[725] See Frazer, Golden Bough: Spirits of the Corn, vol. I. 245 and authorities quoted.
[726] Images representing this are common in Assam.
[727] Hsüan Chuang (Walters, vol. I. chap, VII) mentions several sacred places in N.W. India where the Buddha in a previous birth was dismembered or gave his flesh to feed mankind. Can these places have been similar to the pîths of Assam and were the original heroes of the legend deities who were dismembered like Satî and subsequently accommodated to Buddhist theology as Bodhisattvas?
[728] It is an autumnal festival. A special image of the goddess is made which is worshipped for nine days and then thrown into the river. For an account of the festival which makes its tantric character very clear see Durgâ Puja by Pratapachandra Ghosha, Calcutta, 1871.
[729] One explanation given is that she was so elated with her victories over giants that she began to dance which shook the Universe. Śiva in order to save the world placed himself beneath her feet and when she saw she was trampling on her husband, she stopped. But there are other explanations.
Another of the strangely barbaric legends which cluster round the Śakti is illustrated by the figure called Chinnamasṭakâ. It represents the goddess as carrying her own head which she has just cut off, while from the neck spout fountains of blood which are drunk by her attendants and by the severed head itself.
[730] Yet the English mystic Julian, the anchoress of Norwich (c. 1400), insists on the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God. "God is our mother, brother and Saviour." "As verily God is our father, so verily God is our mother."
So too in an inscription found at Capua (C.I.N. 3580) Isis is addressed as una quae es omnia.
The Power addressed in Swinburne's poems Mater Triumphalis, Hertha, The Pilgrims and Dolores is really a conception very similar to Śakti.
[731] These ideas find frequent expression in the works of Bunkim Chandra Chatterjee, Dinesh Chandra Sen and Sister Nivedita.