Synopsis
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Excerpt from book:
No. 32 is a. temple of Shiva, which I saw near Allahabad. It is surrounded by a high rnouud, composed wholly of the fragments of earthen bottles. On one of the last days of February, from twenty to forty thousand pilgrims assemble, each being provided with two or three earthen bottles, containing water from the Ganges, and a few copper coins. Such is the offering they make to Shiva; and, believing him to be greatly pleased with the act, they dash and break the bottles against the temple. The next day, the Brahmins, faithful and true to Shiva, do not forget to pick up the money, and, as the trustees of the idol, keep it for him. That the temple may not be buried beneath the fragments of this novel offering, and that no com may escape their vigilance, they also have the broken bottles removed to a short distance, where they had accumulated to the extent here represented. It cannot be difficult to understand why this peculiar mode of worship was invented by the Brahmins. It may also serve as an illustration of the manner in which they take advantage of the credulity of the people and secure a large amount of property. The two figures in engraving 33 are portraits of individuals whom I had the opportunity of frequently seeing. The one on the left is the portrait of a religious mendicant. The number of mendicants in India amounts to many hundreds of thousands. As a religious duty, they forsake their families and friends, renounce every useful occupation, and wander from place to place, beggingtheir food. They are literally clothed with filth and rags; the latter, in many instances, being less in quantity than the former. Some of them are decorated with large quantities of false hair, strings of human bones, and artificial snakes. Others carry a human skull containing a most filth...