Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/503

 time inclining its body in a bow toward the image of Buddha. So soon do the heathen mothers begin to teach their religion to their little ones. The other woman is very aged, and she places her hands just as the baby did, and, raising them high above her head, bends her body forward till her head and hands are pressing the stony floor. How abject, how devout she looks in her prostration before the idol! But she is again, in a minute, taking up the conversation where it was broken off, with quite a hearty laugh at some passing remark.

By this time a priest begins in a monotonous tone to read from one of the sacred books. The talking and laughing are going on in the mean time. No one present understands what is being read, the reader included, for it is in the Pali language, but they imagine some blessing comes from the reading, although it is in an unknown tongue.

This over, the ceremony of bathing the idols follows. All rise to their feet, the women getting their basins of water ready, while the men carry out the small images and place them in a miniature temple of bamboo which has been temporarily prepared in the yard. When they are all arranged the women gather around, and each one dashes her basin of water over them, but not touching one of them with the end of a finger; they are too sacred for a woman's hand to touch.