over his life's low wall. In a passage famous with his countrymen, he looks past the bloodstained image which represents his 'Mother' to the many, sees with revolt the butchered victims and the red stains upon the flowers of worship, and cries out to that World-Mercy which he has found for himself and which he adores, that he will sacrifice not living, quivering flesh but the Six Passions the sins of his heart and mind. This passage has never been forgotten by his countrymen; and, though some have disingenuously used it to buttress up the bloody system it condemns, representing their sacrifices as an acted allegory, the victims standing for the sins and passions, yet the naturally merciful thought of the most has seen his literal meaning, and has felt judged and unhappy, even though the slaughter may continue.
Living through that time of anarchy, when Bengal was at the mercy of thieves and oppressors of every race and sort, Rāmprasād kept his vision of Divine kindness, his trust in Divine love that was good despite all seeming. Kālī dancing on her lord, Kālī festooned with skulls, with lolling tongue black with blood, with dripping weapons uplifted and menacing eyes, is not a figure with which one would naturally associate such love as Rāmprasād's. Further, he was a Śākta, and practised the Śākta-yoga. But his poems leave the cruel, lustful side of Tantric worship on one side, their insistence on blood, especially human blood, and on intoxicating drink and the prostitution of maidenhood. His mind, when it touched upon the sterner aspects of the Śākta cult, leapt to those features that were sublime, though in lurid fashion. He saw Kālī in the red flames of the burning-ground, flickering and dancing in the breeze; in the flash of the lightning, or coming with the black, matted cloud-locks of the storm.[1] This terror, leading to imperfect trust, intrudes even into his love of Kālī as Mother. Though she beat it, he says, the child clings to its mother, crying Mother. Today the world's pain does not seem lightened if we
- ↑ See Sen, p. 715.
