Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/137

 AGHOEEES. (94)

GHOEPUNTS, or Aghorees, are a class of people who frequent the Ghâts at Benares, though they are occasionally to be found in other parts of India, and have been met with even in Assam. They are Ogres (indeed, the similitude of the word to Aghoree is noticeable), and affect a practical philosophy, which disbelieves in the existence of any difference between things, and asserts that all distinctions depend on the imagination. A cuff or a kick is as immaterial to them as a blessing. They go about in puris naturalibus, with a fresh human skull in their hands (off which they had previously eaten the putrid flesh, and afterwards scraped out the brain and eyes with their fingers), into which is poured whatsoever is given them to drink. They pretend to be indifferent whether it be ardent spirits or milk or foul water. For food they take the first thing which offers, whether it be a putrid corpse, cooked food, or ordure. With matted hair, blood-red eyes, and body covered with filth and vermin, the Aghoree is an object of terror and disgust. He looks like a wolf, ready to destroy and then devour his prey, rather than a human being.

Hindoos, however, look on these wretches with veneration, and none dare to drive them from their doors. They are among the worst of the many turbulent and troublesome inhabitants of Benares, and there is scarcely a crime or enormity which has not, on apparently good grounds, been laid to then- charge.

One of the ancient Hindoo dramatists, Bhava Bhutt, who flourished in the eighth century, in his drama of Malati mid Mahdava, has made powerful use of the "Aghorees" in a scene in the Temple of Chamunda, where the heroine of the play is decoyed in order to be sacrificed to the dread goddess Chamunda or Kali. The disciple of "Aghora Ghanti," the high priest who is to perform the horrible rite, by name " Kapala Kundala," is interrupted in his invocation to Chamunda by the hero Mahdava, who thus describes the scene:—

Now wake the terrors of the place, beset With crowding and malignant fiends. The flames From funeral pyres scarce lend their sullen light, Clogged with their fleshly prey, to dissipate The fearful gloom that hems them round. Well, be it so. I seek, and must address them.