Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/340

 slippers at the door, the husband may not enter his own house! They have the character of being great libertines.

On this day I purchased curious old china dishes and brass circular locks of remarkable form. Also some brass idols that are scarce and very valuable. I have a large collection of idols of all sorts and sizes: some have undergone pooja for years, others are new. A native will buy a new brass idol, Gopalu, perhaps, for fourpence (two ānās); he takes it to his gooroo, or priest, who dips it in the Ganges; and having performed pooja with divers ceremonies, the spirit of the god enters the idol, upon which the gooroo receives ten or twelve rupees from the Hindoo, and restores the idol a pukkā god! Before the money was paid or the pooja performed it was nothing. Every Hindoo has some particular god whom he worships especially; he keeps his image tied up in a little bag, sometimes in his kamarband (cloth round the waist), at times in his turban, and sometimes stuck into the thatch of the roof of his house. It accompanies him wherever he goes: these little lares are seldom more than an inch, or two inches in height. When a man bathes, he takes his little god out of some corner of his attire, bathes the idol, and replaces it most carefully: to lose it is a sign of ill luck.

The rosary is made use of in Persia and India by Muhammadans as well as Hindoos, and appears with both to answer the same purpose. A bead is dropped through the finger and thumb at the contemplation of certain names and attributes of God, who has many appellations. The Brahmans are constantly seen with rosaries in their hands. It is remarkable that Christians, Hindoos, and Muhammadans, people so distant and distinct, should use rosaries for the same purpose.

Moor mentions,—"The thousand names of Vishn[)u] and Siva are strung together in verse, and are repeated on certain occasions by Brahmans, as a sort of Litany, accompanied sometimes by the rosary; as each name is mentally recited, with the attention abstractedly fixed on the attribute, or character, that