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BENGALI RELIGIOUS LYRICS, ŚĀKTA
Bengali 'drama of coming and going' and song-cycles of other lands. One thinks of the chorus of Canticles giving notice of the imminence of the kingly lover's arrival; or of peasant songs of Greece and Italy. Village poets are still improvising new details or embroidering old ones on the tale of Umā's sorrowful life with her vagabond husband, of her mother's joy at receiving her, and her grief at losing her. Though the Durgā-cult has annexed this legend, it has very different roots. Umā has the breath of Himalayan snows about her—still more, has the fragrance of autumn harvest fields in her hair—while Kālī and Durgā, especially Kālī, are children of a fierce, savage imagination, nurtured in jungle fastnesses.
E. J. T.
