Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/578

506 of the world, and a place for the study of men, not of the Bengali race alone, but of a multitude of kindreds and tongues. All, however, seem intent upon answering one question, “What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" For concentrated worldliness, a Calcutta bazaar is unrivalled..

Calcutta has fewer temples of note than many cities of far less importance. It has no shrines invested with a sanctity made venerable and great by the traditions of ages; and those temples which have been erected are, for the most part, small and mean. Yet it is a city wholly given to idolatry. The forms of idolatrous worship most common here are those paid to the river Ganges and to the goddesses Durga and Kali. The Ganges, which is itself the goddess Gunga, may be regarded as one continuous temple for heathenish devotions, stretching in an unbroken line from the snowcapped Himalaya, fifteen hundred miles, to the jungly shores of Gunga-Sagor. At every point of its course it is supposed to possess the power of removing sins and conferring heavenly bliss. The Purannas (holy books) declare that the