The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s6.55

c14.s6.55

But the man who has started them all in this modern Bengali *bhakti*-literature is Bankimchandra Chatterji. According to him the ten-armed Durgā (consort of Śiva) with her whole family and retinue, the most popular goddess of Hindu Bengal in the nineteenth century and after, who was, historically considered, one of the Tārās (Energies) of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva in mediæval Mahāyānic India and still receives worship as Tārā in Buddhist China and Buddhist Japan, nay, can perhaps be traced back to the Mother Goddess of the Mohenjo Daro epochs, is none other than Motherland itself with all its resources and forces in natural agents and human arts. This synthetic interpretation, crystallized in the song *Vande Mātaram* (c. 1885), is bound to remain the greatest hymn of Folk-India during the twentieth century. Bengal, and with her India, sings as follows :