THE DURGA PUJA
"AND there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in Heaven." Archaic sentences here and there in the world's scriptures tell us of the wars that were waged in Heaven before the beginning of time, and of the heritage--dim, prehistoric, supernatural in the natural--that was left from them to men and gods.
What is it that makes this element of mythology so clear, what force has raised it in this one case to the significance which it attains in the Chandi portion of the Markandeya Purana? This is, above all others, the Purana of Bengal. But here the central figure of the drama is no archangel, mighty in power and beauty, but the Mother herself, personification of the creative energy, focus and centre of the visible Universe. Back and forth amidst the applause of Heaven does She pursue the ever-changing demons, and at the moment of her triumph, when, ten-armed, pedestaled on the
Durga Puja its overwhelming elements of civic pageantry and national comprehensiveness. Those who have studied religions as factors in social and political development must be conscious of the great variety of threads that are united in any single religious practice. What was it that made the Semitic races worshippers of God the Father, and India the land of the worship of the Mother? Can these vast tangles of social and geographical conditions ever be completely unravelled? And even so, does India stand alone in her personification, or is it not more or less common to the whole of Eastern Asia? Regarding this last point, it is perhaps the fact that what exists elsewhere in fragments and survivals has been preserved and developed in India as a coherent whole. And within India itself, customs and doctrines bearing on this worship, in more
