In the silence which fell upon us after this story, she of many years was heard to yawn, while all the women snapped their fingers till her jaws met again.
From Shiva’s Temple gleaming white among the yellow-green of the date palms came the sound of the pooja bell—some one, a woman probably, praying for her Lord to the Lord of Killing and Cursing. Clear against the gray-blue sky stood the cross-crowned spire of the Christian Cathedral; and almost at our doors, rang out the prayer-keeper’s call to the faithful Moslem: “There is no God so great as God.”...
“There is no God so great as—my God.” It is what we are all saying; and it makes at once the strength and the tragedy of human lives. “No God so great as my God.” What different things we mean when we say that—we of the bustling outside world.
The Hindu woman means one thing only.... “No God so great as my God.” That was the lesson each was taking from the story of Durga and Uma. Did not almost every fable and legend chant that chorus? “No God so Great.”... In punishment may be sometimes, or in penitence (see the miracle of the Destroyer himself turned monk for Durga)—but most of all in graciousness....
“He knew Uma for her who went to Dokhio’s feast, and yet he forgave,” said Boho Rani, “Oh! the wonder.”...
But the Mother of Nagendra laughed, sure of her possession.... “The Godling of the arrows was not really burnt,” she said, “the flying foot belonged to Kama’s sheaf-bearer and rival, the less-than-godlet of unlawful love.”...
And the Wise Woman smiled to herself in the growing dusk. “The ignorant are incapable of receiving knowledge,” was what she said.
IV
DEVI—GODDESS!
A young unmarried girl is by some in Bengal called Kumari—Princess, and when married, Devi—Goddess.
I was musing on this, and all it told of the feeling of a Nation, and of the true beauty of that feeling at its best, when an old Prime-Minister friend of mine in a Native State came to invite me to a Ceremony.