VI. HER NEGLECT OF HUMBLE WORSHIPPERS AND HER PARTIALITY FOR THE VIOLENT

Go, Mother, go! I know you. He that praises you gets double punishment. He that follows after you, with prayer and worship crying ever Mother, you send him with grief and pain and sorrow to the House of Yamā.[50]

[34]

With little effort can anything come? The water flows past the weak embankment.[51] But he that is strong wins freedom by violence, freedom in his triple life.[52] Unless one actually thrusts his finger in your eyes, Mother, you never see, never judge.

Feet that Śiva longs for, these in your fear you have given to Mahishāsura![53] He who holds a sword can make you hear him! Fearing for your life, you have become his everlasting refuge.

Rāmprasād will be satisfied if he but win your grace. Leaving aside the Nine Senses,[54] worship the Feet of Śyāmā.[55]

FOOTNOTES:

[50] King of the Dead.

[51] Embankments are of first-rate importance in Bengal, where all agriculture depends on three months of rain.

[52] Past, present and future.

[53] A demon killed by Durgā. As punishment for sin he was born as a demon; his sin was expiated when he was slain, and thus by his death at Durgā's hands salvation came to him.

Durgā is often represented as standing on Mahishāsura's body. Rāmprasād, by a rather weak conceit, taunts her with fearing the demon and therefore giving him her sacred feet (literally, by standing on his corpse) and so, salvation ('You have become his everlasting refuge').

[54] The Nine Senses: There are Ten Senses, five sensory and five motor organs. Rāmprasād means that he will leave the use of all but the organ of articulation; he will become a mere voice to praise the Mother.

[55] Śyāmā, the Dark Goddess.