Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c19.16

c19.16

But admitting the fact of this relation between the liturgical works of the Dharma cult with some liturgical works of Tantric Buddhism, how far will it be correct to say that the nature of the Dharma cult is essentially Buddhistic? In our opinion, though it may be true to call the Dharma cult Buddhistic from a popular point of view, it is not true from the critical point of view; for, the heterogeneous practices which go by the name of Tantric Buddhism have nothing in them Buddhistic but an outward colouring effected through the introduction of some stray Buddhistic terms and ideas used generally in a transformed and deteriorated form, and also through the introduction of a pantheon gradually evolved from the docetic conception of Buddhahood. Some Nepalese Buddhistic practices are, indeed, found in the practices of the Dharma cult;¹ but it is plain to see that these are local practices which are neither Hindu nor Buddhistic either in nature or in origin. The theory propounded by MM. H. P. Śāstrī that the stone-images of Dharma-ṭhākura (Dharma-śilā), which are found abundantly in Western Bengal, and the shape of which approximates the shape of a tortoise, are nothing but the miniature forms of the Nepalese Buddhist representation of the Stūpa with the five Bodhisattvas inscribed on them,² is not, however, clear and convincing. It is not also a fact that all the stone-images of Dharma are of the shape of a tortoise. In the liturgical texts, however, we find occasional reference to the tortoise on whose back the " wooden sandals " of Dharma are to be placed. This tortoise is so well-known a mythological figure in the Hindu