LOVE IN HINDU LITERATURE. 69
forgetting his own wife and taking liberties witii some other lady whom he mistakes for Parvati. Further, the story of the awakening of Shiva's amorous passion through the instrumentality of Madana or Eros is too well known. This was necessary in the interest of Heaven's defence against the Titans. It had been ordained that the child of Shiva through Parvati could be the only victor over the foe. But Shiva had then been in meditation and vow of celibacy. Madana, the great awakener of sex-desire, was therefore called upon to play his part. He was successful — the result was the birth of Kumara, magnificently told in Kalidasa's Kumar a Sambhava.
It has to be noted that if we have the triumph of sex-passion here, we have also the burning or destruc- tion of Madana, the god of love, in the next episode. It is well known, again, how the control of sex-passions forms the motif of a vast mass of the literature of India. Moha-mudgara or " The Cudgelling of Senses " is a classic in that line.
All the rasas or passions from the loathsome and terrific to the delightful and carnal have thus been re- presented in the sex-factor of Hindu culture. The coarseness and realism of the lingam, the sweetness and romance of Radha, the sublimity and austere chasti- ty of Sita, the military prowess of the War-Lord, Kumara, the cataclysmal destructive force of Rudra, and the terror of Kalr, have all to be recognised while interpreting any branch of Hindu sexJiterature. Sex as sex has been in Indian thought as comprehensive as humanism itself. Herein lies the Hindu conception of the dignity of sex, — the sacredness of sex as an organ
