mouth and protruded tongue dancing on a prostrate body,[729] and adorned with skulls and horrid emblems of destruction.  Of her four hands two carry a sword and a severed head but the other two are extended to give blessing and protection to her worshippers.  So great is the crowd of enthusiastic suppliants that it is often hard to approach the shrine and the nationalist party in Bengal who clamour for parliamentary institutions are among the goddess’s devotees.

It is easy to criticize and condemn this worship.  Its outward signs are repulsive to Europeans and its inner meaning strange, for even those who pray to the Madonna are startled by the idea that the divine nature is essentially feminine.[730] Yet this idea has deep roots in the heart of Bengal and with it another idea:  the terrors of death, plague and storm are half but only half revelations of the goddess-mother who can be smiling and tender as well.  Whatever may be the origin of Kali and of the strange images which represent her, she is now no she-devil who needs to be propitiated, but a reminder that birth and death are twins, that the horrors of the world come from the same source as its grace and beauty and that cheerful acceptance of the deity’s terrible manifestations is an essential part of the higher spiritual life.[731] These ideas are best expressed in the songs of Rama Prasada Sen (1718-1775) which “still reign supreme in the villages” of Bengal and show that this strange worship has really a hold on millions of Indian rustics.[732] The directness and childlike simplicity of his poems have caused an Indian critic to compare him to Blake.  “Though the mother beat the child,” he sings, “the child cries mother, mother, and clings still tighter to her garment.  True, I cannot see thee, yet I am not a lost child.  I still cry mother, mother.”

“All the miseries that I have suffered and am suffering, I know, O mother, to be your mercy alone.”

I must confess that I cannot fully sympathize with this worship, even when it is sung in the hymns of Rama Prasada, but it is clear that he makes it tolerable just because he throws aside all the magic and ritual of the Tantras and deals straight with what are for him elemental and emotional facts.  He makes even sceptics feel that he has really seen God in this strange guise.

The chief sanctuary of Saktism is at Kamakhya (or Kamaksha) on a hill which stands on the banks of the Brahmaputra, about two miles below Gauhati.  It is mentioned in the Padma Purana.  The temples have been rebuilt several times, and in the eighteenth century were munificently endowed by an Ahom king, and placed under the management of a Brahman from Nadia in Bengal, with reversion to his descendants who bear the title of Parbatiya Gosains.  Considerable estates are still assigned to their upkeep.  There are ten[733] shrines on the hill dedicated to various forms of the Sakti.  The situation is magnificent, commanding an extensive prospect over the Brahmaputra