Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1886 — Hindoo Fanatics. [ARTICLE]

Hindoo Fanatics.

The scant success of the East Indian missions cannot be explained by the want of zealous missionaries, but rather by the fact that their zeal is directed against the most tenacious creed on earth—the ineradicable cult of Brahma. Brahmanism has withstood the attacks of Moslem and Portuguese zealots; it has survived the political convulsions of half a hundred centuries; it has done more. It has prevailed against the persuasive gospel of Buddha Sakyamuni.' Fifteen hundred years ago the largest part of Hindostan had accepted the doctrines of Buddhism, but the northwestern strongholds of Brahmanism gradually encroached on the territory of their rivals, and at present a hundred million es natives whose forefathers had, for a time, renounced all superstitions but the belief in the supernatural mission of their messiah have returned to their idols and worship a hundred of gods, besides the monkey Hanuman, and other zoological vermin. Their belief in the merit of self-torture, too, has revived in some of its most grotesque forms. Bidicule is impotent against the belief. Since Anglo-Saxon skeptics have superseded the old masters of Texas the Mexican “penitents” have become more self-afflictive than ever, ,and merely observe the precaution to veil their bloodsmeared faces. Nor has derision cooled .the enthusiasm of the Hindoo fakir. In the streets of Aurangabad, one of the most populous . cities of the Deccan, a British officer recently saw a devotee suspend himself head downward by twisting his legs around a sort of horizontal bar, exposed to the fierce glare of the noonday Bun. The observer, seated on the shady verandah of the stage-coach depot, watched hup from morning till noon, and saw him in statu quo when the coach started, an hour before sunset. Candidates for the distinction of a more perfect saintship supplement the caloric of solar heat by lighting fires in the open air and standing erect between three or four piles of blazing fagots. Few’ Caucasians could endure that ordeal for more than half an hour, but a Jainos, or Brahmanic devotee, will stand kis ground for days together, and indignantly refuse alleviation in the form of a cooling drink. Nay, even true-believing spectators would resent interference of that sort, for Tempting a Jainos to break his vow would provoke the vengeance, of an otherwise propitious deity, and perhaps compromise innocent third parties. Hindoo fakirs would smile at the idea of expiating sin by a pedestrian pilgrimage. Benares, the mouth of the Jumna, and other holy localities are yearly visited by pil-

V -I grims who have conquered, distance by wriggling along the highway, after fastening their wrists and ankles to a shoulder-strap, or even to an iron necklace. And yfet the Brahmans complain that the times of. true religious fervor are days of the past. The men who hoped to crush out the taint of original sin by hugging the wheels of the Juggernaut were only second-rate devotees; a true Jainos would deliver his soul from the thralldom of the liody by sitting down naked in a stronghold of horse ants, or by plastering a number of artificial sores with the caustic leaves of the tJrtica urens, unless he preferred to prolong the pleasure of self-destruc-tion by a diet of stramonium seeds.— Prof. Felix L. Oswald.