Let but one drop of
the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it passes, and a
hundred swords fly from their scabbards; many an innocent person
falls; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand
with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power,
the magistrates refuse to prohibit one class from laughing because
the other happens to be weeping; and the Hindoos on such occasions
laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do
so.
A very learned Hindoo once told me in Central India that the oracle
of Mahadeo had been at the same time consulted at three of his
greatest temples--one in the Deccan, one in Rajputana, and one, I
think, in Bengal--as to the result of the government of India by
Europeans, who seemed determined to fill all the high offices of
administration with their own countrymen, to the exclusion of the
people of the country. A day was appointed for the answer; and when
the priest came to receive it they found Mahadeo (Siva) himself with
a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them
that their European Government was in reality nothing more than a
multiplied incarnation of himself; and that he had come among them in
this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats as they had
been doing for some centuries past; that these, his incarnations,
appeared to have no religion themselves in order that they might be
the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many
different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they
must be aware that they never had before been so impartially
governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors,
without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the
gods.
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