Life in India/Religion of the Hindus
Religion of the Hindus.
Although facts illustrative of the religious views and practices of the Hindus occur in the preceding pages, a more connected and definite account of their system will be desired by some of our readers.
The subject is one of great extent, for it treats of the religion of many nations, now forming an empire of more than a hundred million men, through a long series of centuries. It is also a subject of much difficulty, from the minuteness, length, and diversity of the accounts of their faith given by the holy books of the Hindus; and this difficulty is increased by the fact that the religion of India has not, as is commonly supposed, remained unchanged through these successive ages.
Whether in our limited space any satisfactory account can be given of a subject so vast, so difficult, and so complicated, is questionable. As there will doubtless be some of the readers of our little work who will look for information on this point, the attempt will be made to compress within the limits of a few pages an intelligible view of the main features of Hinduism.
The foundation of Hinduism is in certain sacred books known as the Vedas. These are regarded as the authority upon which all religious faith must rest. They are acknowledged by all to be divine, having come directly from the mouth of Brahma the creator. The Vedas, four in number, are in the Sanscrit, a language read by learned Brahmins, but no longer a spoken tongue. It might be supposed that to know the teachings of the Vedas would be to understand the religion of the Hindus. Such, however, is not the case. The present religious practices are not there commanded, nor are the commands there enjoined now obeyed. In truth, the Vedas, until very lately, have been sunk almost in oblivion. The lower castes are forbidden to read them, or even to hear them read; and the Brahmins, whose duty it is to devote themselves to the study of these books, most holy in the eyes of the Hindu, know but little more of their contents than do the Sudras. They can repeat from them certain formulas for prayer, marriage, and other rites, but of the meaning of what they utter they are often entirely ignorant. In fact, not one Hindu in a thousand has any more definite idea of the Vedas than that all wisdom, all literary excellence, and all true revelation is contained in them; what these excellent things are, they know not.
Within a few years, through the untiring labours of a German student, Max Müller, aided by the researches of earlier scholars, a translation of the first Veda (the Rig-veda) has been given to the world. From this we have the fact made clear that the ancient Brahmins knew nothing of the modern system of Brahminic faith and practice. The names of the gods now most widely worshipped are not mentioned, and there are prayers to gods whose names are entirely unknown to modern Hindus. The Vedas are collections of hymns, prayers, and teachings, written doubtless by a number of persons called Rishis, through whom they are said to have been revealed. The date of their composition is probably to be set at about thirteen hundred years before Christ, the age of the Judges of Israel. The worship taught is domestic, contemplating devotion in the family and the house, rather than in the temple. They direct offerings to fire, and invocations of the elements, the deities of fire, wind, the seasons, the sun, and the moon. Idol-worship is allowed, but only because the vulgar and uneducated cannot worship an unseen god.
But, it will be asked, if the religion of India as it now is cannot be found in the Vedas, where is it to be found? To this we answer that the Hindus have other sacred books, though of a sacredness inferior to that of the four Vedas, called Upa-vedas, Ved-angas, Upangas, and Purannas. Of these, the eighteen Purannas are the books really known to the people. They contain poems, histories, theology, geography, arts, and sciences. Thus, the art of medicine or of music is as divinely settled as the history of creation; and it is as heretical to dispute the geography as the theology of the sacred writings. These compositions are quite modern, the oldest of them probably not dating back of the ninth century. To define the teachings of this secondary class of Hindu scriptures would be no easy task, since not only do they contradict each other most flatly, but their sum is so enormous that a lifetime would not suffice for their reading.
There is one point upon which all Hindu theologians are agreed, and we might almost say, only one point; that is, the existence of one eternal, omnipresent, and infinite spirit, the Supreme God—Brahm. They will tell you also that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and immutable; but by these assertions they mean something very different from our idea of the infinite God; for at the same time they assert that he is utterly devoid of all qualities, good or bad. When they attempt to describe him, lost in the mists of their own ignorance, they grow more and more vague until the Supreme Being melts into a mere essence, or nonentity, boundless and limitless, because possessing no qualities that can be limited, and no attributes that can be defined. Brahm, in short, is an infinite nothing. To the Hindu, he is no more an object of worship or of regard than space is to us. He receives no homage, has no temple, hears no prayer. He is to them an unknown god; nay, no god at all.
The human mind, especially when endowed with the activity and subtlety characteristic of the Hindus, cannot rest here; it must have something more tangible than this emotionless, voiceless, thoughtless, actless being. Here is a world; here are men, trees, mountains, streams. Whence have they come? They must have some philosophy to account for the facts of material existence. To meet this demand, their philosophers offer to them two solutions of the problem. These two great systems are known as the Dwita, or the two system, and the Adwita, or the not two—that is, the one system. According to the former, there are two eternal existences—spirit and matter; according to the latter, but one eternal existence, which is spirit or mind.
The followers of the Adwita, (the system of one existence, or the purely spiritual theory, commonly called Vedantists, maintain that God alone exists. God is the universe; beside him there is no existence; all that exists is God. What then, it will be asked, is matter? If God is a Spirit, and beside spirit there is no existence, what are these rocks and oceans? What is this body, and what the earth on which I tread? To this the Vedantist boldly replies, “All this is maya—illusion or self-deception. You, in your folly, suppose that you have individuality, a separate existence; this is maya, illusion—God alone exists. You imagine that you see forms, and touch material bodies; this is illusion—they do not exist. But one thing exists; that is, God.”
It must be acknowledged that this statement is somewhat startling to poor ignorant creatures who have always entertained the idea that they slept and waked, eat and drank, handled and were handled. But the philosopher of the Vedanta school assures us that there can be no doubt as to the matter. "Ex nihilo nihil fit," of nothing, nothing is made, is an axiom that may not be disputed. If God therefore is an immaterial Spirit, from him matter cannot proceed; and, since he alone exists, there can be no such thing as a material universe. The idea of creation, of an almighty God, saying, “Let there be light” and there was light, of his making all things by the word of his power, enters not into the thoughts of the Hindu's heart.
If now we ask for an explanation of this mystery of the seemingly existent universe, the same answer returns, All is maya—illusion. Brahm, they say, has two modes of existence, the positive and negative. Originally, he existed in the negative state, devoid of all attributes, and unconscious even of his own being. This unconscious nothing was the sole existence. Suddenly he awakes, assumes the positive state, and exclaims, “I am.” By a volition, an act of the will, Brahm imagines a universe, and it exists, not in fact, be it remembered, but in the imagination of Brahm. This imagination is the universe. Brahm, by the power of his will, realizes his idea; yet it is not real: it is ideal, illusory, non-existent. The individuals of this illusory universe, unconscious of the truth that they are ideal creations of this volition, suppose themselves to be separate existences. This is folly, darkness, and deception. To discover that all separate and material existence is maya—illusion—is true wisdom. After the lapse of ages, according to this theory, this bubble of imaginary being will burst, and all relapse again into Brahm.
Such are the vain dreams, the “philosophy, falsely so called," with which multitudes of the most intellectual of the Hindus delude themselves and their followers. All distinctions of right and wrong, all moral responsibility, all motives to virtue, are thus destroyed; sin and holiness, vice and virtue, are equally vain and illusory. A selfish enjoyment of all the good they can attain in this deceptive existence becomes the only object of life. Truly, “thinking themselves wise, they have become fools."
The philosophers of the Dwita, or system of two existences, advocate the reality of two separate substances—spirit and matter, and recognise them as entering into the composition of the universe; but how the union of the two is effected, and upon what terms is a point of debate. Some say that matter is eternal, and only modified in its forms by the sakti or energy of the deity; others that it is something emanating from the deity himself. Pantheism, or the belief that God is every thing, is deeply rooted in the minds of the masses. The soul, they believe, is but a portion of the divine Spirit united to a portion of matter; and even that matter is an emanation from this same deity. “Brahm," it is said, in one of the Purannas, “is the potter by whom the vase is formed; he is the clay of which it is made. Every thing proceeds from him, without waste or diminution of the source, as light radiates from the sun. Every thing merges in him again, as bubbles bursting mingle with the air, or as rivers mingle with the ocean, and lose their identity in its waters. Every thing proceeds from and returns to him, as the web of the spider is given from and again drawn within the insect itself.” “I am God," is the constant assertion of those with whom the missionary in India has to deal. And his belief that God and the soul of man are separate and distinct existences is looked upon as the pitiable ignorance of the poor grovelling fool who is not able to rise in thought above external and fleeting deceptions, to grasp the great truth that the soul and God are one.
Under this theory, the existence of the soul in connection with a material body is looked upon as a misfortune, and deliverance from this connection the highest bliss. To be again absorbed into deity, and to lose a separate consciousness, is the highest idea of supreme and final beatitude. This blessedness, however, is not attained by the labours and merits of a single life and death.
No man now lives for the first time. He has lived in former states, and in other forms, ever since the present race of beings first sprang by the will of Brahm into existence. He may have lived in connection with ten thousand bodies as man, beast, bird, fish, and tree; and he will live, age after age, born again, and again, and again, until, in successive transmigrations, he shall have wiped away every stain from his soul by religious penances and good works, or by pains and sufferings. Though, by their merit, these happy souls ascend to heaven, when their store of merit is exhausted, they return again, until, by unwonted holiness, they are absorbed in God, or at the end of the present dispensation, with all things spiritual and material, they sink into the being from whom they emanated.
This period of existence is called a day of Brahma, the name of Brahm in the state of creative energy; it lasts for the moderate period of two thousand one hundred and sixty millions of years! At the end of this vast lapse of time, all things are consumed by fire, or relapse into the creator, and Brahma, the conscious, becomes Brahma, the unconscious. He sleeps; again he awakes and creates; and again he returns with all creation to unconsciousness. This work of creation and retraction, according to the Purannas, goes on for one hundred years of Brahma's existence, or the unspeakable term of 311,040,000,000,000 years!
At the end of this unimaginable period, Brahma, with all beings celestial and terrestrial, relapses into Brahm, and the universe ceases to exist. According to one theory, the one (spirit) only remains; according to the other, the two, (spirit and matter.) Nor is this the end. Again the same process goes on, and again it is undone, until wearied with the effort to follow these vain flights of an insane imagination, the mind of the Christian sinks down, pained and amazed at the depth of the folly to which those blindly rush who turn from the word of God to frame for themselves a system of belief.
But it will be asked, Who and what are the gods of the Hindus? Where is their place in this vast system? To this, one Puranna will give one reply, and another, another. The greater part of them will tell you that from Brahm, the self-existent, sprang Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer. Then again, there were produced or created three female deities to be companions to the three males of the Hindu triad. These three are Sarasvathy, the goddess of arts and sciences; Lachmy, the goddess of riches and plenty; and Parvathy, the goddess of destruction.
From Brahma emanated a vast host of gods and demons, male and female. These bore others. The higher gods assumed innumerable forms, and thus the number of their deities is swelled beyond conception, until, in round numbers, we are told that there are thirty-three times ten million gods, or three hundred and thirty millions in all.
Of the principal gods, each has his own heaven, where, surrounded by inferior gods and favoured mortals, he holds his court, and enjoys the delights of music, flowers, dances, and other sensual enjoyments. All the extravagance of oriental imagination has been tasked to portray the joys of these heavens, but the result only adds to the proofs of the weakness and vileness of man. Sin, in every shape; sorrow, in its bitterest forms; violence, rapine, lust, fraud, and folly, are no strangers to the realms in which Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, and Indra (king of the inferior gods) preside. And when we learn the characters ascribed by their own shasters, (sacred books) to the beings whom the Hindus worship as their gods, we are made to blush for our common humanity. Oh! how little do infidels, prating of natural religion, the dignity of human nature, and the powers of human reason, know of the debt they owe to Christianity! But for the light of Christian morality in which they live, the atmosphere of Christian principles which they breathe, and the restraining influence of Christian public opinion by which they are surrounded and kept in check, with all their boasted virtue, intelligence, and perfectibility, they would sink to the level of degraded idolaters. Nor, in the eyes of a holy God, are such rejecters of his sovereignty and of his Son less guilty or less hateful than the vilest of the vile upon the benighted soil of heathen India.
It is not necessary here to enumerate even the chief of the deities of Hindustan. The names and history of many of them may be found elsewhere; to repeat them would be to defile our pages with a dark tissue of crimes and debaucheries. Lying, theft, robbery, gambling, murder, fornication, incest, malice, revenge, and sin in every shape and form, are the characteristics of their gods, even by the showing of their own worshippers. If such be the gods, what must be the people! Yet, for such Christ died; and such he is ready to wash in his blood, and receive to his own glorious abode! Oh the wonders of the grace of God!
To worship all of the three hundred and thirty millions of gods, or even the thousandth part of them, is clearly an impossibility. It is the practice, therefore, of different sects and individuals, to attach themselves to the service of one or more of their deities, to wear a mark on their forehead as the badge of their sect, to devote themselves in a special manner to their worship, and to look to them for protection. Of the great triad, Brahma is not worshipped, having been cursed for telling a lie; no temple is dedicated to him, no sacrifice offered before him. Siva and Vishnu divide the mass of the people into two great parties. The former is commonly worshipped under the representation of a black stone, shaped like a sugar-loaf, and called the Linga. Vishnu is worshipped in the many forms which he is said to have assumed from time to time. Thus, he is worshipped as a monster, half-man, half-lion, tearing open the bowels of a giant; as a boar, rooting up the earth when sunk beneath the waters of the deluge; as a dwarf, so small that he mistook a cow's foot-mark, filled with water, for a river; as Krishna, a beautiful and licentious young man, &c. &c.
The Sivites maintain that Siva is the Supreme God, while the Vishnuvites as stoutly maintain that Vishnu is supreme. Different Purannas (sacred books) take opposite sides of the question, and the controversy has at times led to bitter enmity, and even to war. One Puranna says, “By even looking at Vishnu, the wrath of Siva is kindled, and through his wrath, men fall into a horrible hell; let not, therefore, the name of Vishnu ever be pronounced.” In another sacred book (the Bagavat) we are told, on the other hand, that “Those who are devoted to Siva, and who worship him, are justly esteemed heretics and enemies of the true shasters." One Puranna tells us that a worshipper of Siva overthrew Vishnu and all his partisans, another, that Vishnu is the greatest of gods and lord of the world. Juggernaut, the famous idol of Cuttack, whose name means “lord of the world," is a form of Vishnu, and the hero-god Rama is another.
If such is the treatment which the supreme deities of India receive at the hands of the Hindus, we may judge of the respect with which the minor gods are regarded. A multitude of absurd, puerile, and most insulting narratives of their lives are everywhere told, and listened to with satisfaction by the very men who daily pray to them. Women, sitting on their doorsteps, sing in responsive verses the most gross charges of folly, impotence, meanness, and crime against the two rival deities. Men, as they walk the streets, chant the history of transactions in heavenly circles that would be a shame to any human family. Nor do they hesitate to curse the gods, if they do not get from them what they desire. A commonplace incident will illustrate the total want of respect for the highest deities, which is, I believe, universal in India. The native preacher who assisted me in Royapooram, when going among the people, was hailed by a fat, heathenish Hindu, and asked about his books and business. The man then began to rail at missionaries, but added that he had met one padré who was worth talking about it was Padré Poor,[1] whom he saw in Madura. He was a man indeed; and, after praising him warmly, he added, “If Siva were to drink the water in which Padré Poor had washed his feet, he would get heaven!"
The images, even of the most famous gods, are treated with an entire want of respect. The great god of Cuttack, the famous Juggernaut, is dragged by a rope around his neck to his place upon the car. Obscene jests are made at the expense of other idols. In times of too much rain they bring out the image from the temple, and expose it to the pouring torrents, that the god may learn the inconvenience of such weather; and in parching droughts they either expose it in the sun, or else pour cold water on its head, that the fierce ardour of the deity may be cooled off.
Their worship of the gods is such as we should expect from this state of things. It consists of coaxing, bribing, flattering, and threatening. If the god will do so and so, they will give him a new cloth or a cocoanut, or they will sing his praises through the whole world. They do not ask or promise holiness; nor is it in the least essential (and why should it be with such gods?) to secure the blessing. The gods do not desire that the worshipper should renounce his sins; to pay them a blind devotion will secure their favour. Hence, a man may ask aid in a wrong cause as well as in a right one; he may pray for prosperity in fraud or theft as well as in the ordinary business of life.
Another main part of the religion of the Hindus consists in works of religious merit. The matter stands thus: A child is born in a given caste and station in life, with a certain amount of beauty and fortune. He has been born before, it may be, ten thousand times, and has each time lived and died. He will die again, and then again be born; and so on, until finally absorbed in the Supreme Being. His present condition is the result of his conduct in former lives. If, in his present life, he in any way accumulates a stock of merit, his next birth will be in an upward direction, and bring him nearer to absorption. If he just fulfil his duties, he may expect to be born again in about the same condition. But if he incur the displeasure of the gods, and transgresses the laws of Hinduism, he will, in his next birth, be degraded and thrown farther off from the time of final emancipation from contact with polluting matter. In extreme cases of demerit, he sinks to a temporary but fearful hell; in the opposite case of uncommon merit, he rises to some one of the heavens.
It may be mentioned as an incidental but lamentable result of this belief in the transmigration of souls, that it shuts up the fountains of mercy and compassion in the human heart. Does a man meet with any misfortune—it is the consequence of some sin in a former state of existence. Does he fall from a scaffolding and break his leg—why should I assist him? asks the Hindu—does he not deserve it? is it not the penalty of his own sins? Is a poor wretch crippled, maimed, diseased—why should he be pitied? is it not the consequence of his own deeds in a pre-existent state? Thus it happens that while Hindus of some sects strain their water, and even the air they breathe, so as not to take life, as a people they are greatly deficient in pity for the afflicted, and most backward to deeds of mercy to suffering fellowmen.
As was remarked of worship, so of works of merit; it is true that they are almost wholly disconnected from vice and virtue. All notions of right and wrong, good and evil, sin and holiness, are confounded and destroyed. Thus, according to Manu, the great Hindu lawgiver, the killing of all the inhabitants of three worlds, and the eating food from the hands of a low-caste man, are sins of equal magnitude. The same authority asserts that the Brahmin, learned in the Vedas, who takes charity from a Sudra, shall, for twelve births, be born an ass; for sixty births, a hog; and for seventy births, a dog! On the other hand, by the repetition of a particular prayer, without any repentance or reformation, the vilest sins are atoned for, and the greatest merit is obtained. To repeat the name of his guardian-god is a work of great value. Even if it is done unintentionally, it still gives the repeater great merit. Thus, a certain Ajamil, we learn from the Bagavat, committed the most enormous sins, and lived in crime all his days. In the hour of death, feeling extreme thirst, he cried, “Narayana! Narayana! Narayana! give me some water!" When the ministers of Yama, the king of hell, were about to drag him away to punishment, he was rescued by the messengers of Vishnu. Upon this, the officers of retribution, greatly enraged, appealed to their master, who, on examining the accountbooks, and finding Ajamil to have been a notorious sinner, hastened to Vaicuntha, the heaven where Vishnu reigns in glory, to demand an explanation. And what was the ground of his deliverance? In the hour of his death he had thrice repeated “Narayana,” a name of Vishnu; and so great was the merit of the deed, that he was immediately taken to heaven!
The accompanying cut, taken from the native paintings designed to illustrate the Madura Puranna, will give you an idea both of Hindu art and religious views. The story to be illustrated is as follows:—While Vara-guna was reigning in Madura, even as Indra reigns in the heaven of the gods, he one day went out to hunt lions, tigers, &c. Returning in triumph, he unintentionally rode over and killed a Brahmin who lay asleep in the road. The king came to his palace unconscious of what had happened; but, when the body was brought to him, gave money for the performance of the proper funeral rites. He was not, however, to go unpunished. He had killed a Brahmin, (though unintentionally,) and was, in consequence, afflicted with the incurable disease of Brahma-ashti. He sought to atone for his 
Disease leaving the Madura King. p. 370.
The reader will notice that both the crime and the atonement were entirely aside from any change in the moral state of the actor in the story. In the illustration, the image of Siva is represented as surmounting the Linga, (emblematic of this god,) which has been carved into a face. The king stands before it, with joined hands, in the attitude of worship, and behind him is the disease which has left him. From the size of the disease, it will be believed that the sufferings of the poor Brahmin-slayer must have been diffused pretty widely throughout his body. This representation of the nature of the disease may suggest some ideas on the practice of medicine in India, for which we cannot here make room. It might be observed that the Hindus do not say, with us, that they have caught any given disease, but that the disease has caught them.
The story connected with another illustration from the same source (the original of which is sculptured in stone in the ancient temple of Madura) will serve still farther to exemplify the views of the Hindus as to the nature of the holiness of their religious ascetics, and the dignity of the deeds of their gods. In a certain town of great sacredness lived a man of respectable caste, with his wife and twelve sons. These youths, neglecting the instructions of their father and mother, joined themselves with hunters, and accompanied them on their cruel errands to the woods. One day they came upon a holy man who had retired from the world to mortify his passions and appetites in the solitude of a forest. Here he was practising religious duties and austerities to obtain deliverance from sin. These graceless youths not only laughed at the holy man, but even threw sand and stones at him. His attention having thus been attracted to earthly things, the merit of his devotions was destroyed. Filled with rage, he uttered on them a curse to the effect that they should be born as pigs, and then be deprived of their mother. The youths, knowing the holiness of the ascetic and the power of his curse, fell at his feet to implore his mercy. His anger was appeased, and he told them that the lord of Madura should nourish them, make them ministers of state, and give them heavenly bliss. And so it happened. The boys died in the woods, and their spirits entered into twelve young pigs; the parent hogs were slain by hunters, and they were left orphans. The god Siva, however, of his boundless compassion, pitying them, gave them nourishment, restored them to human forms, their heads excepted, and endowed them with matchless wisdom and learning. Then, appearing in a dream to the king, he bade him send for twelve rare creatures, who should be his ministers of state, and make his reign as rich as illustrious. The king obeyed the heavenly mandate, summoned the pig-headed statesmen to his court, and set them over his realms. They lived glorious in wisdom as the rising sun, enriched the king by their sagacity, did deeds of charity, and finally ascended to partake of heavenly bliss in the presence of their lord and protector, Siva.
In the illustration, four of the twelve ministers are standing with their hands joined in respectful homage before the king, who, seated on his throne beneath a canopy of serpents, is engaged in council with these sagacious beings.
To attempt to detail the religious duties and rites of the Hindus would, of itself, require a volume. Even the round of ceremonial observances required in a single day would fill a chapter. Few would be willing to plod through the detail, with its minute prescriptions as to the cleansing of the teeth; the plucking, and using, and throwing away of the twig with which this duty is performed; the morning bath, with its sippings, its casting of water on 
The King’s Ministers. 374.
the head, on the earth, and towards the sky; the prayers and invocation of the sun; the inhaling of water by one nostril, and exhaling it by the other; and a whole host of rules for the most insignificant acts of life. In truth, probably not one in ten thousand of the people attempts to fulfil these sacred laws. All that is aimed at is to perform so much as will secure them from sinking in a succeeding birth to a lower grade of being. Others, who are too careless of the future to be influenced even by this motive, merely comply so far as to satisfy the demands of public opinion and avoid the charge of want of decency.
Some, among the Hindus, rising in their aspirations above the low strivings of the mass, aim at one leap to pass from present existence to some heaven of the gods, or even to that final blessedness which is attained by absorption into the divine Spirit. Such are known as Sanyasees or Yogees. Forsaking the natural courses of life, they devote themselves to the attainment of a consciousness that God is all things, and, that aside from God, the universe exists not; that in all space there is but one existence, and that one the supreme Brahm. Thus, ceasing to have a separate existence, they can exclaim, “I am Brahm—the supreme, eternal, omnipotent God!” To attain to this knowledge, however, is not the work of a day; it is only to be gained by the most intense effort, the most self-denying austerities, the most protracted meditations, and the most painful penances. To learn to regard cold and heat, pleasure and pain, hunger and fulness, love and hate, as all equally deceptive and unreal, existing only in the imagination by reason of maya, or illusion, is no light matter. Hence, the affections must be blunted, and parents, wives, and children renounced; the appetites must be quenched; the instincts of nature denied. To do this, they resort to austerities which have filled the world with wonder; living exposed to the scorching suns of summer and the chilling rains of winter; going devoid of clothing; suffering the hair and nails to grow uncut; lying on beds of spikes; holding the arms upright till shrivelled and useless; hanging over slow fires, with a thousand other forms of self-infliction, in the effort to blunt and deaden every motion of nature, “and thus virtually to reduce the heart to a petrifaction, the mind to a state of idiocy, and the body to that of an immovable statue.”
While some, doubtless, in the blindness of their hearts, are actually aiming thus to attain to a knowledge of God, others use a show of austerities to excite the admiration of the people, to gratify ambition, to secure a reputation for holiness, and often to use this reputation for sanctity as a cloak for the most abominable sins. Whole hosts of so-called holy men wander from place to place, as very wolves in sheeps' clothing, extorting alms from rich and poor, living in debauchery, and making their names a stench in the nostrils even of the debased Hindu.
There are a multitude of forms of self-inflicted pain, such as making long and distressing journeys to the temple of a particular god upon the hands and knees, cutting off the end of the tongue, running wires through the cheeks, walking over burning coals with the feet bare, and many others, which are not so much parts of a long-continued system of austerities, as single acts of merit; these are commonly done in fulfilment of a vow. One of the most universally-practised penances, is that of the churruk pujah, or hook-swinging. Different as are the customs of different Hindu nations, this is found almost everywhere in Hindustan. It is a yearly festival in honour of the sanguinary goddess known in Madras as Mari-Ammen, the sender of cholera and smallpox, and the dreaded slayer of thousands. It was each year celebrated in sight of our residence at Royapooram.
On a certain Sunday in July, the top of a lofty pole would be seen above the roofs of the houses lying between us and the beach, with a long and strong cross-beam fixed upon it, like the cross-beam of a well-sweep. About noon, the crowd began to flow by our house towards the beach. Men and boys, women and children, some on foot, some in rude native carriages, poured in a constantly-increasing stream towards the centre of attraction. By three o'clock, the crowd on the sea-shore around the swinging-pole became immense, and the ceremonies began. The person about to perform the pujah, now advanced with a cloth wound about his middle, but otherwise naked, and with his body daubed over with yellow paint and holy ashes. In the lap of his cloth, which is tucked into his waist, he has limes, flowers, margosa-leaves, and other trifles. Advancing to the temple, he worshipped the idol, and, throwing himself on his face, awaits the insertion of the hooks. The officiating priest, (not a Brahmin, for this is a Sudra service,) taking up as much of the skin and flesh beneath the shoulder-blade as he can grasp within his fingers, thrusts the point of the hook into the naked back of the devotee; another hook is inserted into the other side of the back. These hooks are attached to a cord which is hung from one extremity of the cross-beam. Those who hold the end of the rope hung from the other extremity of the beam now draw upon it, raising the opposite end, and the wretch is swung by these two hooks inserted in his flesh, high in the air above the heads of the multitude. At the sight, an exulting cry bursts from every mouth, and the roar of the surf is drowned in the united outburst of delight which comes up from ten thousand men as the sound of many waters. Those who hold the rope now move around the pole in a circle,carrying the beam, which rotates upon a pivot, round and round, swinging the miserable victim of superstition in a circle over the heads of the multitude. Hence the name of the ceremony, churruk pujah, or circular worship. As he is thus suspended between earth and heaven, with nothing but the strength of his own flesh to prevent his falling a mangled carcass on the ground, he loosens his cloth and scatters its contents to the crowd below. As the limes and flowers fall, every hand is outstretched, eager to catch something from a source so holy, as a charm against misfortune for the coming year. After swinging. thus for some ten minutes, he is let down, and another devotee has the hooks thrust into his back, is raised, swung, and in his turn released. Another and another comes forward, and the process goes on till fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five, are swung on one pole in a single day.
What, it will be asked, is the motive to such self-inflicted tortures? The motives of different persons differ. A man is ill; Mari-Ammen is about to slay him, and in his extremity, he cries to her in prayer, promising, if spared, to perform the churruk pujah in her honour. Another has a sick child, and in his distress vows to swing if it is spared. Others, again, do it for pay, they enduring the suffering for a sufficient compensation, and their employers having the credit of the meritorious act set to their account!
Yet, painful as are such scenes of blind superstition and fruitless self-torture, to a Christian heart, a little, bloodless, and most ordinary occurrence, which I noticed when last present at this festival, far more deeply pained and affected my soul. As I left the ground, a father just before me was leading by the hand a little girl some four years old. As they came before a small temple in which stood a black, misshapen god of stone, the father put his hand upon the child's head, made her fall down upon her face before it, worship it, and then raising her, gave to her some candy as a reward for her obedience. Poor child! my heart is sore for thee! How false and fatal are thy earliest thoughts of God! how deluded thy first acts of devotion! The first prayer lisped by thine infant lips is to a god of stone; thy first act of obedience to a father's teachings is idolatry; thy little hands are first clasped in homage to a thing of naught. And when thy childhood gives place to girlish thoughts and deeds, and the girl ripens into the woman, wife, and mother, darkness, degradation, and heathenism will be thy portion—thy portion to transmit to a coming generation. Will the name of Jesus, the only Saviour, ever fall upon thine ear? or wilt thou live and die as though Christ had not left heaven to save thee? And thou art but one of the countless multitudes whom Satan has bound with chains strong as steel, and who rejoice and glory in their bonds! As Christ wept over Jerusalem, so might Christendom weep over idolatrous and perishing India.
Hinduism, vast, complicated, and hoary with antiquity, holds in its deadly grasp more than a hundred million souls. God grant that the Sun of Righteousness may soon shine upon these gloomy night-shades, and banish forever this worse than Egyptian darkness from these millions of immortal minds! a darkness doubly fearful and fatal; for they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.
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MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
- ↑ The Rev. Daniel Poor, of Ceylon, taken to his rest in 1855, after thirty-six years of labour among the heathen.