Page:Old Deccan Days.djvu/265

 Rh Page 74.—The story of Vicram's act of devotion is thoroughly Hindoo. It is difficult for any European to understand the universal prevalence and strength of the conviction among Hindoos that the particular god of their adoration can be prevailed on, by importunity or self-devotion, to reveal to his worshipper some act, generally ascetic or sacrificial, the performance of which will insure to the devotee the realisation of the object of his wishes. The act of devotion, and the object of the devotee, are both often very trivial; but, occasionally, we are startled by hearing of some deed of horror, a human sacrifice or deliberate act of self-immolation, which is quite unaccountable to those who are not aware that it is only a somewhat extreme manifestation of a belief which still influences the daily conduct of the great majority of our Hindoo fellow-subjects.

And even Europeans, who have known the Hindoos long and intimately, frequently fail to recognise the extent to which this belief influences the ethics of common life and action in India. To quote an instance from well-known history: there are few acts regarding which a European traveller would expect the verdict of all mankind to be more generally condemnatory than the murder of Afzul Khan, the general of the Imperial Delhi Army, by Sivajee, the founder of the Mahratta Empire. Sivajee, according to the well-known story, had invited his victim to an amicable conference, and there stabbed him with a wag nuck as they embraced at their first meeting. It was a deed of such deliberate and cruel treachery, that it could find few defenders in Europe even among the wildest advocates of political assassination. A European is consequently little prepared to find it regarded by Mahrattas generally as a most commendable act of devotion. The Hindoo conscience condemns murder and treachery as emphatically as the European; but this act, as viewed by the old-fashioned Mahratta, was a sacrifice prescribed by direct revelation of the terrible goddess Bowani to her faithful devotee. It was, therefore, highly meritorious, and the beautiful Genoese blade which Sivajee always wore, and with which his victim was finally despatched, was, down to our own days, provided with a little temple of its own in the palace of his descendants, and annually worshipped by them and their household not as a mere act of veneration for their ancestor's trusty sword, but because it was the chosen instrument of a great sacrifice, and, 'no doubt,' as the attendant who watched it used to say, 'some of the spirit of Bowani,' whose name it bore, 'must still reside in it.'

An attentive observer will notice in the daily life of those around him in India constant instances of this belief in the efficacy of acts of devotion and sacrifice to alter even the decrees of Fate. It is one of the many incentives to the long pilgrimages which form such a universal feature in Hindoo life, and the records of our courts of justice, and our Indian newspapers, constantly afford traces of its prevalence in cases of attempted suttee and other acts of self-immolation, or even of human sacrifice, like that above alluded to. It must be remembered that Hindoo sacrifice has nothing but the name in common with the sacrifices which are a distinctive part of the religion of every Semitic race. Many a difficulty which besets the Hindoo inquirer after truth would be avoided if his essential distinction were always known or remembered.

Page 76.—This belief in the omnipotence of 'Muntrs,' or certain verbal formulas, properly pronounced by one to whom they have been authoritatively communicated, is closely allied to, and quite as universal as, the belief in the efficacy of sacrificial acts of devotion. In every nation throughout India, whatever may be the variations of creed or caste usage, it is a general article of belief accepted by the vast majority of every class and caste of Hindoos, that there is a form of words (or Muntr), which, to be