Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/419

Rh nor is it in the least essential (and why should it be with such gods?) to secure the blessing. The gods do not desire that the worshipper should renounce his sins; to pay them a blind devotion will secure their favour. Hence, a man may ask aid in a wrong cause as well as in a right one; he may pray for prosperity in fraud or theft as well as in the ordinary business of life.

Another main part of the religion of the Hindus consists in works of religious merit. The matter stands thus: A child is born in a given caste and station in life, with a certain amount of beauty and fortune. He has been born before, it may be, ten thousand times, and has each time lived and died. He will die again, and then again be born; and so on, until finally absorbed in the Supreme Being. His present condition is the result of his conduct in former lives. If, in his present life, he in any way accumulates a stock of merit, his next birth will be in an upward direction, and bring him nearer to absorption. If he just fulfil his duties, he may expect to be born again in about the same condition. But if he incur the displeasure of the gods, and transgresses the laws of Hinduism, he will, in his next birth, be degraded