CHAPTER VI
THE CULT OF WOMAN AND LOVE
Sakti, the female deity, is Woman and Love, and Motherhood. She is worshipped by the intellectual class, the scribes and the clerks. Sakti is the men's goddess among a numerous following. There are holy rites of a sexual character associated with her adoration. The word sakti signifies power and energy.
As I have said before, where women are exalted as the goddesses of religion, they usually occupy a higher status than among the worshippers of male deities. In India, therefore, notwithstanding the much-assailed institution of the zenana, women are by no means the vassals or the mere chattels of men, as we are sometimes taught to believe.
"Far from India's being the land of the uniform oppression of women," writes Miss Margaret Noble, "by a uniform method, it represents the whole cycle of feminist institutions. There is literally no theory
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