The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s6.41

c14.s6.41

One type of gods and goddesses is exhibited as incorporating *śakti* or energy. A second type of divinities was created by Folk-Bengal to furnish the masses with “Great Exemplars” from whom might be learnt the duties and obligations of life, individual, domestic and social. It is in and through this group of gods and goddesses that the people are instructed in the ideal relations between parent and offspring, husband and wife, brother and brother, ruler and subject and so on. The literature through which such gods and goddesses become the instruments of positive morality has its chief *forte* in *bhakti*, the emotional element in human personality. It is to love, faith and hope that this *bhakti*, devotional or emotional poetry appeals rather than to the practices of intellectual gymnastics and ratiocinative argumentation. Krittivāsa's *Rāmāyaṇa* has furnished the Bengali people with positive morality in and through the stories of Rāma and his consort Sītā as well as the ancestors and allies of the great hero. It is by this Bengali epic that Folk-Bengal is introduced to the "whole duty of man." The rôle of man as the creator of gods, goddesses and God has nowhere been so prominent as in Hindu Bengal, nay, in Hindustan through the ages. And this is an aspect of world-culture that remains yet to be assimilated to the investigations into the universal currents in positive philosophy.