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Just before the Divine Song begins, the knight who is about to become, illuminated or 'disillusioned' offers a prayer to the terrible goddess Durg(=a), also one of the new, popular, and horrible forms of divine manifestation. In this hymn, VI. 23, Durg[=a] (Um[=a), P[=a]rvat[=i), K[=a]li, etc.) is addressed as "leader of the armies of the blessed, the dweller in Mandara, the youthful woman, K[ra]li, wife of Civa, she who is red, black, variegated; the savior, the giver of gifts, K[=a]ty[=a]yan[=i], the great benefactress, the terrible one, the victorious one, victory itself ... Um[=a], the slayer of demons,"[44] and the usual identification and theft of epithets then follows: "O thou who art the Vedas, who art Revelation, who art virtue, J[=a]tavedasi, ... thou art brahma among the sciences, thou art the sleep of incorporate beings, the mother of Skanda, the blessed one, Durg[=a] ... thou art the mother of the Vedas and Ved[=a]nta ... thou art sleep, illusion, modesty, happiness ... thou art satisfaction, growth, contentment, light, the increaser of moon and sun."
Turning from these later parasites [45] which live on their parent gods and yet tend to reduce them, we now revert to that happiness hereafter to which looks forward the epic knight that has not been tempted to 'renounce' desire. In pantheistic passages he is what the later remodeller makes him. But enough of old belief remains to show that the warrior really cared a great deal more for heaven than he did for absorption. As to the cause of events, as was said above, it is Fate. Repeatedly is heard the lament, "Fate (impersonal) is the highest thing, fie on vain human effort." The knight confesses with his lips to a belief in the new doctrine of absorption, but at heart he is a fatalist. And his aim is to die on the field of battle, that he may go thence directly to the heaven that awaits the good and the brave.[46] Out of a long description of this heaven a few extracts here selected will show what the good knight anticipates:
"Upward goes the path that leads to gods; it is inhabited by them that have sacrificed and have done penance. Unbelieving persons and untruthful persons do not enter there; only they that have duteous souls, that have conquered self, and heroes that bear the marks of battle. There sit the seers and gods, there are shining, self-illumined worlds, made of
