PREFACE TO THE 1st EDITION.
Hindu writers of the age, when the Pouranic ideas had taken a deep hold into the minds of the people, generally with a view to instruct them on any social topic of great utility, began their discourse on any subject inviting attention in a form which they thought most convenient for the purpose and intelligible to all, and this form was the introduction of a God and Goddess into whose mouths were put questions and answers in a way which well simplified the subject, and brought it within easy comprehension of the people whose general education is limited and for whom it was intended. Such method adopted by the writers was well suited to the popular bent of the age.
Gouri and Siva are but the embodiments of God or parts of Himself. In them God's feminine modesty, meekness, humility, affections, beauty, love and favour to His disciples, and to those who are seekers after His path, and on the other hand His creative and preserving energy, His stern, and at the same time, His merciful aspects as the great Ruler of the universe, His frowning wrath on the transgressors and of His laws, His other masculine features are pre-eminently united. This union of the masculine with the feminine features of God in the emblems of a God and a Goddess— which express merely the duality of existence as evolved from the One Supreme Being, is rendered explicit in the divine forms of Siva and Durga, being the incarnations of the creative and reproductive energies. The duality of existence in the forms of Purusa and Prakrity—
