In their dealings with each other, men are generally deceitful,
but in their dealings with their gods, they are tolerably sincere in the
expression of the character they assign them in their imaginations. If
that character be formidable, they express fear; if it be one of
cruelty, they indicate it by the sufferings they inflict on themselves;
if it be gloomy, the image of the god is faithfully reflected in the
visage of the worshipper. Look and judge.”

  (13) Tippoo Saib wished to substitute the Mohamedan for the Indian
  mythology throughout his dominions. This circumstance, though long
  antedated, is therefore imaginable. “Immalee looked and saw a vast sandy plain, with the dark pagoda of
Juggernaut in the perspective. On this plain lay the bones of a thousand
skeletons, bleaching in the burning and unmoistened air. A thousand
human bodies, hardly more alive, and scarce less emaciated, were
trailing their charred and blackened bodies over the sands, to perish
under the shadow of the temple, hopeless of ever reaching that of its
walls. “Multitudes of them dropt dead as they crawled. Multitudes still living,
faintly waved their hands, to scare the vultures that hovered nearer and
nearer at every swoop, and scooped the poor remnants of flesh from the
living bones of the screaming victim, and retreated, with an answering
scream of disappointment at the scanty and tasteless morsel they had
torn away. “Many tried, in their false and fanatic zeal, to double their torments,
by crawling through the sands on their hands and knees; but hands
through the backs of which the nails had grown, and knees worn literally
to the bone, struggled but feebly amid the sands and the skeletons, and
the bodies that were soon to be skeletons, and the vultures that were to
make them so. “Immalee withheld her breath, as if she inhaled the abominable effluvia
of this mass of putrefaction, which is said to desolate the shores near
the temple of Juggernaut, like a pestilence. “Close to this fearful scene, came on a pageant, whose splendour made a
brilliant and terrible contrast to the loathsome and withering
desolation of animal and intellectual life, amid which its pomp came
towering, and sparkling, and trembling on. An enormous fabric, more
resembling a moving palace than a triumphal car, supported the inshrined
image of Juggernaut, and was dragged forward by the united strength of a
thousand human bodies, priests, victims, brahmins, faqueers and all. In
spite of this huge force, the impulse was so unequal, that the whole
edifice rocked and tottered from time to time, and this singular union
of instability and splendour, of trembling decadence and terrific glory,
gave a faithful image of the meretricious exterior, and internal
hollowness, of idolatrous religion. As the procession moved on,
sparkling amid desolation, and triumphant amid death, multitudes rushed
forward from time to time, to prostrate themselves under the wheels of
the enormous machine, which crushed them to atoms in a moment, and
passed on;--others “cut themselves with knives and lancets after their
manner,” and not believing themselves worthy to perish beneath the
wheels of the idol’s chariot, sought to propitiate him by dying the
tracks of those wheels with their blood;--their relatives and friends
shouted with delight as they saw the streams of blood dye the car and
its line of progress, and hoped for an interest in these voluntary
sacrifices, with as much energy, and perhaps as much reason, as the
Catholic votarist does in the penance of St Bruno, or the ex-oculation
of St Lucia, or the martyrdom of St Ursula and her eleven thousand
virgins, which, being interpreted, means the martyrdom of a single
female named _Undecimilla_, which the Catholic legends read _Undecim
Mille_. “The procession went on, amid that mixture of rites that characterizes
idolatry in all countries,--half resplendent, half horrible--appealing
to nature while they rebel against her--mingling flowers with blood, and
casting alternately a screaming infant, or a garland of roses, beneath
the car of the idol. “Such was the picture that presented to the strained, incredulous eyes
of Immalee, those mingled features of magnificence and horror,--of joy
and suffering,--of crushed flowers and mangled bodies,--of magnificence
calling on torture for its triumph,--and the steam of blood and the
incense of the rose, inhaled at once by the triumphant nostrils of an
incarnate demon, who rode amid the wrecks of nature and the spoils of
the heart! Immalee gazed on in horrid curiosity. She saw, by the aid of
the telescope, a boy seated on the front of the moving temple, who
“perfected the praise” of the loathsome idol, with all the outrageous
lubricities of the Phallic worship. From the slightest consciousness of
the meaning of this phenomenon, her unimaginable purity protected her as
with a shield. It was in vain that the tempter plied her with questions,
and hints of explanation, and offers of illustration. He found her
chill, indifferent, and even incurious. He gnashed his teeth and gnawed
his lip _en parenthese_. But when she saw mothers cast their infants
under the wheels of the car, and then turn to watch the wild and wanton
dance of the Almahs, and appear, by their open lips and clapped hands,
to keep time to the sound of the silver bells that tinkled round their
slight ankles, while their infants were writhing in their dying
agony,--she dropt the telescope in horror, and exclaimed, “The world
that thinks does not feel. I never saw the rose kill the bud!”

“But look again,” said the tempter, “to that square building of stone,
round which a few stragglers are collected, and whose summit is
surmounted by a trident,--that is the temple of Maha-deva, a goddess who
possesses neither the power or the popularity of the great idol
Juggernaut. Mark how her worshippers approach her.” Immalee looked, and
saw women offering flowers, fruits, and perfumes; and some young girls
brought birds in cages, whom they set free; others, after making vows
for the safety of some absent, sent a small and gaudy boat of paper,
illuminated with wax, down the stream of an adjacent river, with
injunctions never to sink till it reached him. “Immalee smiled with pleasure at the rites of this harmless and elegant
superstition. “This is not the religion of torment,” said she.--“Look
again,” said the stranger. She did, and beheld those very women whose
hands had been employed in liberating birds from their cages,
suspending, on the branches of the trees which shadowed the temple of
Maha-deva, baskets containing their new-born infants, who were left
there to perish with hunger, or be devoured by the birds, while their
mothers danced and sung in honour of the goddess.