Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/102

92 “11. Swift is the excessive and girt-distending inebriation of Viswavara, Yajata, and Mayin: by drinking of these juices they urge one another to drink: they find the copious draught the prompt giver of intoxication!”—Vol. III, p. 311.

And this was the worship of Ancient India! Jolly and easy are the terms on which deity and worshiper meet together for their wassail! Prajapate addresses his god thus: “Indra, the showerer of benefits, drink the Soma offered after the other presentations, for thine exhilaration for battle; take into thy belly the full wave of the inebriating Soma, for thou art lord of libations from the days of old!” (Vol. III, p. 75.) But the Rishi Viswamitra evidently thought that, under the circumstances, there was no use in standing upon even Hindoo ceremony, so he says to his deity: “Sit down, Indra, upon the sacred grass—and when thou hast drunk the Soma, then, Indra, go home!” finishing up the address by reminding him that the hungry steeds in his car at the door need consideration, and require their provender!— Vol. III, p. 84.

How melancholy and degrading is all this—god, worshiper, and the traffic between them! But one grade above the beasts that perish; yet these are the teachings of the most sacred of the so-called “Holy Vedas?” This drunken worship realizes and surpasses Dionysius and the Bacchanals themselves.

These besotted mortals had evidently reached that stage of debasement when men can suppose that the Almighty “was altogether such a one as themselves,” and when they can “call evil good” and “put darkness for light.” Well might the reviewer exclaim, from the abundant and fearful evidence before him that, “No worship ever mocked the skies more miserable and contemptible than the religion of the Veda!”

But, what are we to think of professedly enlightened Hindoos, like Rajah Rammohun Roy, or this modern Baboo, Keshub Chunder Sen, who, if they ever read the Vedas, of which they talk so glibly, must surely have dared to presume upon the ignorance of their auditors, when they had the temerity, in a day like this, and before a London audience, to assert that “the worship of Almighty