Children of India

by Janet Harvey Kelman

Often a new idol is found. For the Hindus think that the spirit of a god may enter an animal or a stone or a tree as the spirit of a man may enter any one of these.

A WAYSIDE SHRINE

One day a Brahman priest lay in a temple court, drowsy and troubled. The reason of his trouble was that plague was in the city and the people fled from it, and the offerings that were brought to the temple were poor and small. The priest was full of dread alike of the plague and of the poverty that would face him, if the gifts to the temple grew less and less. Soon the drowsiness grew stronger than his anxious thoughts, and he fell asleep. As he slept he dreamt that a great goddess appeared to him, and told him that she had come to the city in a block of stone, but that she had not been worshipped, and so she was angry with the people, and had sent the plague, and that if honour were not done to her she would send fire to finish the work that plague had begun. She wished the people of the place to hold a feast, and then to carry the stone in which she lived away hundreds of miles over the country to Benares.

The priest wakened, and, as he thought of his dream, he remembered a great block of black marble that lay beside a temple that had just been built in the city. Ere the women came to gather round him that day after offering their gifts in his temple, the priest had thought out the meaning of his dream, and he told it to them, as they gazed in awe and fear. He said that the stone in which the goddess dwelt should have been polished, and set up to guard the entrance to the new temple; but the workmen had not seen that the stone was a special one, and had left it aside, and the goddess in her anger had burned up the fields. The women sighed, for this part of the story was only too true. The fields were hard and bare, because there had been no rain, and the river beds were dry. Plague had followed famine, and death was at the door. But the priest told of more terrible things yet, for he said that Mariamma, the angry goddess, would send fire if she were not honoured speedily.

The story of the priest was soon known throughout the city, for each one told it to another. Within a few days fire broke out in the palace of the Maharajah there. The fire as it raged and destroyed the beautiful building made everyone sure of the truth of the priest’s vision, and hurried plans were made to have the goddess in the stone carried one stage towards Benares.

The people thronged round the marble block. The new temple stood near, but all eyes were on the stone, not on the temple. Then the priests began their work. They washed the stone all over with milk lest anything might have soiled it while it lay untended. Then they brought cocoa nuts and limes to lay before it. After that it was wreathed with garlands and painted with saffron, and lamps were swung backwards and forwards which filled the night air with the scent of burning camphor.

The crowd watched eagerly, and when the great stone with its added weight of flowers was lifted on to the shoulders of eight men, their joy burst out in shouts, for did they not know that famine and plague and death would leave their city with the goddess.

Music and lights marked the great procession as it wound its way through the narrow darkened streets. Without the city gate eight men waited to carry the idol forward. Many of those who had followed it through the streets turned back, but some pressed on to see the stone pass into the hands of new bearers at the next village. There the lights, the music, and the gaily decked stone struck awe into the minds of the village-folk, and they fell in worship before the block, and hastened to find men to bear it on. So the black marble block travelled over many miles of the land. It never reached Benares, for a priest on the way dreamt another dream about it. He dreamt that Mariamma wished to rest in his village, so he had a shrine built for her; and there, amidst lamps and garlands, the unused stone received the worship of the people from the country round, and the priest grew wealthy by the gifts that were brought to the goddess in the marble. But the other priest, Ramachandra, died of the plague which he had said would leave the city with the angry goddess.

Some Hindu gods look very terrible. One of these that is commonly worshipped is called Ganesa, and he has a man’s body with an elephant’s head. Whenever a Hindu is going to begin a new piece of work, or to do something important, he makes offerings to Ganesa, for he believes that the elephant-headed god can take obstacles out of the way and give success.