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HINDUISM.

IV. WORSHIP.

Diversity of the Hindu systems of worship. — These independent of one another. — Manifold divinities to which they address their worship. — Worship of the stars ; that of Ganega. — Worship of the sun : Iranian influences. —The Neo-Brahmanic religions essentially idolatrous : origin and development of the worship of images. — Sacred symbols : the

linga and the yoni : the Calagrama and the Tulasi. — Sacred plants and trees. — Sacred animals : the cow, the bull, and the monkey : the worship of the serpent. — Private religious observances : the Acara and its varieties. — Mystic formulae and litanies. — Forms of public worship : the Gramadevatas. — Worship and service in the temples. — Offerings and victims. — Communion. — Festivals and Melas.—Pilgrimages: the Ganges and other sacred rivers. — Benares. — Religious suicide. — Mathura, Gaya, Jagannatha, Somnath, &c. — Statistics of pilgrimages :

their importance in preserving a certain unity in Hinduism. — Limits of Hinduism : excommunicated castes. — The aborigines, Dravidians, and others, and their religions. — A retrospective glance. — Religious future of India : Hinduism falls in pieces, and seems to have no successor. — Negative results of the Mussulman conquests and Christian missions. — The Brahma-Samaj.

Though it is hardly necessary to say so, there is a still greater diversity in India between the forms of worship than there is between the systems of doctrine. Not only has each figure in the pantheon his own, but usually he has several, as many sometimes as the names he has and the number of his principal sanctuaries. This pantheon itself is formed of heterogeneous elements, in which all the . religious systems which have arisen in the course of ages have left their several contributions. Alongside of the great sectarian divinities and their personal surround-