Durga Puja - With Notes And Illustrations

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About a week before the Durga Puja holidays ensued I requested the author to write a paper on this chief national festival of the Hindus of Bengal, giving an account of the rites and ceremonies connected with it. He readily complied with my request, and although written at the spur of the moment and necessarily in great hurry, the paper has proved so interesting and has been so favorably received by the public that I have thought it proper to reprint it in the present form, chiefly with a view to circulate it among oriental scholars and others, who take interest in the religious institutions of the Hindus. The difficulties, which the author has met with in rendering into English the peculiar forms and expressions of Sanskrit Mantras and Slokas, may be easily imagined by those who have an experience of such work, and it is I think sufficient to mention that he has paid more attention to matter than to manner.

Modern scholars have elevated comparative religion or mythology like comparative philology to a science, and in investigating the origin of the religious festivals and ceremonies of the ancients nothing perhaps strikes the student more forcibly than the reproduction of the same principles, the same thoughts, the same sentiments, and even the same forms in different climes and among different families of man. Thus Durgotsava, the chief religious festival of the Hindus, has its parallel among the Egyptians, the Chaldæans, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the ancient Arabs.

**Contents and Sample Pages**