior. And there are the ideal husband, the ideal father, the ideal brother, the ideal ruler, and so forth, in the Rama-stories.

Deification and extollation of the female element have been none the less prominent. If Radha is a sweetheart and a darling, Kali is the inspirer of a Perseus the Deliverer, or of an Andreas Hofer, e.g., a Pratap-aditya or a Shivaji. If Radha enlivens maiden- hood and young age, Sita and Savitrl are the idols of hausfraus daily life. The female sex as the embodi- ment of shakti or energy has been really accorded the highest and most comprehensive place in Hindu socio- religious polity.

Most of the functions which have to be observed in Indian everyday life have a sex-reference. It is this sex-element which sweetens and enriches and diversifies the dull monotony of existence. Even the little incidents of the puny a pukur or " miniature-tank "-worship per-