Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/66

 sacerdotal vows betray their hollowness now in nude photos, then in criminal prodigality, anon in the incarceration of a holy priest for gallantry, and again in the exposure in a court of law of the life-history of a "born-lord" of countless devotees with particulars revolting enough for a foreigner to characterise the sorry individual as a creature not fit to be touched 'with a pair of hot tongs.' Devotion, that rejoicing of the soul in the graces of the Lord, degenerates into vulgar vagaries that embody themselves in images and pictures of ruthless realism with dissolute details, and express themselves in song or verse that purblind partisans alone can misname piety. Esotericism, that panacea for all the spiritual ailments of India, would fain galvanise these dead bones into life; but while the subtle apologist points to a mystic inside — a light behind Parrhasius's curtain, the simple world adopts the pleading to justify the palpable outside, and offensive orgies and voluptuous leelas, amorous ditties and "unholy holis?" (as