'And was she', asked I,
'to have flown eastward with him, or was he to have flown westward
with her?' 'She was to have accompanied him eastward', said the high
priest, 'but her Majesty, after this indignity, declared that she
would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches,
and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow
east; and west she flows accordingly, a virgin queen.' I asked some
of the Hindoos about us why they called her 'Mother Nerbudda', if she
was really never married. 'Her Majesty', said they with great
respect, 'would really never consent to be married after the
indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Son; and we
call her Mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to
accost her by the name which we consider to be at once the most
respectful and endearing.'
Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest 'calenture
of the brain' addressing the ocean as 'a steed that knows his rider',
and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane; but he must come
to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of
many millions can address a fine river as a living being, a sovereign
princess, who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a
kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single
temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit
by the delusion.
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