A work like the Mahanirvana Tantra presents a refined form of Saktism modified, so far as may be, in conformity with ordinary Hindu usage.[723] But other features indubitably connect it with aboriginal cults.  For instance there is a legend which relates how the body of the Sakti was cut into pieces and scattered over Assam and Bengal.  This story has an uncouth and barbarous air and seems out of place even in Puranic mythology.  It recalls the tales told of Osiris, Orpheus and Halfdan the Black[724] and may be ultimately traceable to the idea that the dismemberment of a deity or a human representative ensures fertility.  Until recently the Khonds of Bengal used to hack human victims in pieces as a sacrifice to the Earth Goddess and throw the shreds of flesh on the fields to secure a good harvest.[725] In Sanskrit literature I have not found any authority for the dismemberment of Sati earlier than the Tantras or Upapuranas (e.g. Kalika), but this late appearance does not mean that the legend is late in itself but merely that it was not countenanced by Sanskrit writers until medieval times.  Various reasons for the dismemberment are given and the incident is rather awkwardly tacked on to other stories.  One common version relates that when Sati (one of the many forms of Sakti) died of vexation because her husband Siva was insulted by her father Daksha, Siva took up her corpse and wandered distractedly carrying it on his shoulder.[726] In order to stop this penance Vishnu followed him and cut off pieces from the corpse with his quoit until the whole had fallen to earth in fifty-one pieces.  The spots where these pieces touched the ground are held sacred and called piths.  At most of them are shown a rock supposed to represent some portion of the goddess’s body and some object called a bhairabi, left by Siva as a guardian to protect her and often taking the form of a lingam.  The most important of these piths are Kamakhya near Gauhati, Faljur in the Jaintia Parganas, and Kalighat in Calcutta.[727]

Though the Sakti of Siva is theoretically one, yet since she assumes many forms she becomes in practice many deities or rather she is many deities combined in one or sometimes a sovereign attended by a retinue of similar female spirits.  Among such forms we find the ten Mahavidyas, or personifications of her supernatural knowledge; the Mahamatris, Matrikas or the Great Mothers, allied to the aboriginal goddesses already mentioned; the Nayakas or mistresses; the Yoginis or sorceresses, and fiends called Dakinis.  But the most popular of her manifestations are Durga and Kali.  The sects which revere these goddesses are the most important religious bodies in Bengal, where they number thirty-five million adherents.  The Durgapuja is the greatest festival of the year in north-eastern India[728] and in the temple of Kalighat at Calcutta may be seen the singular spectacle of educated Hindus decapitating goats before the image of Kali.  It is a black female figure with gaping