perfect and was admitted into heaven. It is worshipped at the time of marriage, at the investiture of a son with the Poita or Brahmanical thread, at the ceremony of giving rice to a child, and on other festive occasions. At the close of the last century a Raja of Naladanga is said to have spent Rs. 300,000 in celebrating the worship of the Dhenki.

6. KA? WHO?

The Athenians were not alone in worshipping the "Unknown God." "The authors of the Brahmanas had so completely broken with the past, that, forgetful of the poetical character of the hymns (of the Vedas), and the yearning of the poets after the unknown god, they exalted the interrogative pronoun itself into a deity, and acknowledged a god, Ka? or 'Who?' In the 'Taittiriya Brahmana,' in the 'Kanshitaki Brahmana,' in the 'Tandya Brahmana,' and in the 'Satapatha Brahmana,' wherever interrogative verses occur, the author states that Ka is Prajapati, or the lord of creatures. Nor did they stop here. Some of the hymns in which the interrogative pronoun occurred were called Kadvat, i.e., having kad or quid. But soon a new adjective was formed, and not only the hymns, but the sacrifices also, offered to the god, were called Kaya, or 'Who-ish.' At the time of Panini (the great grammarian), this word had acquired such legitimacy as to call for a separate rule explaining its formation. The commentator here explains Ka by Brahman. After this, we can hardly wonder that in the later Sanskrit literature of the Puranas, Ka appears as a recognized god, with a genealogy of his own, perhaps even a wife; and that in the laws of Manu one of the recognized forms of marriage, genet ally known by the name of the Prajapati

marriage, occurs under the monstrous title of Kaya." [**] In the Mahabharata Ka is identified with Daksha, and in the "Bhagavata Purana" it is applied to Kasyapa, probably on account of their similarity to Prajapati.

Click to enlarge
THE NIM.

Footnotes

^474:* Ward, ii. 139.

^476:* Ward, ii. 142.

^478:* Ward, ii. 143.

^479:* For another account of the origin of the worship of the Shalgrama, see the account of Tulsi, chap. ix.

^479:+ Ward, ii. 221.

^481:* Max-Muller, quoted in Dowson's Classical Dictionary, s.v. "Ka?"