It is in this temple."

G. "How do you worship your god? and how often?"

S. "We worship our god once a year, or once in two years, or if we miss
that, once in three years. When the worship is made, there is a great
gathering, numbers of people come--wind instruments, cymbals,
tambourines, drums, flags, beggars, devotees, stoics, bearskin-capped
shepherd-priests,--and as for brahmins, they are without number; they
abound wherever you look. Besides these, shops, cocoa-nuts, plantain
bunches, and bundles of betel leaves, innumerable mountebanks,
ballad-singers, tumblers, companies of stage-players; all these, a great
gathering, Sir. Then worshipping god, presenting flowers, lighted wave
offerings, offerings of money, of ornaments, votive offerings, and
consecrated cattle; persons who give their hair, cocoa-nut scramblers,
lamp bearers, offerers of fruit and flowers,--many people come together,
and we worship our god _Bir-ap-pa_."

G. "Is the temple, where your god is, very clean?"

S. "Yes, Sir. If god's place is not clean, what is? God is set up in
a stone temple. Once a year, or once in six months, if we open the door
we open it; if we don't, we don't. Nobody goes there at all except at
the feast. If a temple like this is not clean, what is, Sir?"

G. "But don't you sweep the floor and sprinkle it with water every
day?"

S. "Who is to sweep it every day, eh? Once in six months, once in
three months, or once a year, the priest opens the door, and if there be
a feast or full moon, he sprinkles and sweeps a little, colours and
whitewashes the walls with red earth and with white earth, streaks them,
brings mango leaves and makes them into festoons over the door; and if
we worship and bring flowers, we do; and if we don't, we don't. Such a
god is our god, Sir."

G. "Bravo! a very fine god indeed! But what do you do to this god at
the feast? Tell us a bit, and let us hear."

S. "What can I tell you, Sir? We are silly shepherds; all our language
seems queer to you."

G. "Never mind, tell me, _Gowda_."

S. "Well, Sir, eight days before the feast, the priest must get his
head shaved, bathe himself in water, and take but one meal a-day.
Having thus taken but one meal a-day for eight days, he, on the
feast-day worships the god in the temple, praises it, prostrates
himself, and begs it to do us all good. He then comes out and kneels in
the court of the temple, near a stone pillar in front of th