Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/298

256 ing, who is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, but utterly indifferent to the good or bad deeds of men. He alone, they say, is to be worshipped. In practice, however, they are idolaters, worshipping images, not of God, but of deified men. They do this upon the ground that these men having, by attaining perfect holiness, been freed from their material bodies, have become a part of the Supreme God by union with his essence. To worship them, therefore, is to worship God.

In a village near Seringapatam, where is the most famous of the Jaina temples, there is a colossal statue of Gautama, the last of those who have attained godship, which has been cut from the solid rock upon the face of a hill. It is in the form of a naked man of gigantic proportions. Being some seventy feet in height, and standing upon an elevation, it is visible for miles around. Great multitudes of Jainas resort to it for worship.

The term Budh, or Boodh, or Budda merely expresses the idea of divinity. Budhists, all over the world, so far as they worship any thing, worship Gautama, or Gaudama, as it is variously written.

He was son of the king of Behar in Northern India, and lived six hundred years before the