Without breathing to any living soul a syllable of what
she has told him, he puts on the habit of a pilgrim or religious
mendicant, visits all the celebrated temples dedicated to this god in
different parts of India;[6] and, at the annual fair on the Mahadeo
hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five
hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[7] If the
youth does not feel himself quite prepared for the sacrifice on the
first visit, he spends another year in pilgrimages, and returns to
fulfil his mother's vow at the next fair. Some have, I believe, been
known to postpone the sacrifice to a third fair; but the interval is
always spent in painful pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of the
god. When Sir R. Jenkins was the Governor-General's representative at
the court of Nagpur,[8] great efforts were made by him and all the
European officers under him to put a stop to these horrors by doing
away with the fair; and their efforts were assisted by the _cholera
morbus_, which broke out among the multitude one season while they
were so employed, and carried off the greater part of them.
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