Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/139

 15th.—This day is the anniversary of the birthday of the Gaja Rājā Sāhib, and she has sent me an invitation to accompany her to the Trivenī, the sacred junction of the rivers, to see her perform a vow, made for her by her mother. The young Princess from her birth was very sickly, and the mother, fearing the death of her infant, vowed to Mahadēo that if the god would preserve her life, she should do pooja as a fakīr, at the shrine, on each anniversary of her natal day. The time having arrived, the young Mahratta Princess will perform the vow in the evening. How much I regret I am unable to attend; unfortunately illness prevents my quitting the house. Picture to yourself the extraordinary scene. The young Princess doing pooja before the shrine of Mahadēo, a descent on earth of Shiv[)u] the destroyer. Her delicate form covered from head to foot with a mixture of ashes and Ganges mud; her long black hair matted with the same, and bound round her head like a turban; her attire the skin of a tiger; her necklace of human bones, a rosary in her hand, and a human skull for an alms-dish,—a religious mendicant; or making discordant music on a sort of double-headed hand-drum used by fakīrs, and wandering about within the canvas walls of the zenāna tent like a maniac! The skull borne by religious mendicants is to represent that of Br[)u]mha. Shiv[)u], in a quarrel, cut off one of Br[)u]mha's five heads, and made an alms-dish of it. As the Gaja Rājā appeared as a religious mendicant, the form in which the lord of the Bhōōt[)u]s appeared on earth, I hope some of the ladies represented the latter, a number of whom always attended Shiv[)u]. The Bhōōt[)u]s are beings partly in human shape, though some of them have the faces of horses, others of camels, others of monkeys, &c.; some have the bodies of horses, and the faces of men; some have one leg, and some two; some have only one ear, and others only one eye. They would have made charming attendants on the little Princess, who, wrapped in a tiger's skin, and wandering like a maniac, performed, before the shrine of Mahadēo, the vow made in her name by her mother at her birth!

The Hon. Miss Frances Eden has been with a party at