The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s6.34

c14.s6.34

The Rādhā-Kriṣṇa songs or sex-hymns of Vidyāpati have a background or context sufficiently wide and varied not only in India's art and literature but also in the incidents of her daily existence. They constitute indeed some of the specimens of actual folk-life, or folk-lore elevated to the status of "dignified" culture-lore. The worship of *lingam* or phallus as the creative male element is too deep-rooted in Bengali and other Hindu consciousness to be treated as an aberration. Nor is the male sex deified only in its generative function. Śiva "the Great God" stands for the thousand and one functions and aspects of the male principle, both beneficent and malevolent. If the Bengali and other Hindus know one Kriṣṇa to be a lover and a sweet-heart they know another Kriṣṇa as a statesman and a warrior. And there are the ideal husband, the ideal father, the ideal brother, the ideal ruler and so forth of the Rāma-stories.