and wedding "the Lord of the Universe," plans for him a nocturnal adventure from which he is supposed to return incognito before dawn; or when unbridled eagerness, toiling to scale the heights of Indra's blissful abode, not only marks its progress with holocausts of dumb victims but terminates in a deed of sanctimonious sin that no system of morality dare justify. Celibacy, that self-forgetfulnes in the service of the Lord, degenerates into a social fiction, till a vestal deva-dasi is replaced by a shame-proof demi - monde,*[1] and
- ↑ * "Our temples cannot improve unless the dancing girl be first kicked out," was the remark made by the Hon'ble Mr. P. Ananda Charlu, when the present writer happened once to travel with him. As an interesting experiment, it may be mentioned that a friend of the writer's, who is the manager of an important temple in the Northern Circars, "disallowed dancing girls pbout four years ago," and he states that "no want was felt at any time in the real worship and temple service on account of their absence," that it "does not show any change for the worse," and that "a great majorty of the devotees feel it a change for the .better, although here are a few vulgarly people that complain of it."
