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190 We will once more quote Mr. Pal to explain what we mean, or rather how he puts the idea:

The Mother Worshippers. “ The so-called idolatry of Hinduism,” he says, “ is also passing through a mighty transfiguration. The process started really with Bankim Chandra, who interpreted the most popular of the Hindu goddesses as symbolic of the different stages of national evolution. Jagatdhatri — riding a lion which has the prostrate body of an elephant under its paw, represented the motherland in the early jungle-clearing stage. This is, says Bankim Chandra, the mother as she was. Kali, the grim goddess, dark and naked, bearing a garland of human heads around her neck,— heads from which blood is dripping,— and dancing on the prostrate form of Shiva, the God — this, says Bankim Chandra, is the mother as she is, dark, because ignorant of herself; the heads with dripping blood are those of her own children, destroyed by famine and pestilence; the jackals licking these drippings are the symbol of desolation and decadence of social life, and the prostrate form of Shiva means that she is trampling her own God under her feet. Durga, the ten-headed goddess, armed with swords and spears in some hands, holding wheat-sheaves in some, offering courage and peace with others, riding a lion, fighting with demons; with Sarasvati, or the goddess of Knowledge and Arts, supported by