Page 131.--The Dipmal, or Tower of Lights, is an essential feature in
every large Hindoo temple. It is often of great height, and furnished
with niches or brackets, each of which holds a lamp on festivals,
especially on that of the Dewali, the feast of lamps celebrated in the
autumn in honor of the Hindoo goddess Bowani or Kali, who was formerly
propitiated on that occasion by human sacrifices.
Page 132.--The story of Vicram's act of devotion is thoroughly Hindoo.
It is difficult to understand the universal prevalence and strength of
the conviction among Hindoos that the particular god of their
adoration can be prevailed on, by importunity or self-devotion, to
reveal to his worshiper some act, generally ascetic or sacrificial,
the performance of which will insure to the devotee the realization of
the object of his wishes. The act of devotion and the object of the
devotee are both often very trivial; but occasionally we are startled
by hearing of some deed of horror, a human sacrifice or deliberate act
of self-immolation, which is quite unaccountable to those who are not
aware that it is only a somewhat extreme manifestation of a belief
which still influences the daily conduct of the great majority of the
Hindoos.
And even those who have known the Hindoos long and intimately
frequently fail to recognize the extent to which this belief
influences the ethics of common life and action in India. To quote an
instance from well-known history, there are few acts regarding which a
European traveler would expect the verdict of all mankind to be more
generally condemnatory than the murder of Afzul Khan, the general of
the Imperial Delhi army, by Sivajee, the founder of the Mahratta
empire. Sivajee, according to the well-known story, had invited his
victim to an amicable conference, and there stabbed him with a wag
nuck[109] as they embraced at their first meeting. It was a deed of
such deliberate and cruel treachery that it could find few defenders
in Europe, even among the wildest advocates of political
assassination. A European is consequently little prepared to find it
regarded by Mahrattas generally as a most commendable act of devotion.
The Hindoo conscience condemns murder and treachery as emphatically as
the European; but this act, as viewed by the old-fashioned Mahratta,
was a sacrifice prescribed by direct revelation of the terrible
goddess Bowani to her faithful devotee. It was therefore highly
meritorious, and the beautiful Genoese blade which Sivajee always
wore, and with which his victim was finally despatched, was, down to
our own days, provided with a little temple of its own in the palace
of his descendants, and annually worshiped by them and their
household--not as a mere act of veneration for their ancestor's trusty
sword, but because it was the chosen instrument of a great sacrifice,
and "no doubt," as the attendant who watched it used to say, "some of
the spirit of Bowani," whose name it bore, "must still reside in it."
[109] An instrument so called from its similarity to a tiger's claw.
It consists of sharp curved steel blades set on a bar, which fits by
means of finger-rings to the inside of the hand, so as to be
concealed when the hand is closed, while the blades project at right
angles to the cross bar and palm when the hand is opened. It is
struck as in slapping or tearing with the claws.
An attentive observer will notice in the daily life of those around
him in India constant instances of this belief in the efficacy of acts
of devotion and sacrifice to alter even the decrees of Fate. It is one
of the many incentives to the long pilgrimages which form such a
universal feature in Hindoo life, and the records of the courts of
justice and the Indian newspapers constantly afford traces of its
prevalence in cases of attempted suttee and other acts of
self-immolation, or even of human sacrifice, such as are above alluded
to. It must be remembered that Hindoo sacrifice has nothing but the
name in common with the sacrifices which are a distinctive part of the
religion of every Semitic race. Many a difficulty which besets the
Hindoo inquirer after truth would be avoided if this essential
distinction were always known or remembered.
Page 136.--This belief in the omnipotence of "Muntrs," or certain
verbal formulas, properly pronounced by one to whom they have been
authoritatively communicated, is closely allied to, and quite as
universal as, the belief in the efficacy of sacrificial acts of
devotion. In every nation throughout India, whatever may be the
variations of creed or caste usage, it is a general article of belief,
accepted by the vast majority of every class and caste of Hindoos,
that there is a form of words (or Muntr) which, to be efficacious, can
be only orally transmitted, but which, when so communicated by one of
the "twice-born," has absolutely unlimited power over all things
visible or invisible, extending even to compelling the obedience of
the gods and of Fate itself. Of course it is rather dangerous, even
for the wisest, to meddle with such potent influences, and the attempt
is usually confined to the affairs of common life; but of the absolute
omnipotence of "Muntrs" few ordinary un-Europeanized Hindoos entertain
any doubt, and there is hardly any part of their belief which
exercises such an all-pervading and potent influence in their daily
life, though that influence is often but little understood by
Europeans.
The classical reader will remember many allusions to a similar belief
as a part of the creeds imported from the East, which were fashionable
under the Empire at Rome. There is much curious information on the
subject of the earliest-known Hindoo Muntrs in the _Aitareya Brahmana_
of the learned Dr. Haug, the only European who ever witnessed the
whole process of a Hindoo sacrifice. The reader who is curious on such
matters will do well to consult the recently-published work of
Professor Max Mueller, which might, without exaggeration, be described
as a storehouse of new facts connected with the religion and
literature of the East, rather than by its modest title of _Chips from
a German Workshop_.