Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c5.32

c5.32

The other two important cults that have influenced Bengali literature almost from the beginning are the Śaiva and the Śākta cults. So far as the religious history of Bengal is concerned, of the two, Śaivism seems to be the older and the Śākta cults, which are more often indigenous than Purāṇic, sprang up later in strong opposition to the former. In our literary records we find the Śākta cults often at daggers drawn with the cults that centred round the male deities. In this conflict with the other systems, particularly with the Śākta systems, Śaivism, the religion centring round the most indifferent and inactive god, had to give way and the Śākta cults gradually gained ground. This conflict seems to have resolved itself in another way in a synthetic transformation in the Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa cult of Bengal.