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events, that, in the enthusiasm and novelty of recent discovery, mythical interpretation has been greatly overdone, and, just as the word "Dasyu," which was at first declared to designate only the demons (of darkness, drought, or winter) whom the bright devas fought, is proved to apply quite as often to earthly, human foes; so the cloud-serpent of the uncompromising myth-theory may very well turn out to be, quite frequently, an allegorical presentation of the object of those foes' superstitious adoration. We are often brought down to earth from Cloudland with as unceremonious a shock.

II. Be that as it may, it is certain that snake-worship, utterly un-Aryan as it is, made a profound impression on the white invaders, so much so that, in the course of time, an Aryan snake-god-ARIÂKA— was invented; an impression plainly discernible, too, in the prominent place given to the NÂGAS (snakes and, snake-people, half-human, half serpentine in form and possessed of supernatural wisdom) in the later classical poetry. They play an important part, too, in modern Hinduism, which has instituted a yearly festival in honor, not of mythical serpents, but of the real, live snakes, which do not appear to strike this apathetic people with a loathing and terror at all proportionate to the havoc they play with human life (see p. 40). This festival, which comes round towards the end of July, is of a decidedly propitiatory character. Pilgrims flock to the Nâga-shrines which abound in certain districts; the cities teem with snake-charmers, whose weird charges eagerly crawl around the pans with milk

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placed at intervals on the ground in all the principal thoroughfares, before the admiring eyes of a devout and festive throng."

12. Repulsive and uncanny as this, to us unnatural, worship appears, it is, on the whole, harmless, and we might dismiss it with a shrug. Not so the crowning feature of the Dravidian religion-human sacrifices, which have been in constant and universal use among all the tribes of this ancient race until put a stop to by the English quite lately—in the case of the KANDHS and GÔNDHS, two representative and advanced Dravidian tribes, not till 1835. Human victims-either bought or kidnapped—were offered to the Earth-god regularly twice a year, at seed-time and harvest-time, and on special occasions, when some public need or calamity appeared to call for conciliation or atonement. Nothing can be more averse to the Aryan spirit than such sacrifices, at least at the stage of moral development at which we become acquainted with the race; yet such is the influence of long contact and habit, that we find even this horrible practice adopted by modern Hinduism in one of its two principal sects (Shivaism). The pure Brahmanism of the post-vedic and classical periods was not guilty of any such compromise, and such was the horror with which these aborigines in

1 It is worthy of notice: Ist, that temples dedicated to serpents are not found in the North of India; 2d, that the priests of such temples are never Brâhmans, but belong to the lower castes. Indeed, the old Aryan spirit is so much alive still in the noble castes, that they hold the serpent to be of evil omen and a Brâhman, if he happens to see one in the morning, will give up for that day whatever work or errand he may have on hand.

spired the Aryan Hindus, that their always exuberant fancy transformed them into a race of cannibal giants,

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fiends, and wizards, possessed of supernatural powers and every evil art that magic can lend, even to that of flying through space and assuming any

form at will-thus transferring to them the attributes of the old Vedic cloud-demons whose place they took in the classical mythology of the race. These RAKSHASAS, whose horrible aspect and murderous wickedness make them the counterpart-or possibly the prototype-of our nurseries' Ogre, are described as taking especial delight in defiling sacrifices, disturbing the devotions of pious forest hermits, or leading them into unseemly temptations, carrying off pure and holy maidens, and opposing, by force or wile, the advance of the fire-worshipping, Soma-pressing "friends of the Devas." The Râmâyana is full of their evil prowesses; indeed the Rakshasas clearly stand out as the main obstacle encountered by Râma in his campaign against Ceylon, which embodies in heroic and epic guise the Aryan invasion of the South,' although it was in reality neither so rapid, nor quite so successful as the national poem would lead us to think. It was not so much an invasion as an advance, and we can easily imagine that it must have been an achievement of no small difficulty for a body of men necessarily very inferior in numbers, in the face of a compact population, brave, stubborn, and strongly organized. Such the Dravidians are now, when they number over twenty-eight millions south of the Vindhya, and there is not the slightest reason to doubt that such, in the main, they were at the early time of their long patriotic struggle.

1 See Frontispiece—the Rakshasa king of Lanka, RÂVANA, with ten heads and ten pair of arms, each wielding a different weapon, defending his island at the head of his hosts of black giants.

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