Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c19.10

c19.10

The Dharma cult being the result of a popular commingling of a host of heterogeneous beliefs and practices, it will be incorrect to style it purely Buddhistic or Hindu or indigenous either in origin or in nature,—it is as much a hotch-potch in its origin as it is in its developed form and nature. Critical analysis of the constituent elements will reveal that, as a popular religious cult, Dharma cult owes many of its elements to that form of later Buddhism, which is known as Mantra-yāna and laterly, and most commonly, as Vajra-yāna. The liturgical texts, *viz.*, the *Śūnya-purāṇa* and particularly the compendium entitled the *Dharma-pūjā-vidhāna*¹, will at once remind one of the liturgical texts of Mantra-yāna or Vajra-yāna. Of course, in these vernacular works we find but a very faint trace of the earlier practices, we mean those of Tāntric Buddhism, they being replaced by innumerable local and indigenous practices. In the process of assimilating the local indigenous practices the liturgical works of the Dharma cult show the same tendency as is found in the liturgical works of Tāntric Buddhism. With the *Śūnya-purāṇa* and the *Dharma-pūjā-vidhāna* of the Dharma cult (excluding the portions on cosmogonical speculations) we may compare more particularly one well-known compendium of the religious practices of Vajra-yāna Buddhism, *viz.*, the *Kriyā-saṃgraha*.² This text begins with the details of the construction of the Vihāra (which is not here the monastery of the monks or the nuns, but frankly the temple of gods and goddesses) ¹, worship of various gods and goddesses, and hundred other ceremonies and practices including placing of the jar (kalasa), ablution, fire-sacrifice, etc. These are found also in the Śūnya-purāṇa. The Kriyā-samgraha, however, assumes a pseudo-Buddhistic form by professing occasionally that the final aim of all these rituals and ceremonies is the realisation of Bodhicitta with a view to attaining liberation not merely of the self but of the whole universe. But along with this avowedly Buddhistic purpose even the performance of fire-sacrifice and the sacrifice of animals to the goddesses are also prescribed in this text in complete oblivion of the fact that Lord Buddha began his religious career as a living protest against the sacrificial religion of the Vedas and the cruelty to animals involved therein. The chapters on fire-sacrifice (Homa or Yajña) found in the liturgical texts of the Dharma cult may be a faint echo of this prototype. In the Kriyā-samgraha we find that the offering to the goddess Hāriti consists of fish, blood of animals, meat along with all other articles; in the Śūnya-purāṇa also we find that the goddess associated with Dharma is very fond of animal-sacrifice. ²