theology as Bodhisattvas?]

[Footnote 728: It is an autumnal festival. A special image of the
goddess is made which is worshipped for nine days and then thrown into
the river. For an account of the festival which makes its tantric
character very clear see Durga Puja by Pratapachandra Ghosha,
Calcutta, 1871.]

[Footnote 729: One explanation given is that she was so elated with
her victories over giants that she began to dance which shook the
Universe. Siva in order to save the world placed himself beneath her
feet and when she saw she was trampling on her husband, she stopped.
But there are other explanations.

Another of the strangely barbaric legends which cluster round the
Sakti is illustrated by the figure called Chinnamastaka. It
represents the goddess as carrying her own head which she has just cut
off, while from the neck spout fountains of blood which are drunk by
her attendants and by the severed head itself.]

[Footnote 730: Yet the English mystic Julian, the anchoress of Norwich
(c. 1400), insists on the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God.
"God is our mother, brother and Saviour." "As verily God is our
father, so verily God is our mother."

So too in an inscription found at Capua (C.I.N. 3580) Isis is
addressed as _una quae es omnia_.

The Power addressed in Swinburne's poems _Mater Triumphalis, Hertha,
The Pilgrims_ and _Dolores_ is really a conception very similar to
Sakti.]

[Footnote 731: These ideas find frequent expression in the works of
Bunkim Chandra Chatterjee, Dinesh Chandra Sen and Sister Nivedita.]

[Footnote 732: See Dinesh Chandra Sen, _Hist. Beng. Lang, and Lit_.
pp. 712-721. Even the iconoclast Devendranath Tagore speaks of the
Universal Mother. See _Autobiog._ p. 240.]

[Footnote 733: So I was told, but I saw only six, when I visited the
place in 1910.]

[Footnote 734: Rudhiradhyaya. Translated in _As. Researches_, V. 1798,
pp. 371-391.]

[Footnote 735: See Frazer, _op. cit._ p. 246.]

CHAPTER XXXIII

HINDU PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy is more closely connected with religion in India than in
Europe. It is not a dispassionate scientific investigation but a
practical religious quest. Even the Nyaya school, which is concerned
chiefly with formal logic, promises that by the removal of false
knowledge it can emancipate the soul and give the bliss of salvation.
Nor are the expressions system or school of philosophy, commonly used
to render _darsana_, altogether happy