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RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
Tantras is the worship of Sakti -- Divine power personified as a female, and individualized, not only in the goddesses of mytbology, but in every woman; to whom, therefore, in her own person religious worship may be and is occasionally addressed. The chief objects of adoration, however, are the manifold forms of the bride of Siva: Párvatí, Umá, Durgá, Kálí, Syámá, Vindhyávásiní, Jaganmátá, and others. Besides the usual practices of offerings, oblations, hymns, in vocations, the ritual comprises many mystical ceremonies and accompaniments, gesticulations and diagrams, and the use in the commencement and close of the prayers of various monosyllabic ejaculations of imagined mysterious import. Even in its least exceptionable division it comprehends the performance of magical ceremonies and rites, intended to obtain superhuman powers, and a command over the spirits of heaven, earth, and hell. The popular division is, however, called by the Hindus themselves the lefthand Sakta-faith. It is to this that the bloody sacrifices offered to Kálí must be imputed; and that all the barbarities and indecencies perpetrated at the Durga Pújá, the annual worship of Durga, and the Charak Pújá, the swinging festival, are to be ascribed. There are other atrocities which do not meet the public eye. This is not an unfounded accusation, not a controversial calumny. We have the books-we can read the texts--some of them are in print, veiled necessarily in the obscurity of the original language, but incontrovertible witnesses of the veracity of the