“In the world that thinks!” repeated Immalee, “Impossible! Surely they must know that a difference cannot be acceptable to Him who is One.”
“And have you then adopted no mode of expressing your thoughts of this Being, that is, of worshipping him?” said the stranger.
“I smile when the sun rises in its beauty, and I weep when I see the evening star rise,” said Immalee.
“And do you recoil at the inconsistencies of varied modes of worship, and yet you yourself employ smiles and tears in your address to the Deity?”
“I do—for they are both the expressions of joy with me,” said the poor Indian; “the sun is as happy when he smiles through the rain-clouds, as when he burns in the mid-height of heaven, in the fierceness of his beauty; and I am happy whether I smile or I weep.”
“Those whom you are about to see,” said the stranger, offering her the telescope, “are as remote in their forms of worship as smiles from tears; but they are not, like you, equally happy in both.”
Immalee applied her eye to the telescope, and exclaimed in rapture at what she saw.
“What do you see?” said the stranger.
Immalee described what she saw with many imperfect expressions, which, perhaps, may be rendered more intelligible by the explanatory words of the stranger.
“You see,” said he, “the coast of India, the shores of the world near you.—There is the black pagoda of Juggernaut, that enormous building on which your eye is first fixed. Beside it stands a Turkish mosque—you may distinguish it by a figure like that of the half-moon. It is the will of him who rules that world, that its inhabitants should worship him by that sign.40 At a small distance you may see a low building with a trident on its summit—that is the temple of Mahadeva, one of the ancient goddesses of the country.”
“But the houses are nothing to me,” said Immalee, “show me the living things that go there. The houses are not half so beautiful as the rocks on the shore, draperied all over with seaweeds and mosses, and shaded by the distant palm-tree and cocoa.”
“But those buildings,” said the tempter, “are indicative of the various modes of thinking of those who frequent them. If it is into their thoughts you wish to look, you must see them expressed by their actions. 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.”
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 dropped 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 enshrined image of Juggernaut, and was dragged forward by the united strength of a thousand human bodies, priests, victims, brahmins, fakirs 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
