INDIA.
A GREAT RELIGIOUS CEREMONY
DURGA seems to hold the most important place among the Hindu gods. The figures we see of her carried about the streets, represent her with three eyes and ten hands. In one of her hands is a spear, which she is aiming at a giant; in another is a serpent, which is biting the heart of the giant, and she has other warlike instruments in her other hands. She is feared and propitiated, not loved.
Today, very early, musical processions began to pass and re-pass. Drumming and tom-toming are the principal ingredients in the mus'c. A kind of squeaky instrument can sometimes be heard, and the sounding of a bell or gong at intervals. They carry with great gravity a plantain-tree. This represents Durga, dressed in a silk sari. It is conveyed to the river, and after bathing it the priests again solemnly escort it back.
The priests perform the ceremony of the consecration of the goddess Durga in the following words: " Oh, goddess, come and dwell in this image, and bless (so and so) who worships you." Durga is then supposed to come and inhabit the image, and offerings are given to her and all her family, and friends, and companions.
The sight of the image now gladdens and excites every one-specially the women, who gaze upon it with delight, and do not like to tear themselves away. On the second day the goddess is expected to descend from the Himalayas and to look at all the offerings of her worshippers. On the third day, farewell offerings are presented. Then farewell to the goddess; she may be forgotten now for a whole year. On the fourth and last day there is a great deal of drinking and wickedness, when all kinds of revelry is considered right. And the end of it all is when on this last day, with great pomp and show, the gorgeous images of Durga are taken from each house, with a large or small following, and great or little splendor, according to the wealth of the owner, and consigned to Mother Ganga—the River Ganges, or Hooghly. She is carried to the river-edge with torches and all manner of show, and thrown in—a splash in the water, and she vanishes! The females part from her with great grief, imploring her blessing and favor for the next twelve months.— The Church Missionary Juvenile instructor.
WASHING SINS AWAY.
Next in order of time came the great Bathing Festival of February 8th—a special bathing such as only occurs after an interval of many years. To bathe at such a season will wash away the sins of countless former births; so say the Brahmins. It was even given out that after this the sanctity of the Ganges would cease, and it would become as ordinary water. So the people came from far and near; tottering old women and decrepit old men came to bathe but once in the sacred stream before they died, counting themselves happy if they died on the pilgrimage. Country people left their homes, travelling for miles on foot before they reached the railway. The trains were so crowded that the people had to be taken like cattle in trucks. Rich women were carried in palkis to the water's edge, and grand "babus" laid aside their grandeur to bathe in public like ordinary people. All classes and all ages flocked to the sacred stream.—lndia's Women.