ts frightfully grim and distorted visage, so justly styled the
Moloch of the East, sitting enthroned amid thousands of massive
sculptures, the representative emblems of that cruelty and vice which
constitute the very essence of his worship; when you think of the
countless multitudes that annually congregate there, from all parts of
India, many of them measuring the whole distance of their weary
pilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earning
assiduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religious
mendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their head
on the ground, and their feet in the air; others with their bodies
entirely covered with earth; some cramming their eyes with mud, and
their mouths with straw, while others lie extended in a puddle of water;
here one man lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of
fire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when,
besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amount
of involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion of
toilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings of
pestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival--how the
horrid king is dragged forth from his temple, and mounted on his lofty
car, in the presence of hundreds of thousands, that cause the very earth
to shake with shouts of 'Victory to Juggernath, our Lord;' how the
officiating high priest, stationed in front of the elevated idol,
commences the public service by a loathsome pantomimic exhibition,
accompanied with the utterance of filthy, blasphemous songs, to which
the vast multitude at intervals respond, not in the strains of tuneful
melody, but in loud yells of approbation, united with a kind of hissing
applause; when you think of the carnage that ensues, in the name of
sacred offering--how, as the ponderous machine rolls on, grating harsh
thunder, one and another of the more enthusiastic devotees throw
themselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the
infatuated victims of hellish superstition; when you think of the
numerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs,
jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak and
barren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of
deluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun,"[53] you will be able
to see an awful force of meaning in the words