Varied Shrines and Many Idols.
Needless to say the faiths of those who worship "unknown gods," from whatever source they may have come, differ. The very uncertainty of the religions, which admit of varied deities, has fostered the increase of ceremonies and the change in rites, which, added to local folk-lore and myths which have gained in the telling, have caused new idols to be set up. It was so in pagan Greece and Rome, and it is the same in some parts of the world to-day. To these causes we may attribute the number of idols of different types, or the same idols represented with other attributes, which the collector of metal meets with. There is a strange fascination about the stories of pagan and heathen deities and their influence over men, and to obtain the full interest and delight from such a specialized collection the collector must become a student of Eastern and other religions and priestcraft.
The temples in which religious rites have been, and in some instances are still, observed, vary in importance just as the associations around the cathedrals and ruined abbeys in our own land differ from those almost absent in the more recently erected churches. The wealthy Indian, not unnaturally, employed artificers in brass to make models of the great shrines, and some of these rare works of metallic art are to be seen in the Indian Museum. Several are of eighteenth-century workmanship, among them beautifully modelled temples of Krishna. Incidentally it may be mentioned that secular buildings have been reproduced too; notably there is a very fine model of the Palace of the Winds at Jaypore, Rajputana, which was presented by the Maharajah of Jaypore.
FIG. 74.—JAPANESE PRICKET CANDLESTICK IN THE FORM OF CRANE AND TORTOISE.
(In the Victoria and Albert Museum.)
Some may regard the collection of idols as a curious hobby; others possibly see in them only art treasures to be valued for their intrinsic worth, for many idols are enriched with precious stones and jewels and are overlaid with gold and silver. Such objects occupy a different place from the cruder idols of wood and stone, cut and carved by savage races. We can well understand that the refined worker in metals spared no pains to make his idol or fetish beautiful and something to be admired.