figure with gaping 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