and couches to their playthings, so they, both old and young, offer food to their idols, and afterwards eat it themselves with the greatest delight, pretending that they have left it. We see them occasionally marrying male and female idols together, and acting more like madmen than rational beings. They whirl their hands round their head, snap with their hands, breathe with the greatest rapidity, knock with their arms forcibly against their sides, beat themselves on the cheek, bend their hands and fingers, and their whole body, in various unnatural ways, and perform a thousand other gesticulations of a similar nature, and call this spiritual worship. At certain festivals they engage in pugilistic contests, and, with a view of performing religious actions, bedaub their face and hands and all their limbs with mud, or even blood, and fight together, or strike each other with their fists, and commit such outrages, and play such gambols before the gods, as one would hardly think rational beings capable of performing. Occasionally they substitute another person in the place of their favourite god, and make him dance before them, and amuse themselves by ridiculing and reviling him through Bashoodeb, Kashoodeb,[1] and other such like buffoons, so that it is truly distressing to behold them. They consider their blocks as animated beings, and though they cannot eat, offer them food; and though they cannot smell, present them with various flowers; and lest in the cold season they might suffer from the cold, they furnish them with warm clothes; and in the hot season, they fan them; and lest the musquitoes should bite them, they place them within curtains at night. They are constantly afraid lest the hands and feet of these their gods should be broken, and are therefore very anxious about their preservation; and yet, with all their care, we sometimes see that the rats and cockroaches spoil their colour, and make holes in their bodies; and the flies, after sitting upon various unclean things, come and sit upon them. Alas! where then is their divinity, seeing they suffer themselves to be thus insulted? And how is it that they are so entirely dependent for protection upon the diligence of their worshippers, if they are really animated, as their adherents suppose, by the spirit of the gods? Again, idolaters, to get rid of their sins, likewise pay their adoration to a shell or a bell. For the same purpose, they also anoint their gods of wood and stone, with milk, curds, ghee, sugar, and honey; they present to them clothes, sandal-wood, and garlands; they burn incense, and kindle lamps, present eatable offerings, cocoa-nuts, betel, and money, and scatter flowers before them. They sometimes worship them by standing in their presence, placing their fingers in their mouth, and bleating like sheep; sometimes they bawl out before them in the most unnatural way, and use language which it would be highly improper here to repeat. They beat drums, play on various instruments, walk in procession, wave clubs, twigs, &c.”
Now, viewed in reference to its effect on the intellect only, what must be the influence of a system like this in perpetual operation?—a system, which robs the divine Being of every attribute fitted to awaken veneration, gratitude, or love; a system which virtually and practically converts cows, monkeys, dogs, jackals, squirrels, birds, and other animals; trees, plants, books, wood, stone, and other lifeless substances, into gods or objects of religious reverence; a system studiously inculcating as worship a mass of trivialities such as one would think “could
- ↑ Names of persons employed for the purpose of ridiculing the representatives of their favourite gods.
