200 The Vdstu Ydga. [No. 3, 



A new current of thought soon after set in. In the freshness of 

 imagination during the primitive state of society, comparisons, me- 

 taphors, and allegories, were soon changed into real entities, and 

 mythology rapidly gained ground in men's minds. Thus the Pu- 

 ranas, by a natural poetical idea, made the sun and the moon, which 

 witness all that is done on the earth, the spies of the divine 

 ruler — a myth describing the all-pervading nature of their rays. In 

 the Vedas, they are regarded as the universal witnesses of all cere- 

 monies. The Bdhu, the ascending node, is derived from the verb 

 literally meaning to abandon, void, hence also black, darkness, 

 shadow, &c, and is represented in mythology as having no body, 

 the umbra of the astronomers. The umbra may be said to devour 

 as it were the luminaries. Later mythology makes Halm a trunk- 

 less head, an ingenious mythological adaptation of the umbra 

 which devours, but inasmuch as it has no body, the moon comes 

 out from the throat. Again, poetic imagination or extreme fear, 

 personifies qualities, and that to such an extraordinary extent, 

 that while describing the blood-thirsty vengeance of S'akti, she is 

 said to have, in the Chhinnamastd incarnation, cut off her own head 

 from the trunk, and with the gaping trunkless skull gluttonously 

 drunk her own blood which springs with the warmth of life. 

 However hideous the conception is, it is the result of the license 

 allowed to poets to use'partial similitudes. To such flights of un- 

 shackled imagination, the variously formed sphinxes of the Chal- 

 deans are but mere flutters of the wings. As allegories illustrative 

 of the concentration of force to overcome difficulties, and the 

 adaptation of means to a purpose, the achievements of Durga. offer 

 many interesting instances. On the occasion of vanquishing the 

 mighty Asuras, Sumbha and Nisumbha, and their general, named 

 Mahishasura,(the buffaloe-demon)the several gods are made to direct 

 their energy to their weapons for the purpose. The goddess Durga, 

 representative of this union, sprung forth with ten arms fit to crush 

 several Asuras at one fell swoop. Kali, another incarnation of 

 Sakti, in the war with Raktavija, a demon multiplying his race, as 

 his name implies, from the drops of blood flowing from his body, 

 and touching the earth, is represented as having licked up the blood 

 as it streamed forth from his person with a view to arrest that 

 dreadful propagation. 



