Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/330

286 passion by their penances, and so collect alms, move among the crowd with iron rods run through their cheeks or sides; or lie with their heads buried under the earth, while their bodies are exposed to public gaze. Others, with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness, and smeared all over with ashes of cow-dung, exhibit limbs stiffened by disuse, or emaciated by long-continued austerities. The drawing of the idol-car is thus described by a missionary visiting Conjeveram at the great festival for the purpose of preaching to the assembled multitudes:

“Early in the day, I went out to witness the imposing spectacle. The bright sun that Jehovah made flooded sky and earth with effulgence. Were it not an inanimate luminary, surely it would have veiled its face with midnight sorrow, as it gazed upon the scene that passed before my eyes. How shall I describe it? A vast multitude, whose heads were like the ears of waving wheat upon an illimitable grain-field, filled up the long avenue along which the car was drawn. It was, indeed, a mighty structure, towering above the tops of the palm-trees. It was gaudily decked with crimson trappings, and a glittering umbrella adorned its pinnacle. Its massive wheels moved