hanging from her neck is a garland of human skulls. Kali wants blood, and if not propitiated daily therewith something horrible is expected to happen. Every Indian town has a temple to this monster; and everywhere throughout what Kipling calls "the great, gray, formless India," sacrifices are made each morning to this ogress with insatiable appetite for blood.
The entrance to the Monkey Temple is slime-covered and the air heavy with sickening odors. Through a stone doorway the goddess may be seen enshrined, grinning demoniacally. Twenty horrible men, harmonizing in appearance to a reader's conception of thugs, gather in the court, to give each batch of visitors the performance that most have come to witness. The frontal region of their heads is shaven smooth, and each loathsome Indian drools betel-nut saliva that looks like blood. A goat is led into the enclosure and tied to a stone post, and the evil-looking men form a circle about the helpless animal. One of them holds the rear legs of the beast clear of the ground. A chant issues from the betel-stained mouths, and a human fiend forces through the circle, brandishing a straight-bladed sword, heavy and keen-edged, that has just been blessed before the altar of Kali. He is the official executioner.
This functionary makes a sign of readiness, swings the blade at arm's length for a moment—and lands a blow on the underside of the animal's throat that severs the head from the body. The gushing blood is directed to the Siva emblem close by, the head is borne triumphantly to the feet of Kali, and each thug-looking man smears his face with blood taken from the Siva symbol, and then dances madly around the carcass. Assuming that the spectacle has favorably impressed the visitor, the high executioner begs a donation with which to purchase a goat for a second sacrifice. You decline, probably feeling that you would subscribe bountifully if a priest might be substituted for the helpless beast.
On important days in the Hindu calendar many goats and sheep are sacrificed, and sometimes buffaloes as well. In time of pestilence or famine it is not unusual to find a child's head deposited in the early morn at Kali's feet, it is claimed.
The inner court of the Monkey Temple, like the ceremony of the slaughter, is open to the heavens, and is surrounded by a cloister lined with cell-like niches for solitary meditation and introspection. On the terrace, on every protruding bit of architecture, on every window ledge—wherever foothold may be gained—are monkeys, loathsomely fat, and made more disgusting from years of pampering than are the human freaks on the pavement. Great tamarind trees overhanging the temple are alive with monkeys. They drop to the ground, run between your legs, and dash before you at every turning. You are entreated to pay for basins of parched corn thrown to the revolting creatures by your priestly guide, and do so, but are glad when the monkeys show their appreciation from a distance. From three to four hundred of these mangy animals belong to the temple, and are held to be sacred. At Benares everything specially nasty or repulsive is protected by the cloak of sanctity.
You are glad to get back to your carriage, so thankful that you throw a couple of rupees to the mob of appealing "priests," in your heart possibly wishing that the money might be invested in soap and scrubbing brushes—and in poison for the monkeys. Urging the coachman to drive speedily for the open space and pure air of Benares cantonments, you wonder as you proceed what place in religion can reasonably be occupied by the revolting customs and beings to be witnessed at the Monkey Temple, and it is with no regret that you learn from eminent authority that in less than a hundred years every temple and shrine perched on the brink of the plateau crowning the Ganges will be undermined and its descent not arrested until the structure reaches the river's bed. Those responsible for locating Benares on the outer periphery of a great bend in the Ganges proved themselves to possess no engineering foresight. But India's controlling religion can receive no setback by the destruction of a few score tawdry buildings consecrated to its gods, for they will be replaced by better shrines and temples, rising from places beyond even the iconoclasm of the sacred Ganges.
Investigation reveals sufficient merit in the religio-philosophies of Mohammedanism and Buddhism to explain their adoption by teeming millions. Each faith offers admirable precepts and teachings, and prolonged study of them produces a feeling of respect for all true believers. But a season of travel in India, entered upon with the desire to dispassionately study the Hindu religion in the land of its overweening strength, produces only bewilderment and mental nausea. The more determined one may be to lay bare the gems of this faith and its administration by the Brahmins, the keener will be his disappointment, for not a redeeming feature will he find, and he may quit India smarting with regret over wasted time. To such an investigator Hinduism must forever be remembered as paganism steeped in idolatry. More, its gruesome sacrifices will provoke only disgust, perhaps equaled by that called forth by the unspeakably coarse temple carvings and ornamentation of the cars of juggernaut. I have been acquainted with Indian gentlemen proud to be known as Hindus, and have been amazed to hear them avow devotion to the hideous idolatry that absorbs a great part of the time of two hundred million people in India alone. If the strong arm of England were not raised over the great empire of the East the suttee rite and child sacrifice would unquestionably prevail to-day. To a westerner Hinduism seems the greatest abomination of the earth.
A BRAHMIN PRIEST