S. “That’s good, Sir. What should god be like? It is in this temple.”
G. “How do you worship your god? and how often?”
S. “We worship our god once a year, or once in two years, or if we miss that, once in three years. When the worship is made, there is a great gathering, numbers of people come—wind instruments, cymbals, tambourines, drums, flags, beggars, devotees, stoics, bearskin-capped shepherd-priests,—and as for brahmins, they are without number; they abound wherever you look. Besides these, shops, cocoa-nuts, plantain bunches, and bundles of betel leaves, innumerable mountebanks, ballad-singers, tumblers, companies of stage-players; all these, a great gathering, Sir. Then worshipping god, presenting flowers, lighted wave offerings, offerings of money, of ornaments, votive offerings, and consecrated cattle; persons who give their hair, cocoa-nut scramblers, lamp bearers, offerers of fruit and flowers,—many people come together, and we worship our god Bir-ap-pa.”
G. “Is the temple, where your god is, very clean?”
S. “Yes, Sir. If god’s place is not clean, what is? God is set up in a stone temple. Once a year, or once in six months, if we open the door we open it; if we don’t, we don’t. Nobody goes there at all except at the feast. If a temple like this is not clean, what is, Sir?”
G. “But don’t you sweep the floor and sprinkle it with water every day?”
S. “Who is to sweep it every day, eh? Once in six months, once in three months, or once a year, the priest opens the door, and if there be a feast or full moon, he sprinkles and sweeps a little, colours and whitewashes the walls with red earth and with white earth, streaks them, brings mango leaves and makes them into festoons over the door; and if we worship and bring flowers, we do; and if we don’t, we don’t. Such a god is our god, Sir.”
G. “Bravo! a very fine god indeed! But what do you do to this god at the feast? Tell us a bit, and let us hear.”
S. “What can I tell you, Sir? We are silly shepherds; all our language seems queer to you.”
G. “Never mind, tell me, Gowda.”