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 Müller, 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.
HOW THE SUN, THE MOON AND THE WIND WENT OUT TO DINNER.
Page [194].—I have not ventured to alter the traditional mode of the Moon’s conveyance of dinner to her mother the Star, though it must, I fear, seriously impair the value of the story as a moral lesson in the eyes of all instructors of youth.
M. F.
SINGH RAJAH AND THE CUNNING LITTLE JACKALS.
Page [198].—This story is substantially the same as one well-known to readers of Pilpai’s Fables. The chorus of the Jackals’ song of triumph is an imitation of their nocturnal howl.