Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/587

Rh times more ferocious, bloodthirsty, and fearful. It is said of her that the blood of fishes will please her for a month; the blood of an antelope or bear will please twelve years; the blood of a tiger, a hundred years; the blood of a man, a thousand years; and the blood of three men, a hundred thousand years. In the Kali-puranna minute directions are given for the sacrifice of human victims to this monster. She is said on one occasion to have cut her own throat, that the blood issuing thence might spout into her mouth to quench her appetite for blood.

Such is the being whom the Hindus of Bengal delight to honour. Her most famous temple is at Kali-ghat, a village on the south side of Calcutta. It stands near a stream, once the main body of the river Ganges, but now only an inconsiderable channel. It is, however, still regarded as the most holy and genuine Gunga; and here, under the bending cocoanut-trees, the people wash away their sins, (as they suppose;) here they bring the sick to die, and hither they bear the dead to be burned. The village is mainly composed of shops in which are sold rice, flowers, ghee, cocoanuts, and other articles used as offerings to the goddess, and also earthen images and painted pictures